Damian Gordon/Staff Writer
There is a centuries old tug of war battle going on between friends and the main squeeze. Honestly, friends might be better for you than your significant other will ever be.
The dating game is one where no amount of experience can make you a master and there’s no cheat code to skip through the hard parts. Like maintaining a friendship, it requires a balancing act that would impress a circus.
A lot of people tend to drop their whole life for their significant other, pulling a Houdini on their friends and vanishing until the breakup.
Last year, a group of friends in Wales held a funeral for their formerly single buddy, Keiran. He didn’t die, he just ghosted them for months because he started dating.
Helen of Troy was considered “the face that launched a thousand ships,” but Craig of Miami-Dade likely couldn’t get a pool float from his boy, if Helen sent a “come Netflix and chill” text.
People’s priorities shift, for better or for worse, when they start dating; but it’s up to them on how they deal with the people in their lives.
Some stay in relationships where they’re so teary eyed, most days feel like they’re dating an onion rather than someone who’s supposed to be their pick-me-up. In comparison to friendships, where if a friend is treating another like dirt, they’re dropped quicker than a phone call signal on Metro PCS.
Whether it’s the person of your dreams or that friend till the end, people change and as a result, so will relationships. Nobody is safe from this; the closest person can become the most unfamiliar stranger with time.
Chris Rock summed up how dating someone is at first with, “When you meet somebody for the first time, you’re not meeting them, you’re meeting their representative.”
Constant pressure to impress the person that makes your heart skip twice is a fate countless succumb to. The problem is that the representative is not the real you, leading the relationship to end later down the road due to the driver looking over and realizing that they’ve been riding with a stranger.
Friends don’t grill each other over trivial things like the day they met. It’s generally uneventful and not as important as all the great things that came after it. This is where couple life can be stressful. It feels like being pop-quizzed every other day.
There’s more communication between friends than with couples. Think about who people talk to about their relationship. Ironically, it’s often not the one they’re dating.
Friends provide multiple exits to help alleviate the bad times. Unless you’re a swinger, there’s only one other person in the relationship and nobody wants to be an emotional dumpster.
Regardless of whether someone’s dating or strictly friends, emotions come packaged with anything that a person cares about.
“Catching feelings” is a phrase that seems pretty accurate since no one expects to get them. It can be a ball of a sticky mess that’s difficult to throw away, leaving stains even after being long gone.
It’s not healthy to have your life revolve around one person, because if they leave, then your life can fall apart. This doesn’t have to be said to a certain portion of people reading, but there’s another part saying “why not?” and those are the ones who need the independence most.
Instead of single people spending February throwing shade at couples on Facebook and vice versa, be happy for all the friends you have, because that’s the real backbone of everyone’s life.
Disclaimer:
The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of FIU Student Media Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community.
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