Gotta keep it vague for privacy but the key details should be enough. We first met through a dating app. It didn’t work out. We remained friends. Became best friends. They fell on terribly hard times. They moved in with me. Sleeping on the couch was not good for the long term. We now share a bed, and eventually went halvesies on a new bigger one. We became very close over the past few years. I love my best friend. Sometimes do non intercourse sexish things but have no interest in a relationship. Hard times are likely to continue due to external problems that despite our best efforts, will not likely go away. I’d never kick them out, it would be on the level of hurting a puppy. What kind of monster would do that? I have been wanting a relationship but it would be awkward to have to explain all this to any new partners. I can’t even imagine how my friend would take it. I wouldn’t want to sacrifice our relationship just so I can start dating again. A room in the apartment is vacant now and they could move into that one but I dread broaching the topic to them. I don’t know how they’re going to react and no matter what happens I want to keep this person in my life. We’re getting older and there’s no guarantee that the “hard times” will go away. It might even last the rest of our lives. I don’t know what to do. I can’t face the reality that they might leave rather than watch me do my own thing. How do I have my cake and eat it too?
Yeah that’s not going to end well. You’re basically in a relationship.
Or try having a relationship with your friend? A relationship is basically a good friendship with shared responsibilities (and sex, if you’ve got the time). You’re almost there already.
Who doesn’t have the time?
Ace people, I would assume, but don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth.
I don’t think it’s a matter of time though. 2 minutes tops.
You need therapy to figure out why you’re placing the needs of other people ahead of your own.
Any advice is to hire a competent therapist. If you’re a man, I also advise joining a men’s group.
This kind of compulsion will fuck up your life if you don’t get it figured out.
non-intercourse sex things in bed with your best friend whom you’re keeping around for financial reasons: fuck you got some shit to figure out
Harsh delivery, but I’m inclined to agree.
I’m inclined to agree with the harsh delivery on this one
GTFO
Chill, his best friend is Canadian. Butt stuff is just their way of being friendly.
Eat your best friend op.
/s
How do I have my cake and eat it too?
Better say it with full context:
Eat the friend, then you can keep the cake./s (for the faint of heart)
Gotcha haha did not thought people would take it seriously.
This is already a relationship. A non-sexual one, but still. Even a very strong one.
In a relationship, when the two are on such different levels (as indicated somewhat as “hard times”), then a crisis is unavoidable, sooner or later.
You want to do your own thing. That is very OK and normal. Just be prepared that the way out is going to hurt, for a while.
I’ve been avoiding it because it will probably hurt us both but reading through these responses I am beginning to see that you’re right. Thanks for responding.
Someone will get hurt, there’s no avoiding that. But you should not sacrifice your own happiness for the sake of not hurting your friend. Sometimes we need to be a bit selfish in life.
I can’t help but notice you didn’t say anything about how your potential new partner might feel about this. Perhaps you didn’t think it was relevant, but that’s a huge blind spot if you haven’t considered it.
Yeah, I’ve thought about it. Things would definitely have to change before I started dating. I think what I didn’t consider is how long it might take to make those changes. That I couldn’t just jump into it now that I’m feeling ready.
Honestly was in a somewhat similar situation with my best friend. They would be the one in your shoes except I’m the one with the house. We aren’t sharing a bed or having “not quite sex” but we are close enough and do enough “dating” activities togeather that most people think we’re dating and a few people still insist that what we’re doing is dating even when we both tell them that we aren’t. Your relationship is a bit closer so that will make things sting a bit more.
The answer is to just talk to them. If you are comfortable enough to sleep with eachother then you should be comfortable enough to have difficult conversations. I would personally just start out by bringing up that you want to start dating again and ,while you don’t want to kick them out, sharing a bed isn’t going to work when you want to bring someone home.
