Have You Ever Dated Your Best Friend?

I have to add, that cartoon that was posted earlier was eerily true. (Funny how a lot of these experiences are universal, even though we think we're unique.) I tried to "be there as a friend" when times were tough, thinking that if I was there to help her, she'd fall in love with me. I know now it doesn't work like that. Me being there just reinforced me as "her good friend" and nothing more.

Emotions and relationships follow no set formulae.

Perceptions are greatly influenced by need and desire.

Experience is wonderful to pursue. Some caution is a good idea.

Pain and Joy are part of Life.

We can safely assume that when you refer to "dating" you mean that sex comes into the picture of an interaction - close friends - which up until it is called "dating" is sexless.

Yet some apparently succesful couples refer to their mates as their "best friends."

Yet other couples suggest that keeping their mates out of certain aspects of their lives (for example a hobby, different set of friends, travel...) contributes to making the relationship longlasting. If that should ever be an indicator of success.

I would argue there are more levels to explore than the binary close-friend/dating system you are analyzing.

As onceuponatime implies, you may benefit from being very frank with yourself and try to understand if you think you are friends but in reality it is a behaviour related to you wanting more, and not being sure if this is mutual.

At all times with the risk that what might symbolize the beginning of something new for one of you, might be a stop sign for the other.

This type of experimentation is quite normal. Usually fun and to be done with sop: standard operating precautions.

And as an ultimate goal could be seeking the utmost happyness of your mate, well that could take on meanings which go far beyond intimacy.

And don't be too surprised in the future if you manage to stay with a mate for a very long time, maybe even raise children, and realize, day after day, the wonderful thing is that the relationship continues to grow with an unimagined feeling of discovery...

No. I have never dated myself, but I have pleasured myself to a pic of myself.

I'm not as cynical as the rest of you. Here are two extremes:

-You have been good friends with a girl and have recently developed feelings for her. Many of my friends have formed long-term relationships from this starting point. I can't advise you on how to proceed, but I can tell you that it can work very well.

-The other extreme is the comic I posted earlier.

Of course there are shades in between. I've been rejected by girls and have become good friends with them, and I still have feelings for them and they know this, but I expect that nothing is going to happen, and I'm not trying to get anything more from the relationship. I think it's OK to care for someone who doesn't reciprocate, but the struggle is to do that in a healthy and honest way.

pjag wrote:

Of course there are shades in between. I've been rejected by girls and have become good friends with them, and I still have feelings for them and they know this, but I expect that nothing is going to happen, and I'm not trying to get anything more from the relationship. I think it's OK to care for someone who doesn't reciprocate, but the struggle is to do that in a healthy and honest way.

This is one of the saddest, most pathetic things I've ever read on Letsrun. You have feelings for them, they know this, you expect to get nothing, and you still hang around them? If you've been rejected, why do you still have feelings? I really don't think being friends with the object of your affection is "healthy and honest" way of dealing with this.

Women have two categories: Friends and guys they want to have sex with. If you want to date your best friend you have to find your way to get in both categories.

Men have two categories: Women they want to have sex with and women they DON'T want to have sex with. They only women in the second category are old people, family, and women who will never be your friends.

Onceuponatime is spot on in his initial post. No gray area! Let's be honest for a second. You still rub one out to the thought of her all the while she is getting b*nged out by some guy who's not so p*ssy that he writes his emotions on a public forum. Man up, grow some b*lls, and get some new fish

i agree with pjag. you can have feelings for the woman after being rejected but keep those feelings in check. if you really did like her as a person, you would rather hang out with her anyway, whether she reciprocates with sex or not.

you seem to see it as a game: "if she doesn't want to have sex with me, then i'm going to get her back by not being her friend." that sounds weird to me.

i realize this whole "let's be honest with ourselves, all we think about is sex" idea has merit in a psychological/biological sense, but i also think there is a point where a man can compromise in order to spend time with a woman he has feelings for.

Wrong. Pjag is the one who is not being honest with himself. He is hanging around his crush(es) because he thinks that, as long as he is still in the picture, there's a slim chance he can still get with them. It's nothing to be ashamed of, as we've all done it at one time or another, but he can't let it continue. He's trying to rationalize it by saying he's really into the friendship. I call BS.

If a man is attracted to a woman, and the woman is not attracted to the man, there will always be an undercurrent of that unfulfilled desire in the friendship. It is not a healthy way to live.

onceuponatime wrote:

I have never received so much praise on Letrun lol. Maybe I should have used my real handle so that I get some respect when I post about running related things.

malmo, is that you?

Here's a quote for you to think about:

"To love is to suffer to avoid suffering, one must not love. But then, one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy, one must love or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness."

It doesn't matter what you decide. Suffering is part of the game... so all you need to decide is which way you would rather suffer.

What kind of runner are you?

Would you rather suffer racing to the finish line giving everything you have that day and still coming up short?

or

Would you rather suffer by "packing it in," still losing, and always wondering "what if I decided to really race? I could have won!

or

Would you rather just prepare yourself properly for the race, knowing it will involve suffering... but also giving yourself the absolute chance at victory?

Running solves all problems

The end

Good Luck.

