The Fine Line Between Friendship and Romance

In case you missed our exciting news last week, we’re going to be launching a page turner of an e-book in the first week of December. Written by one of our most quick witted and brutally honest contributors, it’ll cover everything from complicated love triangles, finding the elusive ‘one’ and navigate through the 51 shades of grey of friendship and romance. What does Julia Roberts and Pretty Woman have to do with friendship and romance? Read on here for a special sneak peek of what’s to come.

Had Julia Roberts been a guy in “Pretty Woman”, this would have been the dialogue that took place:

Male Julia: “How much is this dress? ”

Snobby shopkeeper: “It’s very expensive. ”

Male Julia: “What do you mean? ”

Snobby shopkeeper: “It’s very expensive.“

Male Julia: “But I want to buy it. What do you mean? “

Snobby shopkeeper: “You ‘re a hooker and we don’t think you have enough STD laced money to buy our high-end stuff. We ‘re trying to get you out of our store before other people see you.“

Male Julia: “Oh, I see. So I can’t buy this? “

What this means is that when guys confront girls about being more than friends, they usually get their hearts broken because they’re too stupid to get the hint.

At this point, the girl would have to list reasons as to why they can’t go out. Usually, she doesn’t list the one that hurts the most: she just doesn’t have feelings for him. Being an idiot, guys will usually fight to convince the girl that they should be going out and have rebuttals for each reason she has given. If he ever finds himself at this stage of the argument, he would be wise to realize that he’s already lost if he has to appeal to rationality and logical thinking in order to win the girl’s heart. It’s pretty tough to convince a girl to like you by outarguing her. What kind of response would a guy expect? “Fine! You win! I’ll like you!” Maybe there is a way to win a girl’s heart through rationality. The secret exists but there’s a price for it. You want to know the price? It’s very expensive.

Love Re-examined – I think that falling in love with a friend is a very common occurrence. To understand this issue better, we need to talk about what friendship is and how it differs from romance. It is my opinion that the line separating friends from lovers is a thin white chalk, which blows according to the wind. Some people become friends before they fall in love and get married while other people get married, get divorced and end up becoming friends. One thing in common in friendship and romance is this: you like the other person but to what extent? Some people love their friends more than they love their spouses. I think we’re seeing this all wrong: we tend to assume that there’s only one type of love and the only thing we can do is vary the intensity of this love according to our relationship with people. For example, the love intensity for acquaintances is 2/10. For friends, it’s 6/10. For family, it’s 8/10 and for your partner, 9/10.

Given our the complexities in Life, I tend to side more with the Greek thinking that there are different types of love in this world from eros to agape. Here’s a really random example:

If you’re hunting animals in a safari, using one type of gun probably isn’t enough to hunt all the animals in the wild. You may be able to use your revolver to kill that prairie dog but you’ll probably need a rifle to hunt that lion and that elephant gun to shoot Dumbo.

So similar to Love, you can hunt all kinds of animals with only one type of weapon, but that would be kind of stupid and you’ll probably get killed by an elephant.

On Second Thought – I think falling in love with a friend is similar to going to a buffet: at first it sounds like a good idea but at the end of your meal, you might be re-thinking your decision. A lot of people don’t think through their decisions when it comes to romancing their friends. One might think that there are only upsides to this: you both already know each other well, your parents know her parents and you already share the same group of friends. So, what could possibly change the relationship? Sex.

To explain this better, we need to rewind all the way to the beginning of your friendship and how it started. This is the first insight about guys: guys are always looking for sex. Chris Rock is right on the ball when he talks about guys and offering dick: everything a guy does for a girl, he’s offering his dick. When guys are nice to a girl, it’s because he wants to sleep with her. This is true just as the skies are blue.

So, what about friendship between guys and girls? Again, quoting Chris Rock: friendship is where a guy ends up when he screws up and instead of sleeping with her, ends up in friendzone.

So now, you have a situation where most guys are reluctantly friends with girls. It was never their intention but they somehow got marooned on this lonely island. Now, they have to settle for an arrangement where they have to hear the girl’s sex stories about douchebag guys and how guys just sleep with her and then never call. It pains the male friend to hear this stuff as they could have easily been that guy who’s now avoiding her phone calls. Instead, they’ve been relegated to human pillows where she rests her head and waits for the next douchebag to physically and mentally ruin her. You might be thinking: why doesn’t the guy just leave the friendship if it pains him so much? Here is the second insight about guys: guys never give up when it comes to trying to get sex. Sure she’s treating him like a eunuch but if the girl is hot enough, a guy will hang on and keep chipping away at her, hoping that one day she capitulates to his perverted fantasy. A guy might tell a girl that he loves her like a sister, but in the back of his mind, he’s ready to love her like a half sister.

So comes the rationale about dating a friend: if we get along, then why don’t we just go out and have sex with each other?

Hence, the question all guys must ask themselves before they go and start falling in love with their female friends is this: Do I really love her or do I just want to sleep with her? A lot of times, guys think they love someone but in the end, they realize that they just want to sleep with a girl. So, how can one not get tripped up? The answer is this: Always see her at her worst. That’s right: make an effort to see her only when she’s not wearing makeup and is wearing her mom’s flannel pajamas. Try and hang out with her when she just finished spin classes and smells like ass. That is the ultimate test: if you still want to be with this girl despite all these ungodly distractions, then it might be the time to jump on it.