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Some believe that true love begins with friendship. Others object: these are two different types of relationships for which there are separate “shelves” in our brain. Who is right?
Love after friendship — does it even work?
Network relationship experts like to scare readers with a mysterious “friend zone”: getting into it allegedly means that you will forever remain “only a friend” in the eyes of a potential partner. And how is it in reality?
Psychologist Lucy Hunt conducted a survey of 167 couples to find out what were the circumstances of their acquaintance. Each participant was interviewed separately. The results were roughly evenly split, with 40% saying they were friends before becoming lovers, and 41% said they fell in love straight away. 19% of couples did not agree at all about how their story began.
Lucy Hunt decided to find out if couples who are friends are different from couples who have developed on the basis of sexual attraction. She suggested that in the first case, personal qualities, compatibility of characters and temperaments, common tastes and interests play a more important role — that is, what can provide stability to the couple in the future. And in the second, external data and the attractiveness of the image as a whole should be more important.
Partners who value friendship above all else are more satisfied with their emotional and sexual lives.
The results were close to her guesses: partners who started out in love were roughly “in the same league” in terms of visual attractiveness, while there was more diversity among partner-friends. But at the same time, both of them highly appreciated the attractiveness of their chosen ones.
Friendship is the foundation of a couple
Relationships that are built not only on chemistry, but also on personal compatibility, can be more stable. Psychologist Heidi Reeder found that those partners who value friendship above all else in their relationships with each other are more satisfied with their emotional and sexual lives than those who are primarily sexually interested in a partner.
Social psychologist Grace Cornish argues that couples who start out as friendships are more flexible in dealing with conflict and are more sensitive to each other’s feelings: “As friends, you feel sympathy for each other. You learn to respect each other. You will learn a lot about each other. Friendship is the foundation that can make the whole construction of a couple more solid.
In addition, according to the psychologist, such couples have much more trust and sincerity: “If you have a real strong friendship, you don’t have to pretend to please your lover. Some keep themselves within the limits only until the moment they cross the threshold of the family home. But your true nature will show itself if you communicate as friends. There is no place for a game here, because you need not to impress, but to find a partner to communicate.
It’s all about chemistry
Supporters of the opinion about different «shelves» for friendship and love have a weighty argument. The feeling of falling in love — dizzying, intoxicating — is incomparable to what we experience when we think of a person as a friend. Does it not happen that by choosing friendship as a first step, we close the opportunity for ourselves to experience these experiences?
Indeed, friendship (or better to call it friendly love) and falling in love communicate with the brain in different chemical “languages”. In love, this language is dopamine. It is because of him that we cannot stop thinking about a loved one, we are excited by everything connected with him — a smile, smells, the sound of a voice. Friendly love operates through the pleasure system — talking with a friend is as pleasant for us as watching a favorite movie or a glass of wine after a good dinner.
Relationships built on one passion run the risk of remaining only a bright adventure.
But does this mean that we will have to choose — either crazy passion, or even, enveloping tenderness? Not necessary. With long-term harmonious relationships, the switch between passion and friendship happens by itself. Neuroscientists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (USA) found that couples who have been happy together for many years had more distributed brain activity than those who had just started dating.
A mature feeling can go from passion to friendship. But it can also be the other way around: we rediscover the other person and are excited by the thought of a new level of intimacy. One way or another, a relationship built on one passion runs the risk of remaining only a bright adventure. Friendship will give them meaning and make them a source of joy for years to come.