(I believe this qualifies as a poll, so I’m posting it in IMHO. As always, the mods are free to do with it as they please.)
In this thread, the OP asked why the “friends first” method of dating doesn’t work. Several posters responded by saying that, in certain cases, it *does * work.
As a result, I am now understandably curious* about the odds of a “friends first” relationship working. If any Dopers would care to post their stories of successful or failed “friends first” relationships, it would be much appreciated. Of particular interest:
1)How long were you “friends first”?
2)How was the transition accomplished, i.e. Who suggested the idea of being more than “friends”, and how?
and of course,
3)How did it work out?
Thanks in advance.
*[sub][Denial mode: ON][/sub]That’s right. This is just out of curiousity.[sub][Denial mode: OFF][/sub]
Well, we were friends for about 6 months or so, and the transition just kind of…happened. The attraction was understated, but mutual. There was no “Oooh, ya know, I like you that way so how’s about it” sort of conversation. There may have been flirting, but I don’t think so. (I wouldn’t recognize flirting if it bit me on the ass, so I could be wrong.)
I guess if I had to pin it down, he probably made the first definitive move. We were watching movies with some friends and I fell asleep, only to wake up with his lips on my forehead. I promptly moved them to a more appropriate location, and the relationship just kind of went from there.
I guess things worked out fairly well. It’s 8 years later and we’ve been married for six months, after all. Come to think of it, most of my friends have married guys they were frends with first.
Being friends first has upsides and downsides. For example, if you were already friends, you likely have a lot of mutual friends, so you avoid the whole not liking the other person’s friends issue to a degree. Of course, when your sweetie is driving you nuts, you don’t feel as free to complain to those same people.
I’ve done the friends first thing twice, so I’ll answer the questions twice.
Relationship 1
1)How long were you “friends first”?
A few months, but it was quite an intense friendship.
2)How was the transition accomplished, i.e. Who suggested the idea of being more than “friends”, and how?
He did. He basically just said that he had to be honest and that recently (stressed recently, not that he’d been after a relationship all along) he’d become attracted to me, and asked if he could kiss me.
and of course,
3)How did it work out?
We had a fun few months together, before breaking up for various reasons, but we’re still close friends. Being friends first definitely works for me as I feel so much more secure that I know the other person and that I can trust them.
Relationship 2
1)How long were you “friends first”?
We’d known each other for a couple of years, but only really became friends a few months beforehand.
2)How was the transition accomplished, i.e. Who suggested the idea of being more than “friends”, and how?
It was pretty much as mutual as these things can be. I’d realised we had a mutual crush and at some point we just kissed.
and of course,
3)How did it work out?
It’s still going well! Again, I like that we knew each other quite well beforehand.
I suggested we become more than friends. I had to be persistant in the matter as he wouldn’t know flirting if it hit him in the head with a brick It was a very strange couple of months as it is difficult to establish a romantic relationship with a psychotic ex boyfriend following you around but somehow things worked out well.
We started ‘dating’ 12 years ago. We will be celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary in September. Seems pretty successful to me.
She let me know of an unspoken attraction, I pushed the envelope after that.
It’s a year and half later, and even though we live on opposite coasts, I love her more than I can say. She says she feels the same. So it’s worked out pretty durned well.
I got a letter one day, from a woman who lived 1200 miles from where I was, who wanted to buy one of what I was selling. We did a transaction, and later another one, and another one. Then I got a letter saying she had to move and couldn’t buy anything for awhile, but would I still write to her? Well, of course I would! We wrote letters back and forth for two years, and progressed to massive long-distance bills, and finally visits. We discovered that we had so much in common that we sort of had the “higher level of friendship” idea at the same time. I’m pretty sure that she was flirting with me first, as I fit the description by another poster of someone who wouldn’t know flirting if it bit me on the ass (it having been done so infrequently in the past). I left my country behind to come here and be with her. We’ve been married for five years, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to either of us.
We were friends for a couple months first. However, we became best friends, since we were living on the same dorm floor (in college) and spending nearly every evening together, either just us two or with our other friends. So, that was actually a lot of time spent together before we dated.
I knew from early on that he was interested in me - I mentioned that I had a long-distance boyfriend and he said “oh…” in a clearly disappointed tone. My relationship was going poorly, and I broke it off, and meanwhile we were becoming more “cuddly” with each other. At one point we just kissed while cuddling and sparks flew - I think both of us had been reluctant to make any moves out of worries that we’d mess up the friendship or that it was just a rebound for me.
