Why don't people want to be friends first?

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This is not really a good example of "friendship first", because you started out with a romantic relationship. I certainly might find it possible to get a crush on somebody, have a failed relationship, try out a friendship, and then go back to a LTR. That is very different from being friends for a long time and then get into a relationship.

I would.



I don't think there is a big difference. The main difference probably is that most males will have sex with most women if the opportunity arise, but they wouldn't consider them for a relationship afterwards. Which makes the difference minimal.



I'm unable to do that. I don't think this is a girl-guy issue at all.

The more I think about it the more I don't think that the title of this thread hits the nail on the head. It isn't a case of people not wanting to be friends first, it's more a case of people being friends and one person develops feelings for the other, but the feelings are not reciprocated.

The question is, why does this happen?

Because people are individuals and not everyone will be attracted to another person who is attracted to them. They may have a lot in common, but there has to be something more there. In the long run if you want to change the friendship into a relationship you are saying that you want to pair up with the person and intertwine your lives together. Being that close to each other may not work for you both. Some friends you enjoy being around, but you don't ever want to live with them and you don't want to share a bed with them every night and you don't want to have to do your grocery shopping with them.

There is more to a long term relationship than just getting on well with someone.

It's not that women don't want to be friends first, it's just that they may not be attracted to someone who has developed feelings for them. It works both ways. I've known women who have feelings for friends who have not reciprocated.

Personally I am not attracted to men that still look very boyish, like Dwight from the Office, or Jesse Eisenberg or Matt Smith, however I find Steve Carrell or Lars Mikkelsen or Peter Capaldi very attractive. That's just me though. I would feel that someone boyish would be more like a brother or a son (yeah I'm getting old, I met this nice young man recently and though "If he was my son I'd be very proud of the way he's turned out, he's a decent chap").

Even then, I think that women say, "you're just like a brother to me," not because they really feel that way, but because they are letting the guy down gently. Saying that they are a brother shows you have some sort of affection for them, but it isn't sexual.

You're like a mother to me, hurloam.

This is all very true and important to remember. I've gone on and on in several posts about cultivating a dating pool from a large group of friends and acquaintances. Ultimately you're going to narrow it down to a single person and there's STILL no guarantee that it's going to develop into a LTR. Your safest bet is to assume that you'll go through the process many times over the course of several years. You have to keep your options and your mind open. You have to be patient and leave your emotions out of it. I don't mean be an unemotional person. I just mean don't make hasty, in-the-moment decisions guided purely by emotion.

Also, I think it's important to emphasize WHY close friends theoretically work out best as LTR material. The more time you spend getting to know someone as a friend, you'll find out what they're like when they think nobody else is watching. You want to make sure that this person isn't someone who is going to nag you to an early grave or beat you senseless a few times every week. You want to make sure that this person is mentally/emotionally stable, or if he/she has issues that they are issues you're prepared to deal with. The more time you spend with a friend, you'll have a better idea of whether they can be trusted. The more time you spend with someone, the more history you have together, and your war stories are going to go a long way to cementing those bonds for the long term. THAT is why you want to seek romantic relationships with friends rather than this whole silly serial monogamy that people NORMALLY do. NORMAL people pursue relationships one individual at a time and get their hearts ripped ripped to shreds every time they get rejected or the relationship fizzles. NORMAL relationships don't end amicably--they end with cheating, loss of interest, fights, and you can't even have a friendship once it's over. To me, that's just a stupid waste of time. If that's what NORMAL means, I'd rather just be weird.