It’s going to sting for them; it did for me when my friend started dating again even when I knew us dating wasn’t going to happen. But, if they care about being your friend then, they’ll get over it; I did. Your relationship with them will change but not necissarily for the worse. Honestly I’m closer with my friend than ever. We’ve gone from being close best friends to practically being siblings. Hell, I’m closer with them than I ever was with any of my actual family. Yes we both date other people but that doesn’t mean we both don’t still share everything. Don’t try to put the relationship in a box. Be open and honest then just see how it grows/changes. At the same time, every relationship has boundries, don’t be afraid to set some.
You could contextualize the conversation by bringing up how you met and having a retrospective discussion about how and why it didn’t work out romantically.
Maybe ask them if they’ve considered or are interested in seeing other people. This will let you gauge how they feel about it and the current state of your relationship, and also give you an opportunity to bring up how you feel.
Then, the conversation isn’t just about you seeing other people but about what’s best for the both of you.
I feel bad for your friend.
You seem to treat them as an object to serve your emotional needs and have created a situation where they are dependent on you.
They will probably agree to polyamory out of desperation but it will kill them inside, you aren’t doing them a favor.
Don’t you think that’s a bit harsh? OP wrote a single paragraph, that’s not enough for us to know how they interact on a daily basis. Creating the dependency doesn’t seem to have been on purpose. It happened, it created problems, probably for both of them and OP wants to find a solution that hurts their friend as little as possible. I find that highly commendable. Such situations happen, you only notice them when it’s too late and usually there is no good solution. You can’t just stop supporting them because that would cause serious problems for them but you can’t keep silent about your own needs either unless you want things to escalate somewhere down the road.
Now, the polyamory out of desperation thing is a real problem and I know many poly people (including myself) who have at some point suspected that their “original” partner has only accepted this lifestyle to avoid losing them. And let me tell you, finding that answer is hard. If you don’t ask, you might never know. If you ask once, you won’t be sure if they tell the truth or just want to protect your relationship. If you ask too often and they actually are okay with being poly, you may annoy them. The only way to resolve that is to make sure you can openly communicate about anything and everything. All involved parties must be comfortable telling each other about their pain points and be sure that a disagreement will only strengthen instead of weaken the relationship because everyone will try to find a good solution.
Where TF are these kids learning English these days? Nobody knows what “relationship” means. I’m in a relationship with my dad. The relation is that he’s my dad. I’m in a relationship with my employer. I trade service for income. I’m in a relationship with all of you who are reading this. Some of you might not consent, but you just don’t understand the gravity of the situation!
There’s people who don’t wanna put a label on things because the label comes with extra implications they don’t want others to assume, and there’s people who won’t even use the most vague and generic term “relationship” because they’re idiots. It’s the least descriptive term imaginable!
OP wants a cuck and being dodgy about gender just seems super sus.
I agreed with you until the last paragraph.
K. Way to contribute.
deleted by creator
People who are so touchy about their language are hiding something more important or think they’re gonna win something if they present it just right. Gender is the touchy thing here apparently.
You didn’t read the part about wanting her current partner to watch? Try again. It’s there. I can screenshot and draw in red arrows, but I’m not gonna waste the time since you’re asking in bad faith to begin with.
No, please do screenshot it and draw in red arrows because even on the fifth read I’m not sure if the two of us have read the same post. I can’t find the passage you mention nor anything that hints at OP being female.
Edit: now that I’ve read it a sixth time… do you really mean the “I can’t face the reality that they might leave rather than watch me do my own thing.” sentence? If so, you seriously need to get your mind out of the gutter and check if you are the person who should check their reading comprehension skills. That sentence has nothing to do with cuckolding or voyeurism.
Who said female?
You did:
You didn’t read the part about wanting her current partner to watch?
Oh shit. Now I gotta sit here and wonder if that’s a Freudian slip.
Either that or you’re making assumptions about OP while repeatedly refusing to answer questions that challenge those assumptions and accusing people who ask those questions of making bad faith arguments. You see the problem, right?
I don’t even want to accuse you of doing that on purpose. Confronting and correcting your own assumptions is hard.
