| |
Friends to lovers - is it right?
The gray place between friendship and a relationship is not a fun place. Think twice before taking the plunge
Yael Ayalon
What do you do when you find yourself in the gray space between friendship and something else? I have recently been there and let me tell you, it’s no picnic. On one hand you are trying to figure out what this person really means to you, why you feel this way and at what point did his annoying habits become endearing.
You know deep down that crossing that line is not really what you want, but you get along so well that you can’t help but wonder “what if”? After all, isn’t your boyfriend or girlfriend supposed to be your best friend? You know that he or she isn’t the right one, but the combination of being tired of the dating scene and your seemingly perfect connection with them mislead you into thinking that this can actually turn into something deeper.
From personal experience I can advise you to not say anything unless you are 100 percent sure about your feelings. I made this stupid mistake once and lost a friend because of it. I still don’t know what is sadder, the fact that he wasn’t mature enough to keep our friendship going or the fact that I didn’t even like him that way to begin with. I simply convinced myself that he and I could be together because we had such a great time as friends.
We are human beings and as such, we are creatures of packs. We were not meant to travel alone. This need for escaping solitude makes us do stupid things, we’ve all been there, and one of those things is mistaking platonic connections, for deeper more emotional ones.
This confusion is very dangerous as it can only lead to a lose-lose situation, if we are not careful. Either you will make a fool of yourself admitting to feelings you know deep down are fictional and lose a beloved friend or you will end up in a two-year relationship with someone you never should have started up with in the first place.
Making the step from friends to lovers is a tricky one and one that must be made with extreme care and thought. I don’t want to insinuate that a friendship cannot blossom to a committed and deep relationship, it can, and some of the best relationships were built on a foundation of friendship. I just think that to get to that point, you have to really look inside yourself and make sure you are making the right choices based on your heart and not based on substitution or convenience.
I made this mistake and although a broken heart was not part of the consequences, since I realized that my feelings were ill-founded, I did lose a cherished friend. Someone that I think could have been a part of my life for the rest of my life. A true friendship is far more important and outweighs other relationships. Because with it, things are meant to last, and not be forgotten or left behind meaningless.
|
RSS