Weird means setting aside relationships right at the beginning, get to know as many people as you reasonably can, and just start going out with people. It's not what we'd consider "conventional" dating because that would mean you start with the expectation that a LTR will form. I suggest starting with NO expectations. "Hey, I was hanging out with Beth the other night bowling, and I'm pretty sure I saw you there. I suck at bowling, honestly, but if you're not busy, you wanna meet up with me on Saturday for a good laugh?" You never have to go out with her again, because if you're doing this right, you're already hanging out with her a lot anyway. Asking someone out and changing the venue is moving the relationship into a different context outside the norm, which will make you open for something romantic. She might say, "Oh, you mean like a date?" I'd be like, "Um, NO…I think you're interesting, you seem to like bowling, so I thought you might be cool with hanging out sometime. It's not a big deal." So if she's, like, "OK, so it's a date?" then I'm, like, "yeah, EXACTLY like a date." Whatever she wants to hear, I don't care. I'm just trying not to spend the entire weekend alone, and while I'm at it give her an excuse to do something she enjoys.

Here's where my approach is going to be effective: Suppose you meet and go out with 100 people. Let's say out of 100 people, half of them after first going out you discover either they aren't the kinds people you want another date with and you aren't the kind of person they'd want another date with. Out of those you DO get subsequent dates with, half of those are criminally insane, which you find out before things get bad and you are eternally grateful you don't have to hang out with them anymore. That leaves 25 nice people you don't mind seeing regularly and who don't mind seeing you regularly. Of those 25 (keep in mind you started with 100), do you really believe all 25 are going to keep you in the friendzone/bro-zone? Admittedly, it's logically POSSIBLE. But, I mean, out of 100 people you can't find one single person you can't start a relationship with? This is the kind of networking people do who start businesses out of their garages and end up billionaires. You may not be trying to create a Fortune 500 company, but you seriously can't follow a single lead out of 100 that lands you a LTR? I mean no offense to anyone, and I do understand the frustrations people experience in finding that one relationship, but it's a very special sort of pathetic that can't get at least 1 (one) positive response out of 100. Possible? Sure. Likely? I doubt it.

That's kind of what I'm going for on this forum. I make out that I'm older than I am, to stop young guys PMing me, but I'm only a year older than you.

I'm sure that AngelRho's method can work for some people, but it won't work for everybody. The biggest thing that will make it not work is that many people think it is impossible to go from friendship to relationship, and this also reduces the numbers in the examples considerably. If one ends up with 25 friends, maybe only a few of them will be interested to take it further to a relationship, and the time on the others will be more or less wasted. Some will probably not want to take it further when they realize you have a large number of potential dates and you aren't being exclusive with them.

In addition to that, if you form strong attachments easily, this could come out as a real disaster if you bond too much with some of them and it isn't reciprocated.

Not everyone has trouble meeting people, or flirting, or whatever. Some people do just fine with serial monogamy. Some people are ok with the head games and emotional distress. Some people like drama. And some people just like to stay home alone all weekend feeling sorry for themselves.


It's all in the mind. You can't let emotions take over. It's not going to work if you insist on acting in the moment without thinking things through.


That's more or less the whole point. If you end up with 25 or even 10 people you see regularly, those few people out of 100 are going to be people you enjoy spending time with who actually like you. You're not going to end up with 25 people you know you have absolutely zero chance of making it with. If you're spending some good time with these folks, you should be able to find, I'd say, between 1 and 4 people you can form a serious LTR with. If that's your goal, you haven't wasted time.

Whether time was wasted or not depends on where you place your priorities. You risk more in serial monogamy and invite more emotional turmoil. By avoiding that, you spread the risk and hence diminish its impact. You're not looking for an ongoing romance. You just want to hang out with someone over coffee. Do that long enough and eventually it will turn into something romantic. But asking someone out for a romantic day at the zoo followed up with 5-star dinner on the first time out? Not going to happen...


Which is why one must leave emotions out of it. Reciprocation can't be your goal going into it.

I'd invoke the Golden Rule here. People tend to be self-centered and self-interested, which for the most part has worked out well for the human race. The Golden Rule in essence says that the interests of others IS my self-interest. Reciprocation is all about what I want for myself. The Golden Rule applied to dating makes it about what someone else wants--which basically means showing someone you're interested without placing any demands or expectations on them for reciprocation. If you get it, GREAT.

