From: haroome@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Allisson Roome)
Subject: Friendship interfering with Romance
Organization: Me? Nah ... now where did I refile that message?
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 92 14:30:23 EDT


In article <1992Aug12.040417.15972@nuchat.sccsi.com> kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com 
(Kevin Brown) writes:
>In article <1992Aug10.225021.11560@fid.morgan.com> sethb@fid.morgan.com 
(Seth Breidbart) writes:
>>I think it's the interpretation of Kevin's statement; I interpreted
>>him as saying that he wants to *avoid* the friendship stuff, which is
>>what I advised against.  
>
>Well, almost.  I want to avoid the friendship stuff when it's the only
>thing that's happening.  If it happens in conjunction with a romance,
>that's cool.
>

In other words, you want "A Relationship" (aka Romantic Relationship)
not a chance to get to know another human being of the appropriate
gender as a possible friend?  Or at least that's what I gather from
your words.  Personally, I find "Relationships" almost imposible with
someone who isn't a friend or well on their way to being one.  I'm
even uncomforatable, these days, with the notion of sex with someone I
don't know well enough to determine that we'd make good acquaintances,
let alone friends, no matter how much the chemistry of Romance fills
the air. Romance may be the spark that starts the "realtionship" fire
burning but I find that friendship/companionship/etc. is what fuels
that fire. But, with all writings in soc.singles, this is *my* opinion.

>But if the friendship is the only thing that's happening, it won't be
>too long before a romance becomes close to impossible.

Not always, I ended up engaged to a man who was one of my closer
friends and I his.  Part of the problems we had were that we let the
Romance get in the way of us also still being friends.  We were
friends *first* with little or no thought initially of it turning into
"A Relationship."  Now that may be different in your case, where you
seem to see each encounter as a romantic possibility instead of just
an encounter.  

Story time: I have a good aquaintance, a 33 y.o. Chemisty PhD., who
has never had a serious girlfriend.  About two years ago, both of his
younger brothers got married and engaged and my friend got majorly
depressed, that's not quite the right word but it's close.  He then
decided that he wasn't going to be 'single' anymore - every available
female that entered his life (with few exceptions) was suddenly
girlfriend/potential wife material.  Needless to say, he didn't get
any dates that progressed more than two people going somewhere
together and my friend wasn't very happy at all.  Last January, he
stopped immediately pursuing the romance and decided to get to know
the women as friends.  He's had some second dates and made quite a
number of good friends in the process (he's hopefull that once he's
moved to his post-doc he'll meet more women as friends and maybe a
relationship).  I guess that the moral of that vignette, if there is
one, is that when you approach a relationship with "intentions"
instead of letting things develop on their own you run the risk of not
having happen what you want to have happen (you scare them away).

On the other hand, not jeopardizing an extant friendship does seem lately to
be the new way of saying LJBF. 

>For the purposes of starting a romance, friendship by itself is a deadly
>thing, or so it seems.

Yes and no.  It takes two to have a romance (unless we're dealing with
unrequited chivalrous love). There has to be something there for both
parties involved. In my own recent past, I've had a few men decide
that for them there was no spark there, it was comfortable and all
that but the "warm fuzzy" in-love feelings weren't.  Instead of
waiting with vain expectations of "it" maybe appearing, we became or
continued as just good friends, I hope.  I may sound silly but I'd
rather have a good friendship than a mediocre romance.   Even when the
chemistry is there and the friendship - romance isn't guaranteed.

I don't know if I've made much sense or if I've served only to say how
futile Romance is (which I don't think at all) but they're my thoughts
you can take them with a grain of salt.

Allisson  
--
| H.  Allisson Roome - haroome@rodan.acs.syr.edu 
 "The only way to have peace is to teach peace ... Teach only love, and learn
  that love is yours and you are love." (A.C.I.M. p. 92)
Newsgroups: soc.singles