Dating is odd to me. I do not really know what my motivations are. If I actually find someone. What then? What will we do? How different will our relationship be from a regular friendship (besides you know what). And should it be?
Should you be wanting to do other things with your SO then a very good friend?
What I’m getting at is, have you ever thought to someone: “They don’t really want a relationship they just want a one particular friend with benefits.”
I don’t know if I’m rambling over here. But I’m really having difficulty digesting this one.
Edit: The reason I ask is because I’m thinking to start dating again but I don’t know my end goal.
To me, the key difference is just how much you can be yourself around that person, without any feeling of self consciousness or shame. Even with very good friends, there are still things about yourself (physical or otherwise) that you don’t let them see.
Also, my wife IS my best friend.
I feel like a good SO is just a best friend with benefits. Someone you can do all the same stuff as a bestie with, and feel the same way around, but you also are sexually attracted and fuck.
An SO will align their goals with you. A best friend may find another goal in life and go off on their own. A friend isn’t tied to you, and you’d support them if they ‘leave’ you to seek their own fortune. A partner stays with you and you and they need to find ways to reach your goals together. There’s a stability and security to a partner that you don’t get, no matter how close your friend is.
A good friend (platonic relationship) is someone I can see every day, talk to about anything, and I want them in my life regularly. I personally cannot spend 100% all my time with someone who is just a good friend.
A romantic relationship is a good friend who I can live with and want to share a blanket and cuddle with at the end of the day. It’s someone I might want to hold hands with, kiss, or sleep with. It’s someone I want to come home to at the end of a good day to share good news, or end of a bad day to make it better.
A sexual relationship is someone I want to kiss and have sex with.
There are overlap. Romantic friends and friends with benefits are pretty common terms. Having a romantic relationship with sexual interest often ends up in bad relationships; I’ve heard this described as “feels like it should work” or “I loved them but I didn’t like them.”
I don’t try to fuck my friends hah. I can sit for hours with my SO and not utter a word and just do my shit. I don’t have to be on and allowed to be irritable.
You can bone them regularly without making things awkward
Clearly you’re only friends with boring people
Well basically love is a form of psychosis where someone becomes the most important thing to you and your whole reality bends around that. You feel a deep abiding satisfaction and comfort just being in their presence or hearing their voice. Your personal identity becomes secondary to your shared identity as a couple and your connection to them is a core part of your emotional state and thought process. Anything that contradicts being with or caring for them is basically impossible to even think. This can be really wonderful or really horrible depending on the circumstances.
This sounds more like infatuation than love, TBH.
The way I see it infatuation is just the surface feeling, love is when it becomes a more permanent core motivation and foundation of what you do and think. What do you think the difference is?
Some of the things you mentioned in your first comment really point to infatuation to me, like your perseonal identity becoming secondary to a shared identity, and “Anything that contradicts being with or caring for them is basically impossible to even think.” These sound like elements of an unhealthy relationship.
Why are those things necessarily unhealthy? I phrased it in a negative way to emphasize that love can be unhealthy, but having a shared life/identity, being devoted to a person beyond rationality, if these things aren’t present I’m not sure how it would qualify as love at all.
I think for me, relationships are having a good friend with benefits.
I’ve had a few serious relationships and at the time I’ve felt like they’re the person I want to do things with, not ‘things’, just things.
