I find that all my platonic friends fall off when women get a man........so in the end, they're really just place holders.
Sure, but some of that is basically the ebb and flow of all friendships and relationships, and everyone is going to have different and conflicting ideas about these things.
Some of my friends, male, are married, have kids, have a wife, we barely see each other, but I don't discontinue the friendship, or downgrade it like a stock buy.
and basically, if someone makes you feel good, and reflects your good qualities back to you, that is friendship. Doesn't need to have this strict, granular set of standards, but that's for me.
read a whole profile on male/female friendships in the NY Times, and there's all kinds of very sensible reasons why they are difficult to maintain, one, because we both tend to chose people we are attracted to, and two, because women tend to chose men who are seen as financially more stable, so maintaining the exact friendship you had while single, isn't always possible, because on some level we ARE picking people who are back ups.