We started dating 14 years ago, and celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary this year. He’s still my best friend, too.
1)My mother owned/opererated her own business, and she was one of her employees. I frequently helped out for mom and met her soon enough. We started flirting the first day we met, but one of us was always attatched. This went on for about 3 years before we both finally were able to be together. We became fairly close friends in those three years.
2)I can’t say that there was one defining moment, unless you count our first kiss. That is sort of when it went from “friends” to “dating”. I was the one who initiated the kiss, but it was painfully obvious that we both felt the same way. We had as much as talked about it for the 6 months leading up to the first kiss.
3)We have been together for 7 years and married for 5. We have three kids together, and we are still one another’s best friends. So it turned out pretty damn well IMO.
We were friends for something like ten years. We met at his senior prom. For years we were aquaintences who flirted at parties. After I got divorced, we became really good friends who hung out together.
I said to him once (about eight years into the friendship) “why haven’t we ever dated?” Turns out that we had been single at the same time exactly once in eight years for something less than four hours. Silly us didn’t manage to hook up during that four hours (although we were in the same place for most of the four hours). A couple years later we were single again at the same time and this time knew we needed to hook up.
Together ten years, married (very happily) eight. Two kids.
A caveat - we agree, as do all of our friends who have known us all twenty years (am I really this old?) - that had we dated when we first met, it would have been disasterous for both of us. Neither of us was mature enough to sustain a relationship at seventeen. Had we started dating four or five years into the friendship (after college) it MIGHT have worked - but I have my doubts.
I knew my wife for six years before we got married.
2)How was the transition accomplished, i.e. Who suggested the idea of being more than “friends”, and how?
I suggested that we get married. We never dated, just hung out with friends. I began to care about her as more than a friend and just asked her one day to marry me.
3)How did it work out?
We have been happily married for more than ten years, now. Nothing more than the common arguement of who lost the car keys. I don’t know what I would do without her. The great thing is there is no secrets from our past that may spring up and ruin things for us. We knew all the little secrets and bad habits going into the relationship. So no surprises like, oh my parents are nuts and hate anything to do with me/you.:eek: It also helps that we share a lot of the same friends and social activities.
I hope it works out for you. Best of luck. The hardest part was getting her to believe that I was serious about getting married. I had to ask her three times before she realized I wanted to marry her.
Friends first for about 14 months but there was always an attraction
Flirtation gradually increased, group interaction became private lunches, private lunches grew into an hour and a half and then two hours then weekends. Email jokes grew into saucy rhetoric. Friendly hugs because full body hugs complete with accompanying hard ons. But it all seemed very very natural and never forced.
IT has been very stop and go. We have had some difficulty with being afraid to risk a meaningful friendship by trying to force too mcuh romantically so we have been moving rather slowly. But we love each other a lot and have been involved off and on for 6 years. We’ve kept our respect for each other even at times when we’ve been broken up and I keep his happiness in mind even when we aren’t together. Right now we are a couple and it is pretty darned good. Better than it ever has been with anyone else. I feel like he understnads me and just “fits” better than anyone ever has. If it doesn’t work out at least I tried. I will always love him and always feel like he is my true soul mate.
I’ve done this twice also, so I’ll give you two sets of answers
Number One
Friends for about 2 months, there was always an attraction, lots of flirting.
We went to see “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” with a few of our friends. We were sat next to each other, and not entirely sober. I, not having read the book, hadn’t the foggiest idea as to what was going on. He kept on whispering relevant details in my ear. I almost fell asleep on his shoulder :). The film finished. We got up. He took my hand and held it. We held hands walking back to college from the cinema. One of my friends was having a party. We went to the party, and talked exclusively to each other for a while. We kissed, and things went from there.
It didn’t last. It would have been a first relationship for both of us, and we were darned scared of losing a great friendship. We decided to be just friends. I ended up in a relationship with a jealous loser, and he with a girl my age who looked like she was 12 (she had pigtails and everything!). However, to this day, he is my closest friend. I still think that perhaps if things had been different I would probably have been with him today. However, jealous loser ex-boyfriend wouldn’t let me have contact with any of my friends, so we drifted apart slightly. By the time I’d got rid of the loser, he was going out with someone else, but we always remained really close. We’d skive lectures to go and drink coffee and talk crap together. He’d always walk me home. Then he graduated, and for two years I only saw him sporadically, and in which time my second “friends first” relationship developed. When we finally managed to meet up with each other a couple of weeks ago, there was still chemistry there. He said he’d missed me, and to be fair, I’d missed him as well. He told me to my face that he thought my current boyfriend was the luckiest man alive. If circumstances were different, we’d probably be an item again.
