Friendship is a beautiful thing. You share so many moments of your life, whether they’re good or bad, with the people you care about and trust. Sometimes, though, your platonic feelings of happiness and love cross over to the dark side, and my oh my, many things can go wrong. Dating your best friend is probably something you’ve thought about before, even if it was for a second or as a joke. It’s definitely important for everyone to find a partner that they can settle down and experience life with, but I also think it’s important for everyone to have a best friend.
First off, dating your best friend is not the same thing as having your lover be your best friend. While I think it is true that you should be wary of dating your best friend, I think it is important that your eventual lover should become your best friend. It’s not every day that you come across someone in your life that you want to share every good and bad memory with in a non-romantic way. You might be tempted once in a while to take things a little further and put a new label on the friendship, but there are things that you should be aware of before crossing over the friendship/romance border.
If you date your best friend, there is a 100% chance that things will never be the same. You either become lovers forever, or you become like the other 99% of the dating-your-best-friend population and eventually break up. You’d then remain on that awkward level of friendship where you can’t get too close out of the fear of catching feelings again, and you can’t drift too far apart because, well, you guys just won’t be friends anymore. Even if a pair of best friends date, break up, and act completely normal around each other, the fact that there was a romantic thing going on will always be lingering in the back of everyone’s heads.
If you date your best friend, there won’t really be any adventure or excitement when it comes to discovering new things about them. A huge psychological thrill of dating someone is finding out new things about them each and every day. Falling in love is supposed to be an adventure. If you and your partner already know each other inside and out before you start dating, how will you fill that psychological void of that specific stage of the relationship? Bluntly put, you’ll still be best friends, maybe slightly more awkward around each other, with just a bit more physical affection. That’s not what falling in love is about. (Side note: if you do date your best friend and end up finding out more things about them that you never knew, I would probably rethink that “best friend” title you two had in the first place. It’s very possible to know someone pretty well without actually knowing them!)
If you date your best friend, who will be your new best friend? Now that your best friend is your lover, who are you going to go to at 2 AM when you and your partner get in your first fight? Who are you going to call when you want to rant about your love life? You’ll immediately think of going to your new lover about everything, but you’ll quickly realize that you still need a best friend.
Personally speaking, I’m the type of person who won’t even think about going to the next level with my best friend due to the fact that, well, things can get messy and result in the possible exit of a beautiful person in my life. Friendship is something that should be greatly valued. It’s not every day that you come across someone in your life that you want to share every single moment with in a non-romantic way. Making the switch could be risky, but if you know anyone that went through this entire process successfully, share their story in the comments below! Maybe they’re doing something right that most people aren’t!