What's Wrong With Being Friends?
The least valued relationship type.
Last summer, I was giving an ex-friend advice about how to approach the girl he liked to ask her out. They didn’t have much of a relationship outside of work, just the casual conversations coworkers would typically have while on the job. He was chickening out of ever saying anything at all in case she wasn’t interested in him like that, reluctant to be rejected, so I suggested two options: just being straight up about it, or taking the long way around and building more of a friendship first to see if it led anywhere. He said he was against the latter option because he felt that it was dishonest about his intentions, that he didn’t want a friendship and wanted to be forthright about his interest in her romantically. He went with option one, and was rejected.
I haven’t dated anyone since I was 13, the most unlucky person to exist in the romance department, so what do I really know about dating anyway. I haven’t got any practical experience, but I read and watch a lot of romance, and I closely observe the people around me who have had relationships. I feel like whenever a romantic relationship goes wrong, it’s because there isn’t a strong foundation of friendship first. Not always. Of course there are a thousand other factors that could be at play. But people love skipping the basics: getting to know each other. Do you even know the person you’re attracted to? Do you even like the person you’re interested in as a whole, entire person?
My personal philosophy has always been that strong friendships are the basis of a good relationship. It’s why despite being single for 15 years, I don’t find myself on dating apps hunting potential partners down. I’ve had a fair amount of feelings for friends over the years, and to my misfortune, they’ve never felt it back (have you ever fallen in love with two aromantic people in a row? Well, I have). I never understood my friends in school (and in adulthood, if we’re being completely real) who’d be gushing over a guy they never or barely even talked to just because he was “hot”. Okay? But is he kind? Do you have anything in common? Does he have any deal-breakers for you? What’s his favorite color, for Christ’s sake? These are things you’d know if you even considered friendship in the first place.
People get so eager to possess a partner, they forget there’s a complex personality with thoughts, feelings, and opinions inside of the attractive body that they’re so fixated on. I use that word “possess” very deliberately, because it feels to me that people often want to jump into relationships just to say they have one, just because they’re lonely, without ever really loving the other person at all. If someone clears the bar of physical attraction, they’re in, no questions asked until much later when you’re teetering on the verge of things not working out.
I know people say “I’d like to get to know you better” when propositioning dating, but I’ve always felt this is all backwards. Get to know them first as a friend, and see if you’re actually in love with them or not. If you already love someone as a friend, it’s easier to love them in a romantic sense. I’ve heard a lot of people say that they started dating someone to see if any feelings would burgeon because of it. I’m not saying this method never works, but to me, the success rate of actually staying together is probably lower there.
I just wonder that if that ex-friend had taken my advice on option two, maybe his coworker would’ve been more inclined to agree to date. In her rejection message to him, she said that she’d love to be his friend. She was very sweet and chill about it. In my opinion, this is the next best thing. You like this person, so you’d want to keep them around, right? But my ex-friend admitted to having gone out of his way to avoid her at work from now on. He said he’d be her friend, but didn’t follow up on it. I understand that being rejected can be awkward, but he was so adamant about being honest about his feelings, yet lied about wanting to be friends in the end. It puzzled me. He started acting as if there was some bad blood; it’s not as if she was callous in her rejection message. He showed me screenshots, so I knew this wasn’t the case. What had changed so suddenly?
Thinking on it made me realize perhaps he wasn’t being entirely honest about the reason he didn’t want to be friends. Or maybe he wasn’t aware of it himself. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to the realization that a lot of people don’t value friendships. They put romantic relationships on a pedestal above platonic ones, that having a romantic partner is the end all be all to happiness. Relationships are better than friendships, more important, more, well, romanticized. If I’m not dating her, I don’t want her. If he doesn’t love me, I don’t want him in my life at all. Did you know that you can love your friends too, and that it’s actually a very fulfilling feeling? People think that the only way you can be truly loved is in a romantic sense, or that it’s the only one that really matters in comparison to platonic and familial. But the love I’ve received from friends has quite literally kept me alive.
The thing is, I don’t think a lot of people know this, because they don’t act like they’ve experienced a deep platonic connection. Friendship isn’t as coveted as romantic love is. It’s underappreciated. People don’t put as much effort into friendship. People don’t put enough effort into it to even reap its eventual rewards. Because I’ve had no partner for the majority of my life, I’ve watered and nurtured my close friendships to a degree in that I feel like they’re just as precious to me, if not more, than having a partner would be. I’ve seen firsthand how vital it is to sate the craving for affection and company. I think if people looked for love in other places, other forms, maybe they’d be less alone.
I’m saying this because I’ve been there. When I was in high school and college, and my friends and siblings started dating, getting into long and serious relationships, I felt that there was something fundamentally missing from my life. That looked fun. That looked nice. I wanted to be a part of it. I obsessed over the fact that I was single, and that no one would ever love me back, and I’d never get to experience that. It still makes me sad on occasion, but it doesn’t plague me as it did back then. Because I filled up that hole of loneliness with something else, something else that readily and easily fit in there. I just didn’t think it was possible that it could be filled by anything else, but it could. During that time of my life I met some of my greatest friends (including the two former aromantic crushes I mentioned earlier) that I still have to this day.
I just wish more people would have the same revelation that I did about friendship. It can save you. It can be enough if you let it. The idea of romance is nice, but it would be an addition to my life, a bonus. It isn’t as essential as friendship is.