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To Risk Friendship For Love
by Neal M.
(Article 4: The Trials and Tribulations of Love)
Many people have heard the phrase, "Let’s just be friends." The feeling after that is never good, and trust me, like most people, I’ve heard that phrase way too many times. What happens if you realize that the one you care for is a good friend of yours? He/She is everything that you have ever wanted in that special someone. It just took a long time to realize that he/she was the one that had what you wanted. Life works in a weird way like that. A good saying applies to this situation: "The one that cares about you the most is the one you least expect. Sometimes, that person is standing right in front of you and you don’t even know it." The question still remains, "Is it worth risking a strong friendship to gain a love that you have never experienced before?"
To Risk The Friendship:
As a good friend of mine once told me, "If you risk nothing in life, Neal, you gain nothing as well." Another saying that comes to my mind is something my Uncle Michael told me, "A life isn’t worth living if you can’t take risks." Both of these sayings are related to risks we take in life.
In life, some of the greatest risks we take are related to love. Whether or notto go out with the guy/girl and see what happens. Whether or not to write that poem to see if it gets him/her attention. Whether or not to leave a message on his/her answering machine. Love is all about taking risks.
I’ll modify that saying and say this, "Love is when you find the right risk to take, placing it all on the line, and in the end, experiencing something that you have never experienced before. It’s all about sacrifice." A strong friendship with a guy/girl can endure all whether it be a bad moment, bad argument, or even times when you just feel like you need to be left alone. However, a true test of friendship is when a friend likes their really close friend.
A lot of my female friends hook up have hooked up with their close male friends. In one case, A close female friend of mine, Katy C., date a close male friend of mine, Aaron D.. At the time, she had a boyfriend. She realized that her guy friend, Aaron D., was such a good person to hang out with, and she started really admiring him. It wasn’t until they were alone talking to each other, having a decent conversation, that they realized that they had more in common than they thought. Eventually, she broke up with her boyfriend to give Aaron D. a shot, and they hit it off beautifully. They went out for two years, I think, but it was the distance that killed them. Katy C. went to a college in upstate Pennsylvania while my boy, Aaron D. stayed back in Florida. The only time they really got to see each other was during the college breaks and even then, they had a hard time seeing each other because they were busy with family or working.
"The best relationships come from the deepest and purest friendships." It’s when the two friends realize that risking the friendship is a risk worth willing to take. When it turns out well just like my friends, Aaron D. and Katy C’s did, then the love that you experience is something that you will never forget, and it will be a love so strong.
Don’t Risk Friendship and Stay Friends:
The easiest way to solve all your problems when it comes to liking a friend is definitely just staying friends. It’s not bad to have a good mix of friends that are both male and female. Trust me, since I came to this college, I’ve never had so many female friends in my life. My friends were predominantly male, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t have female friends. I did have my fair share of female friends just not as many as I do now.
So what happens when you start feeling attraction towards your friend? What do you do? In this case, the only option you really have is to suppress those feelings. Unless you truly know how your friend feels, then I would say suppress those feelings. It’s not worth ruining a friendship that you worked so hard on just to have a chance at love.
Honestly, I’ve been in many of those situations. I’ve been attracted to a couple of my female friends and in all those cases, I got burned pretty bad. It’s not a good feeling when someone tells you, "It’s not worth risking our friendship." Trust me, no matter how many times you hear that phrase, it still hurts like a knife cutting slowly into your heart. Most of the time the person that does risk the friendship ends up losing their friend in the process. It’s tough to risk it all and gain nothing. If you want to just make life easier for you and save yourself the heartache, pain, and suffering, find yourself a guy/girl that isn’t your friend and see where that goes.
Conclusion:
No matter what I say or do, I’m always the type of person that likes to take the risks of losing a friend to gain a love. I know that I’ve been rejected so many times because of that, but if you don’t take that risk, you will always be asking yourself, "What if?". My parents always tell me that no matter what I do, I have to live my life without having regrets. I don’t want to go back in my past and say, "What if I asked that girl out that was my friend? I might have had a chance." I don’t ever want to say that.
It’s all about what your heart is telling you, not your head. If your heart is telling you that she is the one to bring you a love never experienced, then by all means, listen to what your heart says and go after her. If she is not interested in you, you will be in pain and your heart will hurt. After a while, you get back up and look for someone else. As hard as it is for me to say this, don’t lose the one you once cared about as a friend. I’ve lost so many female friends because I couldn’t stand being with them. It’s not that I couldn’t stand being with them because I thought they were annoying. I couldn’t stand being around them because it just reminded me of all the good times I had with her, ya’ know? It’s tough.
If your heart is telling you that you care about her but you don’t have enough courage or information to go after her (I.e. you don’t know how she feels about you), then I suggest you play it cool and get to know your friend better. If you’ve been long time friends and are attracted to him/her slightly, trust me, that attraction will catch up with you. If you hang around him/her a lot or during the weekend, then you’ll realize that the attraction that was so small will become something that will overtake you. Just keep your feelings/emotions in check and whatever happens, happens. Just remember this, "Listen to what your heart says, and not what your head says."
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