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Q&A: How To Stay JUST Friends

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One of the most awkward times in a friendship is when one friend has feelings for the other that the other friend just doesn’t return. If your friend wants to be “more than friends,” it might seem impossible to let them know you don’t feel the same way without hurting their feelings, but you can and you should. Here’s how.

Question: Hey Dan and Jenn, last night my best friend of 8 years just admitted to wanting to be “more than just friends” with me however, we are both guys so I’m not really interested. He’s asked me to do stuff with him but I can’t seem to give him a straight no, I guess I just don’t want to hurt his feelings. Is there anyway I can permanently turn him down whilst keeping the friendship we had? Any help will be great, thanks.

–YouTube Viewer

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Being Afraid Of Hurting Their Feelings

If your friend likes you and wants to be more than friends and have a romantic relationship with you, it can make the friendship very awkward if you want to stay just friends. You may be afraid to hurt them because they’re you’re friend, so you may have avoided telling them the truth about how you really feel. You may be afraid that they’ll think you don’t want to be friends at all, or they may be so hurt or embarassed that they just can’t bear to be friends with you anymore. Either way, if you haven’t told your friend the truth, you’re probably afraid that it hurt them and that it will end the friendship.

Be Honest

Regardless of how afraid you are to tell your friend the truth about not returning their romantic feelings, it’s important that you be honest with them and honest with yourself. Leading them on, even by not saying anything at all, will make it worse when you do finally tell them that you don’t like them that way or when they figure it out on their own. The best thing to do in this situation is to be completely honest, without being critical, and just let them know in a nice way that you don’t want to be romantic with them. Be sure to let them know that you really do value the friendship and want to continue to be friends, but that moving beyond that just isn’t something you are interested in.

If It Affects The Friendship 

No matter how hard you try not to hurt your friend’s feelings, you might end up doing just that. Hopefully if you’ve been honest with them and weren’t critical, they’ll understand and still want to continue the friendship. But no matter how nice or understanding you are about it, you do run the slight chance that they won’t want to stay friends with you. This is usually on account of embarassment on their part, especially if they really thought you felt romantic about them. If this happens, there’s nothing you can do about it, except let your friend know that you really don’t want to see the friendship end. Even if they choose to end the friendship, it’s important that you were honest about your feelings and didn’t lead them on. They’ll appreciate that in the long run.

I Dated My Friend and It Didn’t Work Out… How Do We Get Our Friendship Back?

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You’ve moved out of the friend zone and into a relationship with your best friend or another friend of yours. Sadly, it doesn’t work out for one reason or another, but you want your friend back!

Fortunately, you’re not alone in this awkward situation. What will it take to get your friend back? Can you?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf5c8FDIiuk[/youtube]

How Mature Are You And Your Friend?

Moving from the friend zone into a relationship is something that happens all the time. A great number of people do this, and a number of them move back into friend status after the relationship has run its course, regardless of whether the relationship was a week long, a month long or even a few years long.

What’s their secret? How do they do this with seemingly no effort at all?

It depends on how mature the two people in the relationship are. If you and your partner are very mature, you’ll be able to better handle moving from the friend zone to a relationship and back to the friend zone again.

If you and your partner aren’t at a high level of maturity at the point in your relationship where you want to be friends again, you might find it difficult to do so without hurt feelings, resentment and awkwardness experienced by one or both parties.

What can you do?

First, be open and honest with your friend. Tell them how you feel! Talk to them about the friendship and how you felt about it before you made the turn towards dating romantically.

Talk to your friend about how you felt while you were dating romantically and how you feel now that the relationship is ending. Talk to your friend about how continuing the friendship would make you feel and how you can best accomplish that goal without letting old feelings get in the way.

Encourage your partner to share their feelings about those topics with you too. A great deal of awkwardness after an ended relationship is one or both parties refusing to communicate with each other and harboring ill feelings and resentment towards the other. Air your dirty laundry and start with a clean slate!

It Might Be The End

Not every friendship turned relationship turned friendship works out, regardless of the level of maturity by both parties. Sometimes it’s not meant to work out and sometimes issues that were dealt with during the relationship are just too difficult to deal with afterwards in a friendship setting.

That’s okay! It’s heartbreaking, sure. It’s a tough thing to deal with, but it’s probably something you knew going into the relationship – that you might lose your friend because of it. It’s a risk you and your friend both decided to take. If you and your friend are having a difficult time moving back into the friend zone after an ended relationship, it might be time to let it go.