My theory of women's attraction to men is that, assuming you have something to offer as a human, you have a good chance of a woman being attracted to you if you can get her to think of you in terms of a potential mate (sorry for the sterile word). This is why, in my mind, being friends doesn't usually lead to relationships, and also why initial or early encounters are so important. Even more important might be the context in which people meet for the first time. Nothing, moreso than this context, determines how the woman thinks of the man. Men tend to think that they can find a mate in any context moreso than women I think. I think this comes down to (perhaps subconsciously) perceived roles that a man is the chaser and the woman the chased. For men being pursued is the rare case, while for women being the pursuer takes an unusual situation or elevatd consciousness of the role they are playing. Anyway, if the woman sees the man as a potential mate, she is already looking for the qualities he has that she might be attracted to, piecing together what a relationship or a wild night might be like.

In short, women are selective in which options they weigh. If a woman has three guys pursuing her to some degree or another, she is less likely to consider in a romantic way Joe the guy in her spinning class, even though Joe might be in the spinning class to meet women.

The part I don't like about this, is that I have successfully manipulated this theory. I pursued a girl for the better part of a year, was sure that we were compatible, but that she wasn't thinking about me as a possibility. I had told her how I felt, but her personal circumstances and the way we had met were such that I still wasn't the pursuer. I was square in the friend category, and I watched her get with other guys I knew were less important to her. So I had to screen my actions and seem like the pursuer, and I can pinpoint the week that her thinking of me changed. Now we've been dating for some time, wonderful relationship, but I know it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't tried to manipulate the situation, check my instincts, etc. It seems a shame to me though that two compatible people depend so much on circumstance to end up together.

Just my two cents.

"You have feelings for them, they know this, you expect to get nothing, and you still hang around them?"

Yep, it's called friendship.

"If you've been rejected, why do you still have feelings?"

Because how someone else feels about me doesn't affect how I feel about them.

"I really don't think being friends with the object of your affection is "healthy and honest" way of dealing with this."

That's my point -- I think this depends on your motivation. I don't think you should become friends with someone because you want to start a relationship with them, and certainly not as a response to being rejected. But it also seems childish to refuse to hang out with someone (and eventually become friends) just because they've rejected you. Especially if it's someone you would have to interact with in a social setting anyway.

I hate that my friends can tell who I am from my style of writing (bunch of bastards). :)

stringer bell wrote:

Wrong. Pjag is the one who is not being honest with himself. He is hanging around his crush(es) because he thinks that, as long as he is still in the picture, there's a slim chance he can still get with them. It's nothing to be ashamed of, as we've all done it at one time or another, but he can't let it continue. He's trying to rationalize it by saying he's really into the friendship. I call BS.

If a man is attracted to a woman, and the woman is not attracted to the man, there will always be an undercurrent of that unfulfilled desire in the friendship. It is not a healthy way to live.

One of my best friends is a girl that I used to be attracted to. She was attracted to me at one point also (bad timing all around). Our friendship has gone through phases -- we've had times where we've told each other everything, and we've had times where we just couldn't stand to be around one another. But I probably wouldn't have this great friend at all if my primary goal in life were to manipulate girls into starting relationships with me.

yes - big mistake - HUGE

i had a situation like this in high school. i decided i liked this girl on my xc team, and developed a friendship with her to get to know her better/get her to notice me. what i found out later is that she initially liked me too, but we were both young and had no game so nothing came of it but a sexually tense friendship. a year later, it was pretty obvious that we liked each other and found each other attractive, even though we were best friends and hung out all the time as friends.

we started dating and had VERY minimal physical contact. like we barely hooked up and it was awkward. we broke up after 2 or 3 months and we basically didnt talk for 8 or 9 months. then i went to college and when i came back for breaks she decided that she should start over with me. i still liked her the whole time, but she didn't know that. over winter break my freshman year, we hooked up (she obviously still liked me too). we hooked up again that spring.

since then, one of us has been in a relationship the entire time. she is one of my best friends, but we both know that if both of us were single we would hook up. its fine with me, i have no serious feelings for her and don't ever want a relationship with her again. im pretty sure she feels the same way. i don't get jealous when shes with other guys (although she hasnt been for a while) and i dont think she gets jealous either. i think the "friendship" we have now is amazing and i wouldn't trade it for anything.

basically, id go for it. she might have feelings for you too. but make sure you make your move in a way that wont completely f*** up your friendship if you are safely in her "friend-zone." id try and find out if shes in the friendship for sex or for a friend. i think my situation is pretty unique because shes in it for sex too. but you never know, that could be the case for you too.

Your willingness to try the anal beads has a lot to do with the ability to remain friends.

As a young teenager, I became very close friends with a girl I had known since childhood. Wished for romance for many years but was limited to platonic. In my early twenties, I was engaged to another girl for months before realizing I could never marry anyone else unless I had absolute certainty that I could never have my longtime friend. Broke off the engagement, asked my friend for a "real" date and will celebrate 29 years of marriage to my best friend in the near future. Sometimes we really get lucky, but you still have to take a risk. In my case, worth every bit of unrequited love and risk.

what is the fascination with anal beads here?