How do you tell when a friend is interested in beginning a more serious relationship? What do you do to let someone know you’re interested in a romantic relationship? Guys are usually pretty simple to understand, but women are totally unreadable (just part of the allure! :)), so I thought this could be useful to all of us clueless people.
Suggested alternative discussions and authorized hijacks: Stories of how you and your SO met; whether male/female friendships are even possible without some romantic tension involved; whether it’s a good idea or bad idea to try to move beyond friendship; attempts that didn’t turn out too well
Is this some sort of Newbie hazing that wasn’t mentioned in the guidebook?
Or did I just ask a question that nobody knows an answer to?
BTW, is there an award for going over a day with zero replies? 
Touchy subject…but I’ll try.
Your SO is supposed to be your best friend, so it helps if you’ve been friends before moving on to a romantic relationship. You already know you’re compatible on a friendship basis, you know likes and dislikes, etc. However, if the romantic relationship does not work out, you run a high risk of losing the friendship as well. I have managed to salvage friendships after a romantic disaster, but not very often, and only with men who have been VERY close friends for quite a while. Occasionally several years will pass and we can become friendly acquaintances again, but usually nothing like before. More often than not, we end up hating one another.
So it’s pretty much a risk, like everything else in life. If the idea of a romantic relationship is enough to make you want to risk the friendship, go for it. If you don’t want to lose the friendship don’t move to the next step…or at least give it PLENTY of time.
Absolutely. In fact, I can’t stand most women (at least the ones I happen to know) so most of my friends are guys. And it works well, without any “romantic tension”.
I am now romantically involved with a guy who was my best friend before (and still is). The tension was getting too much for me to take, so I just told him flat out that I wanted to take our relationship to the next level, but if it didn’t work out, I would still like to be his friend. It turned out he felt the same way as I, and so far everything seems to be working out smoothly.
My only advice is to not rely on clues, as they usually don’t mean anything definite. If you are ever put in a situation like this, you should be direct. That way, there’s no guessing involved.
I “took our relationship to the next level” with a friend-since-childhood once. The following week he slept with a mutual friend. I broke up with him. He had a nervous breakdown and disappeared for six months. End of that one.
My experience is extremely atypical, however. Or so I would hope.
I tried twice to take a relatioship to the “next level”. And failed. Miserably.
The lesson is, never try. (for me anyway)
I had a friend for 5 years. Had being the key word in that last sentence. He was my best friend for a long time. After a while, we both decided that we’d give the relationship thing a try. Six months later I realized that I can’t stand him. I’m sure he feels much the same way. We don’t even talk anymore.
I still say that male/female friendships can work though.
I think people’s reluctance to respond might be due to some fairly recent threads covering aspects of this topic. Nicklz had an early post about this (lots of advice from Dopers, all of which sounded good but the thing had an unhappy ending)… I also recall some other threads started by other Dopers, but I can’t recollect their names or the thread titles to steer you right.
It’s not that it’s not a worthy topic (believe me, Dopers seem to have a lot of advice and experience in this area) but I for one feel too lazy to go into it all again knowing that the better posts than mine have recently been authored.
I agree with you, okielady, that any relationship should be with your best friend. especially since it’s best to get to know the person as they actually are first. (IMHO, dating is just two people trying to be what they think the other person wants, and look at how well that works. :))
However, my experiences tend to be much like most of the other replies posted here. It seems I have the wonderful luck of being attracted to people who aren’t attracted to me in return. Which is one reason why I’m hesitant to try the direct approach. (Even though it worked out so well for you, FireUnderpantsBoobs!)
Thanks for the info, CrankyAsAnOldMan. I tried a few searches before I posted to make sure I wasn’t rehashing old threads, but I guess I didn’t pick the right keywords. I’ll try harder next time. (And I’ll try not to take it personally, either!)
Well, I had a minute to dig around.
Here are a few previous threads that got some interesting (and perhaps helpful) Doper responses:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=70362
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=80810
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=69304
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=69342
I was once in this kinda situation. It was a bit easy for me to tell she was falling for me, and I knew I was falling for her. We would kiss each other very frequently, either on the cheek or lips, but not in a passionate way. Then, she and I took a trip to a large city about 2 hours away from where we live, and that night, she asked me to cuddle with her for a little while. So, naturally, I did. I guess we were just tickling each other and stuff, and I finally built up the nerve to kiss her. A true kiss. Adn we just lay there for a good 15 minutes, kissing, it was wonderful. We are still together, and it rocks. Just in case any of you dopers remember me from previosu posts about this, you can read about it here…
and here, is part 2
Just thought I would update anyone that cared 
That’s interesting stuff, Silver. It is my own personal theory that two tolerable-to-moderately attractive people cannot maintain a lasting friendship-only relationship without one or the other “falling” for their friend.
