What is the difference between a girl friend and a best friend?

>>18226904
>What do you guys think the key difference is between a girl friend and a best friend is?
As a girl who started dating a good friend (and now best friend, as well as boyfriend), there's an element of sexual attraction and romantic love. Both are pretty easy to tell if they're there, they just feel different to how you feel about other friends

>>18226911
But you can be attracted to each-other as friends and not date, which is basically what we were doing before.

>>18226915
Sure, which is why you started dating her. Also notice that I said sexual attraction AND romantic love. There's both there.

>>18226921
I feel like love is something that develops out of a relationship together, not something that you could definitively claim to feel before you get together.

But who really knows? I guess I'm just arguing semantics.

>>18226928
>I feel like love is something that develops out of a relationship together, not something that you could definitively claim to feel before you get together.
If it's a relationship where you don't know each other or know each other well, then I'd agree with you. However, if you know each other well, especially to the degree that you and your girlfriend knew each other, before dating, then I'd imagine that there was some romantic feelings present before you started dating too.

>>18226933
It sounds to me like we were already borderline boyfriend/girlfriend and that, like I said in the OP, the only thing that has really changed is the amount of time we can spend together.

Thanks for your input btw.

Romance, dates, intimate gestures like putting your hand on the small of her back or cuddling together. Tucking her in and getting under the covers with her if she's cold but too comfortable to get up. Going out of your way to do things for each other just because you can and want to make them happy, That and flirting.

If you were doing all that before, nothing changed, except you finally admitted what it was. If you weren't doing all that before and aren't doing it now, nothing changed and it needs to if you want it to succeed.

I am a male, I have a female best friend.

We have even been friends with benefits for a little bit (mostly because one night we were bored, drunk, horny, and acknowledge one another as attractive, so figured eh, fuck it, why not). Then went back to being purely platonic.

I have never thought of her romantically.

I think she's a fucking awesome person, I love hanging with her, and obviously I find her attractive, but that has nothing to do with me finding her romantically interesting.

In fact there was a moment while we were sleeping together that we talked about it, but it was pretty much immediately discarded.

While I love her, I know for a fact that we wouldn't last more than a coupe of weeks together as a couple before wanting to murder one another.

There is shit I can put up with as her best friend because I always have the option of just walking away if I need a little space, or turning a blind eye on occasion (not that ima fickle friend or anything, far from it. But her business is her business and I'm not obligated to be up in it 24/7, even as her best friend), but if she were my significant other, that same divide doesn't really exist because I wouldn't be fair to hold back that extra 10%, because I'd need to share almost everything to be fair, because I couldn't turn a blind eye.

Theres just straight up less leeway when someone is your friend vs your partner.

To me, that is the difference between best friend and girl friend. One does not imply the other will work.