by Jim Kerrigan

Created on: May 06, 2010

First of all this is a subject that is tough to deal with. When one party wants to be “just friends” and the other wants a more interpersonal relationship there are several problems.

One, different feelings are not a match and disappointment can occur on both sides making the situation even more stressful for both parties. Being “in love” with a friend is as awkward as befriending a person who is in love with you.

Two, rejection is all that’s it’s cracked up to be and to deny that there is rejection in this to deny reality. Both the person being rejected and the person doing the rejecting are going to feel uncomfortable unless they are truly heartless.

Three, The idea that not wanting to spend romantic time with a person defaults them to the status of “friend” is demeaning to every real friend you have ever had.

Real friends aren’t your friend because they couldn’t be something else. They are your friends because that is the place that, hopefully, their past and present actions caused you to select them from everyone else that is around your life. Friends are in your corner even if that means telling you when you are out of line. Usually you will listen if it is a friend telling you this whereas a stranger or acquaintance would be blown off or told to mind their own business.

The older you get the stranger this is. I have friends that I have known for more than twenty years. They are at this point family. To think that someone I have been seeing could suddenly stand in their ranks by default is insane. What is worse is I don’t really know which is crazier that person who wants to be friends after a week or the one who wants to be friends after a year.

At a week you barely know them I helped raise some of my “friends” children who now call me uncle. If the person was seeing me for years then have they had trouble making up their mind or were they buying time until something better came along? Either way my friends don’t treat me this way so why should their status change to friend by default?

My second wife was married to me for four years. She is a sweet person and I wish her well and hope her life pans out as she wants it to. However, she returned from a cruise with her parents that I didn’t go with her on. She told me upon arriving home she was leaving. That day happened to be my 45th birthday. Further, she was leaving the next morning, for good. She wanted to stay at the home of two of our friends. The problem was they were my friends for fifteen years and knew her because she was married to me. They told her they couldn’t do that to me and that they were sorry but she would have to stay somewhere else.

Needless to say I don’t consider her a friend. I don’t consider her in the same universe as friends. Though I have to admit that knowing she left when times are good and money and health wasn’t an issue. I have no doubt that she would not have stayed had I been injured or lost my job. There is certainly no doubt that she would not have supported me as I supported her.

So you see, different feelings, rejection and a desire to default to friend does not a friend make. You don’t have to be enemies and with time may even be friends but the assumption that a relationship that isn’t working out should become a friendship is completely insane.

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