Here's my hot take, as a woman: If you are not yet capable of experiencing friendship with a pretty woman without feeling attraction (different than acknowledging that she's attractive), you have no business dating yet. There should be lots of women who are attractive that you don't feel attraction to because their personalities aren't romantically compatible. When you're dating someone, you have to be capable of being friends with other attractive women without your brain turning them into potential partners. The inability to be friends with them without fantasizing/imagining them as potential partners means that you are still heavily objectifying and not thinking of them as just people who have lives and interests outside of possibly dating you. I have a very high sex drive and also a dozen or so very attractive men who are good friends, who I have zero romantic or sexual interest in because they are people and not just potential sex partners. Having platonic friends of the opposite sex is literally just about seeing them as people, in the same way you do your male friends. A lot of that for you is going to be getting into long-term recovery where your brain is no longer trained to view women as body parts you scroll through.
It's possible to have platonic female friends and it's easier if there is no attraction between you. If you are attracted to a female friend, you may always want to take it further, but depending on the situation or her attraction to you, it may or may not develop any further. Just treat women as any other friend and you will be fine.
I have a good female friend. I think we have a good connection because we have several things in common. We were both once fundamentalist Christians. We both know what it's like to be a part of and walk away from a religion. I'm white/Asian, and she's Asian but was adopted by a white family, so we both know what it's like to be a part of both worlds. We both have an interest in psychology and have somewhat similar political views. We have had a few disagreements, but there's enough respect between us that we've never personally attacked one another. I will be honest, I do find her somewhat attractive, but she made it perfectly clear at the beginning that she had no romantic interest in me, and I was cool with that. I'm not being her friend in hopes of having a relationship one day, I see her as nothing but a friend. Our friendship happened by accident, really. I had no intention of having such a good friendship to her, it's just I got talking to her one day, and we discovered we have a lot in common.
