and unwillingness to relax in men, making friendships awkward and harder to develop. The fear to create cross-sex friendships in the workplace becomes a problem as friendships amongst coworkers can be specifically important for career development. Friendships can provide information access, networking and emotional support to any individual all of which are valuable for job performance. Hence, when one is limited to forming friendships with those of the same sex, certainly, they are being deprived of advancement in the workplace. Major empirical findings Research has been done in the areas of attraction, protection, perception, cross-sex friendships throughout development, and touch and sexual activity between cross-sex friends. These studies find that there are some evolutionary and social benefits to cross-sex friendships. However, there are also some negative social consequences. Attraction Within cross-sex friendships, men judge sexual attraction and the desire for sex as a more important reason than do women for initiating their friendship. Additionally, men are more sexually attracted to their opposite-sex friends and have more frequent desires to have sexual intercourse with their opposite-sex friends than women are. Bleske-Rechek et al. (2012) found that men overestimate how much their female friends are attracted to them. Women are less likely to want to date their male friends if he is in a committed relationship, but men have the same desire to date their female friend whether or not she is dating someone. Bleske-Rechek et al. (2012) hypothesize that a man's desire to date his female friend is not changed by whether or not their female friend is in a relationship. This is due to males’ mating strategies that focus around acquiring short term mates. Furthermore, Bleske-Rechek et al. (2012) suggest that men would pursue cross-sex friendships both when single and in a relationship, while women would be less likely to pursue cross-sex friends while dating someone. Attraction within these friendships can cause challenges. Sexual attraction can arise for a variety of reasons in cross-sex friendships. In a study by Halatsis and Christakis (2009), participants cited social pressures and emotional vulnerability as reasons for sexual attraction arising in a cross-sex friendship. A social pressure that may prompt sexual attraction between cross-sex friends is the perceptions other friends have of their relationship and emotional vulnerability coupled with closeness may provoke sexual attraction between cross-sex friends. When sexual attraction develops in a friendship, it can corrupt the friendship and individuals state that behavior