Forums » Smalltalk » Best Friend Cliche advice? Opinions?

Most people have heard of the stereotype of best friends dating random people never works out until they date each other. Then it ends with them married and happily ever after.
Movies, books, sometimes even video games portray this romantic situation.

There is even a situation at work where this girl I work with is in love with her best friend. They don't want to date each other because they're afraid to lose the friendship if they broke up. They have a lot in common a few examples bow hunting, drinking, ice fishing ect. In a ideal situation she would love to marry him but it doesn't seem to be happening. Anyways, she says marry your best friend.


If my coworker is right, I have definitely been wasting my time here and (hypothetically) I should move to Lake Havasu right now and be with my best friend since childhood. Let's just say my friend shaped me to be the person Iam today and we still talk to this very day even though we live states away. I don't know what kind of a person I would be without that friendship. Before really thinking about this, I always thought it would be odd to date a friend.
My friend's mom always said we would be a good couple but at that age I shut that idea down real fast.



What do you guys think?
Do you believe in the cliche happily ever after with your best friend?
Or is this view left better for books and rps?
I'd like to hear your opinions, thoughts and even personal stories too. Thanks guys for reading.


[url=

Like anything it comes down to communication, respect and boundaries. This is an I've-been-awake-for-24-hour rant so I hope it isn't dumb.

There's a lot to ask yourself. How do they feel about you; have they thought about it too or is this infatuation one sided? Does the other person consider you in the same way? What bugs you right now about how they act. If you guys go days or weeks between communicating, is that something you would be able to handle if you were committed to them? I've had a few friends ask me to go out, but it puts a weird tension on a friendship when the attraction is only one way and those friendships ended pretty much abruptly. Have you guys had a fight? When was the last time you had to talk about a conflict between the two of you, or a conflict between someone else?

I've dated two good friends, one of them I am still really close with for 6/7 years or so, and we spent about six months dating but it just wasn't going to work out, and due to a variety of reasons it isn't possible to be anything more than long distance friends. I've got no bad feelings about him and I'm really glad we got to know each other better because we'll always have a close bond.

Another friend and I were very compatible and had been regular friends for a like two years. There was def some tension building at one point bc a few months after we met he broke up with his gf, but for about a year we only hung out at parties or on our own a few times. We dated for about a year or a little more and it did not work out; we don't talk anymore and I don't regret the time we spent together and it doesn't sting to have lost him as a friend or a partner, but I put any bad feelings about it to rest a long time ago.

Dating friends is hard: relationships either last, or they don't. You could be caught dating someone you don't know or like that well, but overtime you learn to understand their feelings and wants and needs. My married friends are certainly best friends with each other, and some of them don't have very much in common as far as hobbies or passions go.

You don't have to marry your best friend, but you should make sure the person you're going to marry is your best friend. There's a hair of a difference.

And really there's only one way to find out. What I've learned though is a friend, like a real true one, is worth having around, especially as you grow older and the mutual respect become deeper. Those friendships can usually survive an awkward dating phase. I'm not sure how old you are but If it isn't in the cards right now, what about ten or fifteen years down the line? That time will go by a lot faster than you think and there is a lot that goes on between 18 and 30. And somethings happen when they're supposed to happen, so it's not always the best idea to force it or make a decision driven by emotion. Maybe you guys date, find out you hate each other, go your separate ways and then reconnect and end up dating successfully? There's just no telling. Weirder things have happened.

I guess to wrap this rant up, you know your friendship better than anyone can give advice on the situation. Just make sure you are able to communicate with them. And sometimes, moms know whats up.

I can only share my own anecdote.

I grew up next to two brothers and certainly considered them my best friends all through my school years. As we got into high school, I remember some of my girlfriends (not used in a romantic sense here) commenting about how cute the older one was. But, maybe since I'd known him as long as I could remember, the relationship felt more like brother/sister.

I would have been super weirded out if I ever found out he had a crush on me. (and I don't believe he ever did).

Once out of school, I met my husband through our circle of friends and he's certainly my best friend now.

I've drifted away from the two brothers, though still remain good friends with one of them. (One of the few people I can literally go years without talking to and there is no awkwardness when we happen to run into each other again.)

There is a lot more to love than just being best friends. There is a lot more to happiness than being in love with your best friend. There is also communication, trust, transparency, doing little things, affection, intimate life, an interactions with family... There are so many things involved in a happy relationship that you cannot dwindle it down to "love is all you need"... And I think it's too complicated of an issue to say "Yes, go be with your best friend." I don't think anyone of us will want to say do that unless you actually have feelings for them.