You should talk to your friend about where you see this going, but don’t be surprised if it’s difficult to come up with an answer. Remember that not everything works out the way you want it to, and you certainly gave it a good shot. Feel out the situation and find out if it’s time to move on and do it gracefully!

I’m In Love With My Best Friend. How Do I Tell Her?

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If you find yourself in love with your best friend, take heart. You’re not the only one! It can be intimidating, however, to think of ways to tell your best friend how you feel without risking losing your best friend.

You might be tempted to feel the situation out with your friend’s friends, or you might prefer the idea to keeping quiet. How do you approach your best friend if you have feelings for them?

Dear Dan and Jennifer,

I really like this girl, I think I love her… But she’s one of my best friends and I don’t want to tell her about my feelings because I’m afraid that I will lose my friend. I told her friend about my feelings and I think she told her. Since then she’s gone all weird with me and doesn’t go out with me anymore. She always says that she’s busy or something. What should I do? Please help.

–Fizwan, England

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrom_1KQaU[/youtube]

The Friend’s Friends

Bouncing the idea of hooking up with your best friend off their friends’ might sound appealing. You get an opinion that is as close as possible to your best friend’s opinion without actually being their opinion. Sure, it sounds great but in reality, this plan tends to backfire the most. What usually happens is the friend never keeps it quiet and approaches your best friend with the info.

While that’s scary enough, the friend usually puts whatever spin on it they like, based on how they feel about you. If that friend dislikes you or thinks you aren’t a good match for her friend, your best friend might hear a convoluted story. It’s not always this way, but if you tell your best friend’s friend your feelings, you can pretty much guarantee that your best friend will hear about it too.

Keeping Quiet

Risking losing your best friend over your feelings might sound like it’s too much to handle and it might be tempting to just stay quiet rather than risk the end of the friendship.  Sure, if you stay quiet, you won’t risk losing your best friend over your feelings. But you might also be living an unfulfilled life.

What if you grow out of the friendship and end up going separate ways anyway, but you never got to tell your best friend how you felt? Think long and hard about whether you truly want to stay quiet. Make sure it’s a decision you really want to make.

Telling Your Best Friend

You might decide that you want to let your best friend know that you have romantic feelings for them. It takes some guts, but in the end, you might be better off. Just make sure to tell your friend directly how you feel instead of letting someone else do it for you. It’s much better when they hear it straight from you!

If your friendship ends over it, you might want to consider the fact that perhaps your friendship wasn’t meant to be in the first place. Who knows though, your friend could secretly be nursing a crush on you as well!  The only tried and true way to find out if you can make a relationship work with your best friend is talking to them, one on one.

Take It Slow

If you end up being lucky enough to start a romantic relationship with your best friend, you might want to take it slow. Don’t skip the dating process just because you already know each other well.

This might cause you to move to fast and end up crashing and burning later down the road. Take the time to get to know each other in a different way. You might be surprised at how much new things you learn about your best friend!

How Do I Tell My Best Friend I Want to Be More Than Friends?

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If you find that you’re interested in asking out your best friend, you’re not the first person to have ever experienced this.

Nonetheless, it can still be frustrating and intimidating to want to ask out your best friend and not know how or where to start.

Before you go gung-ho and start wooing your friend with wine and dinner, there are a few things you need to ask yourself first.

Dear Dan and Jennifer,

I like my best friend (there’s trouble there already) and I want to ask her out but I don’t know how. Many other guys like her too.

How do I make my self seem like the one she should go out with?  And how would I do that?

But please hurry! Were going to the movies tomorrow and I’m thinking of asking her out tomorrow.

– Kevin, Texas

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpsRUQJeZdk[/youtube]

Is there true chemistry there that goes above and beyond a friendship?

When you’re best friends with someone, there is a lot of chemistry there already. You both get along together great and you enjoy each other’s company. Basically, you can do anything and everything together. However, if you’re thinking about asking out your best friend, you need to really figure out if there’s more than just friendship there.

Do you feel a chemistry between you and your friend that goes above and beyond the friendship? Do you feel a sexual chemistry? If not, then you are probably better off staying friends. If you do, however, feel that there is something more between you and your friend, you have yet another question to ask yourself. Do you feel like your friend may return your feelings? This may not be something you get the answer to right away, but it’s important to consider before you ask them out.

Do you want to take the initiative and possibly get rejected?