Which leads me to number 2
Friends for about two and a half years. When someone suggested that he and I should get together, my reaction was “Eeew. He’s my best friend”
It just kind of happened. I was really upset - my father had gone into hospital diagnosed with cancer, and so I wasn’t too good. I ended up crying, and he put his arms round me, which is when we both realised what we felt for each other.
Well, two and a half years later, we’re still together, we’re planning to get married once we’ve both finished our PhDs. He knows how close “friends first #1” guy and I are, and he is perfectly OK with it. The transistion was remarkably easy, it felt natural, as if this was what was meant to have happened from the beginning…
My case is very similar to CrazyCatLady’s. Can’t really tell you how long the friendship phase was, either, because there’s this big grey area in there somewhere. Started out as friends, then good friends, then very good friends, then best friends, then ended up as a pair.
That is my current relation. In fact, all my relations, except one, started out as friendships. The advantage to this is you already know the other side some, making the whole thing less of a guessing game. Besides, I suck at doing this “chase” thing.
Also, a “thank you” to everyone who has responded to this thread so far. I’ve noticed, however, that the success-to-failure ratio for Dopers’ experiences with “friends first” relationships seems awfully high. Are all of those with failed “friends first” relationships too bitter to post about it, or is this some massive conspiratorial attempt to avoid shattering my little fantasy? (I suspect it is the former, since the Straight Dope has somewhat of a reputation for brutal honesty…)
I find that in order for a ‘friendship’ to become more than that it usually requires a little bit of alcohol and one of the parties to be braver and/or stupider than the other and dive in and hope for the best.
That way if it fails the alcohol can be blamed and the friendship can be salvaged.
N.B. This doesn’t work if the subject has already been discussed and failed …
However … if the subject has never been broached and the friendship a strong one, this ofen works because with many strong friendships you do wonder about the other person … what would it be like? etc.
1)How long were you “friends first”?
Over two years.
2)How was the transition accomplished, i.e. Who suggested the idea of being more than “friends”, and how?
I developed a huge crush on him early on, but never said anything for fear of “spoiling the friendship” (although looking back, I can see that I must have been pretty easy to see through). He made it perfectly clear to me that he was Not Interested, which made it rather surprising when he later asked me out. Two months later (!), we were engaged.
3)How did it work out?
Painful, messy breakup after dating about a year and a half.
I still haven’t figured out whether Friends First is a good idea or not.
She dated my roomate for 5 years in college, he was bad to her, she didn’t see it. (He got engaged not once, but TWICE behind her back and she kept letting him come back.)
One or the other of us tried something over the years but the timing wasn’t ever right. I left college first, got engaged, broke up, gave her a call, she’d broken up with bad boyfriend/roomate about 3 weeks before. 8 weeks later we were engaged, 13 months after that we were married. It’s been 7 wonderful years of wedlock, twin boys, and has been great.
Ask me in another 40 years. The experiment is stull underway.
1)How long were you “friends first”?
My SO and I have gone to school together since we were 10, and we’ve been friends since we were 12. We started dating each other at 18, so we were friends first for 6 years. Of course, when we first knew each other, we were still in the “boys/girls have cooties” stage
2)How was the transition accomplished, i.e. Who suggested the idea of being more than “friends”, and how?
We were both attracted to each other and just started hanging out more. Originally, we would hang out a lot with our whole group of friends. Then more and more often, it was just the two of us getting together to do little things, like watch TV or have lunch together. Then one night, he made the mistake of telling me I couldn’t do anything to annoy him. I spent a good half hour poking him randomly with my finger, and then he caught me doing it and his hand just kind of slipped around mine. (Awww…)
3)How did it work out?
We’ve been together for almost two and a half years now, and haven’t had so much as a fight. There was no “getting to know each other” phase to go through since we had been friends for so long, and we were both already perfectly comfortable together.
It was a very strange couple of months as it is difficult to establish a romantic relationship with a psychotic ex boyfriend following you around but somehow things worked out well.