I will say this I have had quite a "best friends" over my life that have been of the opposite gender of which I'm attracted. I have an older brother and I was raised kind of like a tomboy. so naturally I get along better with men than I do with women. It comes down to I just have more in common with them, and find them much easier to talk to than other women.

Several of these I have date or have had intimate interactions with. And every single one of them ended up not working out in the end. But you know what? We actually are still friends because our friendship was stronger than our attraction for each other.

Things happen, it's normal and it is natural. But in some cases, yes it does break the friendship. It depends on how mature both of you are in handling it. And it depends on what's more valuable to both of you. I need to put the emphasis on "both of you".. because if it's one-sided it falls apart.

For example I dated one of my best friends and it was very much one-sided. When I finally was done waiting for him to come around after a year, I essentially had to break up with someone who I wasn't really even together with? But because he just saw me as a friend and I was in love with him... Our friendship broke.

But another cases we both looked at each other like we're siblings and we're like "let's never do that again" and life went back to normal.


But truthfully the cliche can be true depending on how you look at it. Me and my husband we were friends for 8 years before we got together. We were not best friends, just friends... Online role playing together at that. and I have to say out of all the relationships I've ever had and spend the most stable because we knew each other so well. My friendship is a great foundation for an actual love life and I think that is necessary in every love relationship. Your spouse is in fact your best friend. So I understand that best friends can sometimes turn into beautiful marriages. friendship is the glue to any good relationship to last for a long time. so I can see how going from friends to a relationship works. I just don't agree that it's absolute. It's not going to work out 100% of the time.

So I think it's up to you to decide if it's worth it. If you love them and they love you.. then obviously there is something to explore. I do believe though, that "when you know you know"... Finding that person you want to spend the rest of your life with is just like a gut feeling.

Thanks so much for everyone's input. It's been great reading the responses and good advice.

I don't think just because you're best friends it means you should be dating each other. I DO think that if you're dating somebody, they should be one of your best friends. They can become that when you start dating or have been that before you started dating, but no relationship lasts without an underlying layer of close friendship and platonic love. The initial bout of romantic 'feeling in love' only lasts so long, and then when that fades it changes into a different kind of romantic love that uses this friendship to exist on. Without friendship, there's no relationship, platonic or romantic. And there are also queerplatonic relationships that many people favor, because they're aromantic/have no interest in the common romantic gestures between partners. It's a form of dating that doesn't depend on any romantic feelings, but it's still very much about love - just a different kind.

Society has placed a tremendous value on romance and procreation as a result of said romance, which is unfortunately also very strongly reflected in media and fiction by making this concept of 'best friends must fall in love' the norm. One of the reason Studio Ghibli films are so extraordinarily amazing is because the relationships of the characters don't fall into this trap/trope of assuming that there's no other way for them to exist. I think we've normalized something that isn't supposed to be so normal, and Studio Ghibli does a good job of avoiding that, which I think is really cool!

I try to incorporate this into my own writing and relationships as well. I've dated best friends and people I've dated have become best friends. I've also dated people who weren't friends that way and those relationships all fizzled because we lacked a solid foundation. You can't survive on romance alone! I know moving forward in my life, I absolutely require my partner to be my friend; I want to grow old with a friend before a partner because friendships last the longest and give a strength to relationships that romance just... lacks. And I think my characters have stronger relationships based on this concept as well, and it makes my roleplays more lively and dynamic.

Having married my then best friend (we've been together for 16 years as of a couple of weeks ago!) I can definitely say that, anecdotally at least, it takes more than fluffy fuzzy feelings to maintain a long-term relationship. My spouse and I went through a near split about 4-5 years ago where we realized we were really unaligned in what we wanted out of life. We had to talk--a lot--and realized that we'd become too enmeshed to really have developed our own personalities fully. Since we started dating in highschool, that makes a lot of sense! We'd stopped developing individually, and our relationship was straining without having a solid foundation.

I can't speak to dating those who aren't friends, but I can definitely say that it's possible to get too close. And, if the person you had the fluffy warm feelings for initially turns out not to be able to talk about their wants and needs, you're likely going to have a hard go of things unless you have a solid personal basis... but that's mostly from watching friends' relationships fizzle over the years. If you date your friend, there's always be a chance that you 'got too close' and could end the whole thing poorly. It's really hard to discover what the heart wants and needs if you've never experienced it before!

Be careful, be patient, have an open dialogue about what you want and need. Expect warm fuzzies to fade over time regardless of who you date; at that point it's time to put in work if you want things to continue not just to survive, but to thrive together.