Another thing to take into consideration is the fact that you might end up getting rejected and you might end up losing a friend too. If you suspect that this might be something that happens, consider leaving the friendship where it is at. If you simply can’t live with not telling your friend how you really feel, you need to realize that this may be something that changes the relationship forever, or possibly ends it. Make certain this is something you’re willing to risk before you take the plunge!

Avoid Getting Stuck In The Friend Zone

It generally is never a good idea to become friends with a person with the intent of becoming more than friends. Rarely does this work! Usually, you just get stuck in the friend zone. You end up being a great friend, one who they can share intimate talks with and confide in but realistically, you’re on the same level as their gay friends – someone who they care about deeply but would never consider a romantic relationship an option. If you like someone, be upfront and honest with them about your intentions rather than trying to sneak in the back door.

Telling Your Friend How You Feel

Okay, you’ve decided this is something you want to do and you’re willing to take the risk. Take your friend aside to somewhere you’re alone together and make sure there is plenty of time to tell them how you feel. Avoid cliché’s such as, “I’ve felt this way about you forever” or “I’ve always been in love with you.” These will most likely do little more than overwhelm and possibly frighten your friend!

Take it slow and be casual about it. Let them know that you’re interested in being more than friends and you’d like to spend more time together in a romantic way to see where it leads – and then leave it at that! Hopefully, a relaxed attitude will get you what you’re looking for and you never know – they could feel the same about you!

Are Friends With Benefits REALLY Beneficial?

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When you’ve been single awhile, friends with benefits might just seem to be the answer to your prayers.

You’re alone and lonely, you miss the closeness, you miss being touched and desired, and you may think a FWB (Friends with Benefits) relationship is just what you need.

But have you considered all of the consequences it brings with it?

Imagine a friend approaches you and suggests the two of you embark on a friends with benefits relationship.  If you are attracted to your friend or have wished that your friendship was something more than just a friendship, you might think you have nothing to lose.  You run through all the pros in your mind. Regular sex, intimacy, spending time with someone you like. Hmmm, those sound pretty good!  What the heck? Why not?

Setting the ground rules

One of the first things that usually happens is a discussion of the ground rules.  You may decide that while you are sleeping together you won’t sleep with anyone else.  That if either you meets someone with ‘relationship potential,’ you’re free to walk away without any hassles.  You discuss the fact that it’s not a relationship.  No romantic feelings should be involved.  It’s just about the sex.  Or is it?

Those pesky hormones

The problem is, especially it seems for women, that feelings do develop.  Biology gets involved releasing hormones, such as oxytocin, that make us form an attachment when, in reality, none exists.

It’s almost certain to happen.  She imagines she feels more than she really does. And this, my friends, is how you end up getting hurt.

If you already have some feelings for your friend, you may go into these FWB relationships thinking that he’ll develop feelings for you.

Guess what? It isn’t going to happen.  If he was going to develop feelings for you, he more than likely already would have.

Men do not have the same biology issue that women have.  He is totally able to have his cake and eat it too without any pesky old feelings getting in the way.  He’ll say good bye, forget about you until next week when he gets horny again and that will be that.  He isn’t going to fall in love with you just because he starts sleeping with you.

Single white female seeking nothing

Sometimes you might think that this will be good for you until you do meet someone with relationship potential.  From my own personal experience, the problem with that is that, well, you kind of stop looking.  I mean your body has formed an attachment to this guy, your heart is involved, and you’re having sex on a regular basis. Why on earth would you keep looking?

You should. This is bound to end badly, but often women delude themselves sticking their heads in the sand pretending it’s all okay.

It’s not all okay

Inevitably, it’s got to end either because you can’t deal with the unreciprocated feelings or because he’s getting nervous about them.  Either way, you’ve probably not only ended your friends with benefits relationship, but your friendship as well.  And, the cold hard truth of the matter is, it’s just not worth it.

The biggest blow will likely be to your self esteem.  It will start as a fleeting thought such as “I guess I’m not good enough to have a relationship with. I must only be good enough for sex.”  Soon, that little thought will blossom into a full fledged attack on your self worth.  Next thing you know, you believe you’re not good enough.

Just say no

Do you really want to be that girl?  No sex in the world, no matter how good it is, is worth the risk.  The negative feelings of self worth, the possible loss of a friendship and the possibility of missing out on someone who is right for you are a big price to pay for a roll in the hay.

So, the next time a friend approaches you with just such a proposition, take a minute to really weigh the pros and cons.  If your friend cares about you at all, he’ll respect all of the reasons why friends should remain just friends.