Friendship between guys and girls

I've had several discussions with friends lately about the possible existence of friendship between guys and girls.

Several people think it doesn't exist, that the guy always end up falling in love with the girl.

Theres an interesting theory on the subject i read a while back which is called the ladder theory (http://www.laddertheory.com/) basically what it says is that between a girl and a guy, the friendship/love is gonna slowly rise until it reaches a point where the guy falls in love with the girl and decides to tell her, which usually fails since the girl wont be in love with the guys at which point the friendly relationship becomes awkward or ends. Therefore, that theory stipulates that its not possible to have close guy/girl friendship

For my part, i strongly believe in guy/girl friendship as i have several girl friends, but i would say that its a matter of being firmly in controls of your feeling, staying natural and not getting all excited at every "hint" the girl might give you. Because thats how it goes in a guy's head, he will think the girl is interested while it might not be the case. In other words, you need to be somewhat smart to be able to handle guy/girl friendship. If the guy starts putting the girl on a pedestal or starts being too devoted to her, he's done, he will end up telling his feelings to her and the friendship ends.