Obviously you want to end up with someone who SHARES your interest in a LTR. So if you're alternately seeing 2 people, or if you've taken it another step and pretty much ONLY spend time with one person, it's time to bring up being "official" bf/gf. You want to know if this relationship has a future. Someone worth being with is going to put YOUR interests first. If you don't feel special and wanted with this person, it's only natural that you move on to someone who DOES share your interest in a LTR. The Golden Rule applies both ways.

If you insist on forming bonds that way, I can't help you. Nothing I say is going to work if you lack the mental discipline to keep emotions in their proper place. I'm not suggesting you become a cold and heartless person. I'm not saying ignore your instincts. I'm just saying that knee-jerk, emotional responses being your only guide won't get you very far. It's never a good idea to lose your head over a crush.

Huh?

I will PM you my skype ID, send me your picture.

Oh ha ha, but when I first joined I was getting 19 year olds sending me emails so I upped my age and the emails stopped.

I was kidding hurtloam, I am not interested to know you on skype or to see your pic.

Sorry for breaking your heart.

I think that about summarizes why it won't work for many people. I neither want nor can leave emotions out of it. I want to start with a massive crush on the girl I'll spend the rest of my life with. When the crush wears off, I need to have created a strong attachment otherwise it won't work long-term. Those are the things that create long-lasting love.

It would work if people would do it.

Probably more people than not make knee-jerk, reactive decisions when confronted with a serious issue. I'm a small-town kid, a nobody. So I got this opportunity to license music to a production company for a local reality show (set to premier in January on TruTV, btw). Reality show producers are not in the habit of paying people, which ORDINARILY would be just fine by me…EXCEPT this is how I make my living and business has been way slow this year, PLUS I'm trying to fund a couple of recording projects. I wasn't about to sign a license agreement I didn't actually agree to.

My first instinct was, being a nobody, to just sign the thing because these people don't give two $#!+$ about me and aren't going to pay me no matter what. It's not worth the intimidation, and they've got experience with much worse people than me. My second instinct was to declare war on them. So rather than sign the agreement, I simply asked if I could take a day to read over the agreement and get back to them the next day.

So one of the producers or assistants called me back the next morning and I let them know that their proposed license fee was no good for me. The guy fired back with some lame excuses about budgets and production company SOP dealing with reality shows. So I cut my offer in half. More excuses. So I'm getting fed up with this guy and really, REALLY struggling to keep my cool. So I very calmly explained that we'll act like grownups and take one more day for the producers to talk it over and see what they could come up with. They guy is practically yelling over me at this point. I wished him a good day and hung up the phone!

20 minutes later my phone rings, and it's the lead producer. She's being unusually sweet to me. She offers me a deal, which is SLIGHTLY better than nothing. Again…I was VERY tempted to jump on it, but I still felt they were being unreasonable--even after I'd already slashed my offer to 1/3 of what I originally asked for. So she got on the phone with her company and came back with something we BOTH could agree on.

What's my point? I've never dealt with a big TV production company before. I was scared to death. For the most part they really were nice people and a lot of fun to work with. But I was being put in a position in which I felt I was being mistreated. I could have walked out entirely, but what good would that have done? Then I'd be the one acting like a jerk. I could have just let it go, but then I'd have just hated doing the work and would have been miserable the whole time. But instead I insisted that I myself and the producers take time, think it over, and come up with something a bit more palatable.

Moving into a romantic arrangement is exciting and tense. You take a lot of risks and there are never any guarantees. Even if you do what I suggest by hanging out with 100 different motos, you will STILL only have a 1% success rate. And EVEN IF you stay with that motos long enough to get married and have more kids than the Duggars, whether you like it or not, THAT RELATIONSHIP WILL EVENTUALLY END, and there's NOTHING you can do about it. It might take 5 days or 5 decades, but it will eventually end one way or the other.

