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Can men and women really be "just friends"?

That's the question people have debated for years.

Harry of "When Harry met Sally" famously said, no way. But research leads to a different answer.

Meet Kasha and Marcus. Both graduate students, they share an office together and once, even shared an apartment.

But they say they're…just…friends. As for anything more?

"She's a very attractive woman, but there's just something about us that would never work in a romantic way,” says Marcus Ogawa. “It's just too much butting of heads, but we can't do things without supporting each other, as well. It just works better with the dynamic we have."

Kasha Glynn says people often assume they’re in a relationship.

"When they find out we're not in a romantic relationship, then they're like, well why not? Why can't you? It's almost like they're disappointed that we're not romantically involved," Glynn says.

If there ever was any romantic interest, they say it was at the beginning - and it went away early on.

"I think what we're talking about here is, is it really a friend? And men and women really can be friends with each other,” says Dr. Heidi Reeder, communication professor at Boise State University.

Dr. Heidi Reeder's research on male-female relationships has been published in numerous journals and most recently in “Psychology Today”.

He research shows that while 96% of male-female friendships report there attraction for each other is simply "friendship" attraction - they genuinely like spending time with the other person - only 14% report romantic attraction.

"Turns out that we can just think that someone's attractive, but we're not attracted to them. And doesn't this get a lot of couples in trouble, where they say, 'Do you find this person attractive?' Well, how do you answer that question?” she says.

Reeder says opposite-sex friendships that are truly friendships can benefit a marriage by taking some of the pressure off a spouse to be everything for the other person.

"If your spouse has a close friend that they've had for a long time that is of the other sex, statistically speaking, that's probably pretty safe,” she says. “Because research shows, if they ever were attracted, that probably decreased over time and now they really have an authentic friendship."