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My best guy friend is sitting across from me as I type this, playing footsie with me under the table. We’ve been friends for 10 years. We can talk for hours about things big and small; we can also sit comfortably in silence. He makes me laugh, always, but has sincere words when I need a lift.
It’s the perfect relationship. Except, of course, for when I go home, try to decode the meaning of footsie and then turn to my roommate or my sister or anyone who’ll listen and say, “UGH! WE’RE SO PERFECT TOGETHER, WHY AREN’T WE DATING?!” And other sane things like that.
Examples galore
Pop culture abounds with examples of friends who’ve navigated (or attempted to navigate) the path to romance” Monica and Chandler in Friends, Laurie and Jo march in Little Women, and When Harry Met Sally ..., which explores the muddy waters of sexual tension to determine if, in fact, men and women can be friends.
Can men and women be friends? I mean, can they really be just friends? OK, yeah. And yet:
“All friendships, even same-sex ones, have ambiguous and changing boundaries,” says psychologist Linda Sapadin, author of Now I Get It! Totally Sensational Advice for Living and Loving. “You may think somebody’s a best friend, and they just consider you a casual friend. Perception is not always the same.”
In other words: Your perspective can shift. Suddenly you see a friend as desirable, but he or she still sees you as only a friend. Which leaves you with two choices, Sapadin says: You can try to change it to a romantic relationship. Or you can learn to live with it so that there’s flirtatious banter — footsie, anyone? — but nothing else.
It’s sexual attraction without acting on it. And the primary reason many of us don’t act is fear: the worry that if our friend rebuffs us or the move from platonic to romantic fails, the friendship is irrecoverable.
Such was the outcome for Amy Ewen, who was close friends with her co-worker Peter until they enjoyed a whirlwind romance just before Peter left to spend a year travelling in Asia.
“I was so happy, but it was really bittersweet because he was leaving,” Ewen says. She wasn’t expecting them to stay together long distance, she says, but they split with the assumption that there would be something on the other side: a continuation of their friendship.
The end
Ewen left her job to travel, too. When she returned from New Zealand, where she’d met someone else, Peter was back, and she wanted to reconnect as a friend.
He never returned her phone calls. When she finally ran into him one evening, he was standoffish.
He shook her hand as though they were business acquaintances and blurted out that he wasn’t in love with her.
“I was remembering how things were when we were good friends,” Ewen says. “He thought I was thinking about being his girlfriend. It’s sort of a shame, because we got along so well.”
It is a shame — but there’s a comfort to friendship that often gets destroyed when romantic feelings are raised, an awkwardness that accompanies the transition into, and out of, these feelings.
“It feels very uncomfortable when somebody likes you more than you like them,” says Ellen Sue Stern, a relationship expert who has written advice books. Making the transition is “always a risk,” she says.
“You should be really sure you want to take that risk before you make that move.”
Mystery element
Kathy Werking interviewed dozens of opposite-sex friends when researching her book We’re Just Good Friends: Women and Men in Nonromantic Relationships.
Many reported that, when looking for a romantic partner, they sought someone with an air of mystery.
“There’s a lot of fantasy involved when we meet someone,” Werking says. “It’s not as exciting to be around one who knows you well.”
When you’re single and meet someone new, you size them up to determine whether they’re dateable.
“At a certain point in life, you already have friends,” says Greg Behrendt, author of He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys.
“So you’re not looking for friends. You’re looking for something more serious.”
Call it a superficial calculation, but it’s also deliberate. Friend romance, by contrast, seems Freudian.
The right timing often is paired with the maturity to understand the difference between what makes friends compatible and what makes romantic partners compatible. Do you both want kids? Where do you want to live?
These kinds of talks, so pragmatic, are imperative to saving a relationship.
“The friend definition is very different from how we define our romantic relationships,” Werking says.
“We have different expectations. Flaws that are OK in a friendship may not be OK in a romantic relationship.”
But if the flaws are benign and there’s a spark, that’s a great place to be. After all, Stern says, “the healthiest relationships are those that are maximum safety and maximum passion.”
When passion kills platonic
You’re great friends. You get along terrifically. What if ...? Maybe we could be ...? I mean, it kind of makes sense: She calls me all the time. He always greets me with a hug. That’s got to mean something, right?
Trying to determine someone’s interest in us is exhausting, and, experts say, we often mislead ourselves. “Human beings have an amazing capacity for denial,” says Ellen Sue Stern, a relationship expert and author. “We convince ourselves there’s something there, even when deep down we know there isn’t.”
So, next time you find yourself analysing a friendship, ask yourself these questions:
- Do you find yourself constantly searching for cues of romantic interest?
If so, you’ve probably rounded the corner from a healthy friendship into something less healthy.
“It’s certainly not your optimal relationship,” Stern says. When you’re eyeballing a friendship in terms of romance, “it’s more about what isn’t there,” she says.
For instance, physical interaction: You throw your arms around each other, hug goodbye and so forth. And yet, Stern says, “if there isn’t that sort of lingering moment when you part ways where you feel, `Oh, right now somebody could make a move,’ then it probably isn’t there.”
- Who’s making the effort in the friendship?
You have a great time when you hang out, that much you’re sure of . But if you’re the main instigator of getting together, then that may be a sign your feelings aren’t reciprocated. “There’s certain nuances people want to ignore,” Stern says. “Like how much one person initiates the relationship versus the other.”
- Are you interested in your friend — or the challenge?
Ah, the old want-what-you-can’t-have syndrome. “There are people that fall in love with not getting what they want and choosing things that don’t work as opposed to the simplicity of finding something better,”
says Greg Behrendt, author of He’s Just Not That Into You.
“You’re falling in love with a cause. We all have an obsession with winning someone over or of changing them. But human beings are unmovable.”
In this way, hoping for romance with a friend is safe: You know you love spending time with the person, and liking your friend is more comfortable than putting yourself out there to meet someone new. But “look what you’re getting back,” Behrendt says. “Is it worth wasting that time, not meeting somebody else?”
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