Can a man sincerely be a real friend with a woman that he is sexually attracted to without repeatedly thinking about wanting to have sex with her?

Repeat after me.  Feelings are never an excuse to violate someone else’s boundaries.  Apart from having to bathe, clothe, and feed someone that can’t do these things for themselves or touching others in order to save them from sickness, injury, or death, there are no excuses to violate someone else’s boundaries.

Just because cultural conditioning influences men to regard giving unwanted attention, especially romantic and sexual attention to women, as innate and uncontrollable (I call bullshit) doesn’t mean they don’t know when that attention is unwanted.

Yes, a man can sincerely be a real friend with a woman that he is sexually attracted to without repeatedly thinking about wanting to have sex with her. It just depends on how much he values that woman’s friendship. If that man concludes “friendship” is a ploy he will use to try to date or fuck her, he is not friendship or date or sex partner material. Many people, men included, value their platonic friendships with attractive people so much that even if those attractive friends indicated a desire to be romantic and sexual with them, they wouldn’t do so because it would compromise the relationships they already have.

By the way, this is not a problem unique to men. Many women fancy their attractive platonic friends: male, female, or otherwise. Many women choose to keep those attractions private and unexpressed for the benefit of those friendships.

Anyone who wants a date or romance or sex can ask openly, honestly, and without deception and/or coercion plus be prepared to accept the answers they get, first time, every time. This is what ethical individuals do. Feelings, desires, hormones, and culture influence our decisions, but we’re the final arbiters on any and all decisions we make. Should people choose to ignore others in pursuit of satisfying their feelings, they’ve indicated the kind of people they really are.

Many people, including myself, promote the ethical consent standard when it comes to human relationships. This is a measure of how far we’ve come. Unfortunately, many people are still operating within the deception, coercion, force, and gender-essentialist paradigm. This is a measure of how far we’ve yet to go.