My girlfriend [19f] and I [20m] have recently been in a bit of a tough place and she asked me this question when we were talking and to be honest I struggled to answer it and wanted to ask other people.
For background: We’re both in college and have been together for about three months, but we’re seriously talking for about a month and a half before we started dating, and have known each other for about a year. I’ve been in a few serious/long term relationships before, while I’m her first real boyfriend. As a result our relationship is not incredibly physical. She’s been really confused and stressed out recently over what really makes us different than just great friends beyond the that we have a physical aspect to our relationship.
Personally I believe that we might’ve just not taken things slow enough and rushed in our relationship cause we were both excited and that it was just scaring her which is why she’s confused now, as I believe that what we are best friends, but beyond the physical aspect I feel stronger about her than any of my friends, and the way we treat the quality time we have together is different than either of us would treat time with our friends.
TL;DR
What do you believe truly differentiates a relationship from a friendship besides the physical capacity?
7 comments
The type of feelings you have for the person. Now, I personally do associate romantic feelings with physical desires, but some of those feelings can be tangled out. It’s hard to describe feelings, but I have a kind of warm, loving feeling towards somebody I am in a romantic relationship with that is missing from a friendship – where I still have love, but not that warm connection. Early in, there is often the nervous flutteriness in romantic feelings, which is what then morphs into that comfortable, warm feeling. I have some great friends, but my partner feels like home.
This probably varies from person to person. And you might get interesting answers from asexuals, since they would potentially have had reason to put more thought into it.
Personally, I think that when you’ve been together for three months, and especially when you’re 19/20, there really isn’t a big difference between being really close friends and boyfriend/girlfriend other than the physical/sexual aspect. The real differences emerge as the relationship progresses.
You tried to avoid a fight not by being honest with your partner, or behaving in a way that wouldn’t cause an issue, but rather to do what you wanted to do and hide it. You hoped to avoid a fight by not getting caught, which you did anyway.
I think both relationships start with a verey similar basis. In the long them though, you become one another’s priority and eventually what you are building together becomes the priority.
For example, when married, your spouse takes precedence as your next of kin. This matters a lot in the medical/legal sphere. They become the person who is expected to always act in your best interest and vice versa.
In the traditional sense, dating is what you use to find the person to be this person.
This is an interesting question. I love my friends, but I don’t want to F them. When I’m in love with someone, I get butterflies and want to be with them and want to let them know how much I appreciate and love them. I want to support and nurture and feel connected to them at the roots.
Being intimate with a partner should (hopefully) have an emotional component to it. Or maybe I’m just old-fashioned, I don’t know.
I believe your partner should be your best friend, or at least close to it. I think the old trope of married couples barely talking an no longer having sex – in cases where these things are true – just means that those two people aren’t very compatible.
You should want to learn and grow and explore and experience things with your partner. For me, it’s just a deeper feeling of connection on many different levels. You two are very young, and this is her first relationship. Slow down if you need to and get to know each other and truly fall in love, if that’s in the stars.
Honestly, nothing. A good relationship should be like being exclusive fwb with your best friend.
There doesn’t necessarily have to be any difference. There are people who are happy to go through their lives as fully independent people, who don’t want to fully join as a unit with another person. Even if you end up in a long-term relationship, there are plenty of ways to be close and intimate with someone, and you can profoundly treasure someone and feel bonded to them and want them in your life forever, but their happiness is not a focus for you. You trust them to maintain themselves, and you maintain yourself, and you stay together as long as it’s convenient and then break up when/if your lives move out of alignment. But you’re not putting effort to make sure you stay in alignment with them, because you want to maintain your freedom and independence and not be tied together.
But I would say for most people/relationships, at the start, things are basically just a lengthy, often-monogamous friends-with-benefits situation while you get to know each other and get a feel for how you work as a team. You’re exclusive, and might be serious about one another and hoping to be together for a long time, but you’re not really committed.
Over time, when my husband and I moved in together and started considering getting married and what that means, it became something pretty different. I want to do what I can to make my husband’s life easier and better, and he takes care of me the same way in return. When they say marriage takes work, I think the bulk of it is pretty low-key, every day functions of trying to act as one unit—trying to always bring your best to the relationship, and communicate what you need in return by balancing empathy with necessary boundary-setting. Being kind and respectful of someone even if they’re kind of pissing you off/you’re arguing, because you know the other person is putting in the same effort to meet you in the middle and protect each other. Seeing and appreciating what the other person is doing for you, and going out of your way to return the favor. We both feel responsibility towards each other that is beyond what I’ve experienced in friendship, closer to family, except it’s something you choose to uphold every day because you value the person and have consciously committed to building a life together. Either person can walk away at any time, and probably have a good life, but we both like each other and value each other enough that we are choosing to share our lives on a much more profound level than any friendship I’ve had. His challenges are my challenges, and my challenges are his challenges, because neither of us is low key waiting for something better to come along, or secretly hoping and waiting for the other person to change in some way.
The couples I see who don’t seem like they work, there’s usually at least one person who is unable or unwilling to bring their best to the relationship. They are not even trying to make the other person’s life better. Sometimes both people pretty much unconcerned with the other person or even weirdly adversarial, but often times one half is bent over backwards trying to accommodate someone who is quietly, often unintentionally taking advantage of that and not giving much back.
Sounds like you’re at the point where you have to decide if you both need to put in the work of truly caring for each other, or if you even want that.