Let's Not Just Be Friends

If I was your best friend, I want you 'round all the time 

Can I be your best friend, if you promise you'll be mine 

Please say he's just a friend, now girl let's not pretend 

Either he is or he ain't your man, please say he's just a friend

Best Friend - 50 Cent ft Olivia

Ah the vagaries of love. They are like the waves of the sea, ever tossing and turning to the winds of emotion, dancing to the beats of the naive heart. Have you ever noticed how the people who seek love seem to be the ones hurt most by it. By stark contrast, those who rarely seek love, who sometimes only seek carnal gratification tend to find it more. Perhaps they are just less picky, perhaps they have already learnt that this fickle thing called love is just what you make it and nothing more. Anyway, this is not what this article is about.

This article is for those who never give up the pursuit of happiness. This article is for those who have been in, to call it mildly, 'situationships'. What is 'situationship' you ask? That is precisely what this article is about. No crap about love and oh how beautiful it is supposed to be, no just plain facts of life today.

Situationship is when you meet someone who seems so promising at first, who makes all the right moves and for a while it is like they are courting you but then they stop. Weird isn't it? Well ladies as you probably guessed, this article is targeted at you. Situationship happens quite often these days. It is more of the rule rather than the exception. That new handsome guy in the office? He is smooth, knows to show you a good time, has a sense of humour. He has a certain sense of joie-de-vivre about him. He is not what you expect but you are willing to get to know him better. Two weeks, three dates and a hundred jokes down the line you want to see where this goes but then all of a sudden he just pulls out. He no longer calls you, texts, and to make matters worse, he is now applying his moves on someone else at the office. 

You want to understand what happened but you are lost for words. You didn't give up the cookie, you thought things were going well but then he just moved on like he never even met you. You'd rule him out as weird but it has happened to you so many times that it's like deja vu. Sometimes it lasts a month, sometimes it lasts six weeks but alas, same old crap, different day!

On the other hand, the man meets a girl and he likes her. She makes him laugh, drives out the blues and they can be together without spending too much. He finds that she has some attributes that he would like to see in a long term partner, at the same time, she has certain idiosyncratic tendencies that are harmless enough on their own. She intrigues him and he likes it. Two weeks and 5 dates later though, he finds that he still cannot find meaning in this relationship that seemed so full of promise at the outset. He has been here a million times. On the outside, both he and the lady are well-to-do people with promising careers. They seem to match in their ideals and values, and they even seem to make each other happy. With any luck they could be walking down the aisle within a year or so.

However, the man has been here before, he knows how it goes. They may have been together through a rough time in his life or in both their lives and survived it, but this is not necessarily a harbinger of the good things to come. Men are trained to be fast and decisive in the way they act and having faced so many meaningless relationships, they can easily drop a relationship and pick up another one. Faster isn't always better though. A man must however never look back, as his ability to stick to his decision is psychologically tied to how well he will fare in other endeavours. 

It is sad that relationships or rather situationships as they are so often called these days, are so shallow and empty. Rather than find relationships, people find temporary attachments that can bring them joy and enjoy them as long as they last. Once the attachment ends, both men and women move on. In this way, they avoid the pain of having to let go of someone that you've come to know so well. The aftershocks of this disastrous decision is only felt when they see the children of their age mates playing about. This is especially hard for women as they are born with maternal instincts. This is not to say however that the men do not hurt, they do too, but they are better at hiding it.

I still haven't answered your question have I? I mean, sure the relationship lacks real meaning but give it time and it may yet surprise you right? I mean, maybe he finds a side of you that no one else knows and that maybe he won't want to let go. Maybe, the two of you make it work. Maybe, the two of you can make each other smile till you finally tie the knot with each other or with someone else. Maybe, maybe...just maybe you were meant to be. It takes time to get to know one or does it? Doesn't even nature teach us that gold and diamonds are found deep within the earth? "Never mind!" You tell yourself. "It's his loss anyway!"

While it is good to be slow to judge, it is not quite so good to be in a dead-end relationship. What do I mean by that? A relationship where you can't discuss real issues, like your insecurities, your fears, your hopes, your dreams, your challenges and your eccentricities. Such a relationship is good only for purposes of fun, where you need to keep things shallow and undefined. There is a point however in every man's life where the question of family actively moves from the back of his head to become his chief focus. It is not entirely dependent on age, rather it also depends on socioeconomic status.

Abraham Maslow defined a hierarchy of needs in the year 1943 that is still quite valid today. Once a man is able to provide for himself and has a little left over and has crossed a certain level of maturity, he desires or rather needs intimate relationships. Intimacy is not just sex, nay! The definition of intimacy reaches far and above the basic urge to have sex. Intimacy demands openness, sharing of secrets, dreams and hopes.  

Inline with this, it is necessary for two people to have matching dreams and hopes for them to be truly together.