Personally, I rarely try and go out with girls that I wasn’t already friends with. After all, if I can’t even be their friend, how the hell could I go out with them?
That said, I’ve lost a few female friends over such affairs, but since I hold my first paragraph as axiomatic I think it would have happened anyway.
I think every ‘actual’ relationship I’ve ever had was with a friend. Hmmm… barring one-nighters and travel hookups(back in the day…), yeah, all of them were friends. You’ve got to be committed to the FRIENDSHIP though, to make breakups recoverable. It helps if you absolutely cannot avoid seeing them, like, you all socialize together as a group. No escape, so you can’t dodge working it through. Dodging is a sure-fire ender, friendship-wise.
My hubbie (epeepunk) was a friend first. Not the very best friend, but good enough. You do have to be very direct (beyond hinting), willing to be embarassed half to death and survive (should you get a no-way answer), and willing to fight to save the friendship later, too. The guys I was closest with are still friends, though over time, life has shifted us somewhat apart (something about having babies… sucks up the time, if not the intent). Great deal of fondness still present for all of them, mutually, even the really ugly crashes. Actually, three of my ex-boyfriends (one of them an ex-fiance) were in my wedding party! And epeepunk and I were deeply involved in my ex-fiance’s wedding, too. Some of the breakup/recovery stages were pretty painful, but worth the effort to recover.
As for tension in all male-female friendships? HUH? I’m attracted to almost everyone, but not absolutely everyone, even if I like them. There are quite a few guys (and girls) I’ve never had a single ‘tension’ moment with, but who I like a great deal, or even love dearly. Just not a romantic spark to be found.
As for how I hooked up with the love of my life, I was just completely honest about what I wanted. He was a lot clueless (very much a ‘don’t spoil the friendship’ approach on his side, plus not really ever being clueful with women anyway), so I got even more specific, and indicated time, date, and location. He got the clue, eventually. The trick with us was that we kept it non-serious at first. We stayed at a casual fun level for a while before really hitting the TRUE next level. In the meantime, we figured out how not to bug the sh*t out of each other, since we were just there for fun - skills that have served us very well in the last 11 years. If a ‘just for fun’ fling with a friend ends, well, so what? Much easier. Though that was the first time I’d done that - the other times went BAM into full-relationship mode, but were still survivable with friendships intact.
Biggest tip for success: Be honest with yourself and each other. Even if it is hard hard hard to do. Better to accept where you’ve screwed up and take the hit immediately than have your friendship marred by fudging or blaming. (Good advice anytime, really.)
I agree with you, erislover. Of course, it could just be a guy thing, but it seems that whenever I find someone I like and that can actually put up with me, I end up falling for her.
I guess I kinda got this thread started out wrong. (Didn’t put enough thought into my subject heading!) I know that trying to take a friendship ‘to the next level’ usually destroys the friendship, which is why most of us are hesitant to make our feelings known (despite the success that some have had with the direct approach). So, in an effort to avoid the destruction of what might, otherwise, be a good friendship, I’m more interested in:
How do you tell when a friend is interested in beginning a more serious relationship?
What do you do to let someone know you’re interested in a romantic relationship?
I know, FireUnderpantsBoobs, that you said not to rely on clues, and I agree that they don’t mean too much, but they can help determine if you should consider taking the risk or avoiding it completely, thus making the world safer for star-struck lovers.
I have been told that I’m a bit paranoid, but I never dated guys that I wasn’t already friends with. I just don’t like the idea of hopping into a car with someone I just met ala Blind Date without the camera men.
I also have a significant number of male friends that I would never date. (Well, mainly 'cuz I’m married now, but speaking in past tense) It’s just that what works okay in a friendship may be totally unacceptable in a romantic relationship. You can put up with a lot more differences (and irritating habits) in a pal than in an SO. Just because you’re great friends and she’s cute, doesn’t mean that romance is a step up.
Was good friends with my husband for a lot of years before we started dating. One day, I looked at him and said “why didn’t we ever date?”
There wasn’t a good reason, we started dating. Married seven years, two kids.
If your friend answers “cause I’ve never been attracted to you that way,” or “you aren’t my type” you have an answer and no harm done.
And I’ve had several long term male friends that have always been just friends. So I disagree that attraction is inherent in these relationships.
I was friends with my SO for a year and a half bfore we “kicked it up a notch”. I had a crush on her from day one, but after a while I had given up on the idea of ever moving on. We were just friends (plenty of romantic tension…at least on my side). Finally I guess she started to feel the same way about me, but I had already started going out with another girl. I broke up with that girl over the summer and about a month after getting back to school in the fall the my “friend” said she had a dream and we kissed. We really did kiss that night and we have been going out for 3 years now.
I’ve moved on to auto-asphyxiation, as I deem it safer.