I'm not saying that to be pessimistic. I'm saying it's important to keep all this in mind the next time you get bent out of shape over someone or you misplace your priorities in a relationship. It's ok to have feelings for others. It's ok to be excited about getting a date with someone you like. It's perfectly fine to develop a healthy attachment to motos. There's nothing wrong with any of that. It's just getting caught up in the emotion and allowing that to cloud your judgment that makes it a problem, no different than how I had to make a deal with a production company. I was extremely nervous throughout that whole thing. In the end, it was taking time and acting like adults that allowed us to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. You negotiate LTRs pretty much the same way…stop, take your time, think things through, THEN respond appropriately. Becoming overly emotional about one single person might just ruin more than your day.

How long these women knew their friend, hurtloam; in my experience whenever a woman falls for a friend she knew him only for few months - I've never encountered a woman telling about starting to have feelings for a guy after years of friends, from men yes, it is common, from women never, I cannot deny this disparity in my observation no matter how PC I try to sound.

Also, what amazes me from some women is how they act oblivious to the super obvious signs of romance:



I mean come on, red shiny and gold plated roses, are you telling me she never guessed? This is not something given to a friend.

That's not really the point. By not having those intense emotions in the beginning you are missing-out on some of the best things in life. I'd say the initial crush is much more pleasurable than any LTR is. And I'm not a person that want a LTR just because everybody else has one. I was single til I was 30, and if I for some reason become single again I could very well stay single rather than remarrying. I don't need LTRs or relationships in general so I won't get into them unless it is very pleasurable and it offers me continued satisfaction (and then I don't mean in the sexual sense).

Also, when you argued previously about serial monogamy I don't think it really has much to do with emotions. For me, the only exclusive emotion is the crush itself (I don't think I can have a crush on more than one person at a time). I'm very capable of having multiple attachments and to love more than one person, so I'm not really monogamous, and definitely not serial monogamous. A crush typically is a temporary emotion, and even if you go about it all logically rather than emotionally, you can still happen to get a crush on one of the 100 people you see. Getting a crush is not a conscious thing, it just happens, whether you want it or not, and using a logical approach won't change that. For me, the biggest problem in "dating" / finding a partner is getting a crush on somebody that doesn't like you that way, and then being unable to get out of it. I don't think your method solves that issue.



I don't think you can compare a business deal or getting along with people in general with relationships. I'm also logical and non-emotional in such situations. That's because the goal is to get the best out of it and then emotions often are just in the way. A relationship is very different. You don't have it because you need it. You have it because you enjoy it and thrive. Thus, I would find it counterproductive to use the same method for getting into a relationship as closing a business deal.



I've had much higher success rates than that. The one's that ended (mostly in school) did it because we went different ways and moved to new places. Actually, I only have a single instance when somebody actually ended a relationship with me, and I think she regretted it afterwards. Since I never did any dating, I've never experienced somebody suddenly changing their mind and losing interest as is typical in dating.



Yes, they typically end as one of you dies

Since I'm not serial monogamous, I don't need to end a relationship if I get a crush on somebody else (or if my partner gets a crush on somebody else). Thus, ending relationships is not necessary for me. There is no point in doing so unless I cannot get along.

btw, I knew you were joking that's why i said "ha ha" anyway moving on.

I know, I saw that on tumblr or something and I couldn't believe how stupid she was. I think she knows and she's using him. You can't be that stupid, surely?

Ok, interesting point. The times I've been friendzoned have been when I have decided quickly that I was interested in the man and I kind of hoped he would grow to like me too, so this may mostly be true. There was one chap I developed feelings for after a few years, an old roommate, I had no feelings for him when we lived together, it wasn't until after I moved out that something clicked, which is totally not appropriate because he was married by this point, but it just kind of happened. Maybe we missed each other, I don't know. We avoid each other now. That was a weird anomaly.