Why is it so hard to date your best friend? People fall in love

>The bond and trust between me and my close friends is stronger than that of any couple I've met. We can insult each other, play pranks on each other, laugh about each other as much as we want, we don't require proof that we're friends, we never question it. Being there for each other feels like the natural way things should be.
One of the biggest reasons I only date friends and my longest relationshipo was my best friend of several years. It didn't work out, but we realized we just work better as friends so we went right back to it after a few months cooling down period.

I have trust and commitment issues as it is, I simply cannot get into someone unless I spend enough time around them that I know I can lower my guard, so to speak. I've had one night stands but sex for me is pretty carnal so I actually avoid any such things with a girl I might be interested in. Once my mind catalogs her as good to go for sexual thoughts and deviancy, I can't have feelings for her.

Fucking hate dating too, what an awkward and uncomfortable courtship ritual. Pay out the ass and dress up in some monkey suit so you can play a game of emotional poker where you try and win over some girl. It seems absolutely ludicrous to me. Rather befriend the girl and hang out with my friends, go urban exploring, bbqs, swimming, hiking, movie nights and all that. That's how you see the real someone, when they're truly comfortable around you and others. Makes for a longer-lived relationship IMO.

>>16451897
>awkward and uncomfortable courtship ritual
>play a game of emotional poker
Exactly this. Where do I find the girls who are equally tired of this socially constructed bullshit?

>>16452161
I can't tell you, my method (that is, befriending girls and integrating them into my friend-group) has a way of both bypassing that and mostly attracting likeminded individuals. The ones that don't really fit tend to break away eventually.

As should be obvious, I feel at my most comfortable around my friends, so when a new girl is brought I don't feel awkward or anything because they are on my home turf so to speak. This makes me treat them as a friend, like I've known them for a while and I'm naturally very playful and a jokester, so it tends to disarm them.

The best thing to keep in mind is that you interact with them as if you want to make a proper friend, not hook up with them. Proper friends you joke with, playfully insult them, give them a good ribbing when they say or do something stupid, laugh at them, get serious when they need advice and all that. From my experience and if done correctly, they don't see you as an emotional pincushion. That only happens when you serve them hand and foot.

>>16452181
basically, treat them as an equal and present yourself as an equal. It's a fine line but if you serve them hand and foot, you're presenting yourself as subservient and an inferior and you'll be treated as such. Biggest problem and the hallmark of what others would label mas "beta", because they think if you do everything for a woman she'll be grateful and reward you with love. This can't be further from the truth for most women. Would you have feelings and entrust yourself to someone you see as inferior or otherwise unworthy?

The fine line can be crossed the other way, by being an arrogant jerkoff. This work better than the other way but mostly with girls with daddy issues and the like. You make lasting friends and the strongest girlfriends by treating them as an equal, no more and no less.

>>16452181
Well yeah, but in my experience this leads to the issue of "I can't date him/her, he/she's my best friend" for a reason I have yet to understand.
I'm not exempt from this either, in the past I've ended up refusing to become intimate with my best friend at the time.

What makes us want to separate sexual and non-sexual relationships so strictly?

>>16452213
I.. honestly can't pinpoint it either. but I have my theories. Usually the obvious "I consider the friend too precious to me to even risk losing them to anything". Lots of people are more decisive than they let on when it comes to this stuff. Or simply the fact that emotional attachment is separate from sexual attraction. It's when you have both that you get the strongest relationship, I find.

I've had a female friend who I fancied hardcore, and she saw me as a big brother figure. I asked her out, but she just didn't see me that way. Likewise I've turned down another friend because despite she being very supportive, she just didn't spark any romantic feelings at all. She like a reassuring weightedness on a rocking ship in a storm, not a warm touch when you're cold in bed, if that makes sense.

The human heart is a complex piece of shit. We could spend years discussing this and never get any closer to finding a definite answer.

>>16451716
I've wanted to date my best female friends in the past. But, after seeing them with other people I've realized that I couldn't make them happy the way they would make me happy. It's not airways meant to be even if you two are best friends. Lovers are a step above what you can offer which is why it's so difficult to maintain feel friendships with women one they get a boyfriend. The boyfriend offers everything you do plus sex. What did she need you for?

My boyfriend is my best friend, and the best friend I've ever had. It's not hard to date him at all, it's much less effort than anything. I don't know what you're getting at.

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>>16452232
falling in love is contrary to most people's preconceived notions, a rapid and unintentional thing. It's usually a biological and sexual attraction that leads to a destruction of the boundaries between two people rather quickly. This doesn't lead to the most ideal relationships, but it is how human biology has worked for a long time.

You're friends with somebody because you didn't go through that at first, or you were willing to "wait" until that person started feeling the same way about you. The reason people never "risk" their friends is because they don't truly love their friends that way and can't see themselves enjoying that, at least on a subconscious level.

>>16453481
You're bringing up a ridiculously interesting point that I should've thought of myself.
>This doesn't lead to the most ideal relationships, but it is how human biology has worked for a long time.
It leads to, how to put it? Hump and dump, fire and forget, drop the load and leave. Are we even biologically hardwired to stay together for a lifetime? Like penguins? Does our most basic biological programming regard mateship as something temporary?

It certainly would explain why the prolonged "dating" years into relationships exists and why it feels so unnatural and staged. We're not meant to have relationships the way society is telling us.

I'm certain someone must've had that thought before, else I'd get a nobel prize for discovering this paradigm shift. Does anyone have any literature on this? Does modern sociology cover this?

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My own feeling is that it all comes down to where you're compatible. Some couples are good as platonic friends, some as fuck buddies, and some as both.

I'm married, and after enough years of learning how to do it right, very happily so. My wife isn't my best friend- it's more than that, and different, that just an intimate friendship.

I'm not trying to be a special snowflake- for marriage, and long-term committed relationships, there has to be common purpose, a mission, and passion and love have to comingle and exist such that they can be on a sliding scale, as both will wax and wane in intensity over time. That committment is exclusive to sexual relationships, and it does very much include chemistry.. and there's an issue there, too. Many platonic friendships are codependent, where one person wants a sexual relationship, or at the other end of the spectrum, one person gets the same ego gratification and comfort as in a sexual relationship, without the committment and emotional investment. Cake-eating, in other words.

At any rate, there's a damn good reason why platonic relationships don't tend to be perfectly healthy, and also why making the transition from an established platonic relationship to a committed sexual one is pretty damn hard.

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>>16453552
well anon, our society goes against a lot of what human biology and instincts seem to desire. We decided at some point that withholding base desires made us better than those who couldn't, and that included sex, among other things.

Society is just... there. Who knows where it will go, but I personally enjoy a good, long, stable partnership with a gf, no matter how unnatural it may feel.