You tell your best friend what you need and they will either understand or take a different path in life.
It’s quite simple really.
Yep. If you communicate respectfully, they aren’t your best friend if they don’t care about your desires / goals.
That doesn’t mean they won’t have hurt feelings or need time to process though.
I don’t see anyone commenting from the perspective of that friend, and what being them might be like after you talk to them.
I am currently friends with someone I used to be in love with, but she did not feel the same way, so while we dated a few months, she eventually told me it wasn’t going anywhere.
That hurt like hell. But the love and respect I felt and feel for her meant that not spewing a bunch of negative feelings her way was my first concern. If your friend is a wonderful person, they will probably think along similar lines, but you can’t let them entirely spare you. Show them you feel with them.
I was probably the saddest I’ve been, learning it wouldn’t work out, and the time after was akward af.
She told me point blank that some of her friends had adviced her to cut me out of her life entirely, that it would be the “kinder” thing to do. Thank the deities she didn’t follow that advice as we both still wanted each other in our lives. And we DID make it work.
Maintaining the relationship was extra difficult for a while. Years. We came to a kind of unspoken agreement that our romantic lives were a taboo between us, but we went through the motions of a frienship even as she felt she was walking on glass with how I was hurting, and me essentially pretending to be ok when I wasn’t.
That doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy each others company throughout that, but we made an effort to focus on good things. If we went into the complicated stuff, there was a feedback-loop of empathy where she’d feel bad because I was hurting, which would make me feel bad for making her feel bad for something which was in no way her fault… Etc.
A thing we did when meeting, was that she’d ask “are you ok” to which I’d reply, “no, but I’m going to be”. This way we acknowledged it was there, but buried it most of the time because it was the kind of thing that would get worse the more we dwelled on it. So we didn’t.
I spared her any displays of heartache best I could, and she never rubbed her new boyfriend in my face.
Eventually, I came to the realization that I wasn’t in love anymore. That hearing about her going on dates or moving in with her SO, didn’t cause a twinge of misery. Next time we met, I took up the subject of my former infatuation, and we talked through all the things that had been taboo between us, catching up on things we would have talked about, if not for the need to spare each others feelings. From that day, we’ve been easy friends, able to talk about everything again.
She told me that conversation was really important, as she wasn’t going to put in the extra effort forever. Neither was I, but unlike me she had no way of knowing whether she had to keep it up, unless I told her.
This is to say, when you talk to your friend and figure out how your feelings for each other differ, and what you might want from other people, make a plan for how to get to a new normal, and how you want things to work in-between.
My current friendship with this woman is quite different from the friendship I had before I fell for her, but it’s just as stable, if not more so. But the time in-between required a lot of effort, and a couple very honest conversations. In hindsight, I can find a ton of points when we might’ve just stopped meeting. But neither of us wanted to lose the other. Make that VERY clear. We both told each other, many times, and I think that’s why neither of us ever got into the mindset that it would be “kinder” to “let the other go”.
This is a great point that making a plan to stay friends can work and morph a relationship. It’s not the same but nothing stays the same.
I’m so glad that you posted this. I had a similar experience. My personal goal is to ask some things only twice, and then suck it up and move on.
The girl I dated in high school broke up with me when college started. A few years later, we were talking again, and we were in the friendship fog. I asked her out again, she said no. That also hurt like hell, but I told myself I’ve asked twice. Time to move on.
I actually recently found a journal entry from that night - “It feels like I am king of the friend zone with her, but holy shit it feels so good to have that cleared up, and now I know I have a solid friend who I don’t have to worry about dating potential”.
After that she was the first female friend who I didn’t constantly have a thought of “…but what if?”, and that was incredible.
Over 10 years later, she’s like a sister to me - she was my best ma’am at my wedding, and I was a bridesman at hers. (my wife likes to poke fun at the imbalance here, but we had a small wedding haha)
Oh, I think I’ve seen this webcomic. Hold on, let me see if I can find it again…
