How do you build a friendship & a relationship with a guy at the same time?

[snugglegirl05]

This post is concerning a guy I have known since January.

He told me he has had his heart broken many times in the past.

I am completely new to this.

I have never had a guy friend before.

He tells me he loves me, but he also wants to build a friendship and a relationship at the same time so if our dating relationship goes south, we can still be friends. When I ask him what he wants, he says he wants both.

This entire situation is frustrating & confusing for me.

Exactly how do we go about this?

Help.

[Kheldarson]

Um...just my two cents but if he's hedging his bets like this, I'd say he's setting up for heartbreak again.

BUT...my major advice would be to concentrate on the friendship aspect. Making friends with a guy is the same as making friends with a girl, you need to find common interests. Something to talk about, something to do, something to try, whatever. Just find stuff in common with each other besides work and/or school.

Once you're solidly friends, you can figure out if you want to progress the relationship from there.

But you've only known each other four months and obviously not well enough to say you're definitively friends and he says he loves you? How?

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Okay, keep this in mind: he's had his heart broken? Well then please extend to him my welcome to the human race.

We've all had our heart broken. Usually repeatedly.

People use this excuse to avoid committing to anything. Not saying there's malice involved...he probably means it. Just saying don't put too much stock in the excuse.

Be friends first and if it turns into something more later, great. No sex unless you like the idea of being a fuck buddy and nothing more. No exclusive dating.

Kheldarson's right on it.

And it sounds to me like he isn't wanting a romantic relationship for whatever reason right now. That's cool. So just be friends. I have many guy friends and I love them all. Really love them. I just am not IN love with them and I treat them no differently than I do my girl friends.

My husband and I were friends first and we've been happily married for almost twenty years.

[MaggieTheCat]

I definitely agree that being friends first makes a romantic relationship much easier.

My husband and I were friends for 12 years before we started dating. We're still each others' best friend and still very happily in love. You don't have to wait 12 years to date him. But you two should at least get to know each other. Kheldarson's right -- how can he say he loves you if you've known each other for such a short period of time, and haven't really hung out much?

Do friend type things together. Usually I do different things with my guy friends than my girl friends. With my guy friends, we play D&D or video games or watch nerdy movies. With my girl friends, we'll go out to lunch and chat, go crafts shopping, or watch girly movies. Maybe you'll find you can do the same things with your new friend that you do with your existing girl friends, but guys typically don't like clothes shopping or scrapbooking (this is major generalization and just using examples from my own life.) So find something that interests both of you and try it out.

Also, you said you are frustrated and confused. That is definitely not a way to start out, either a friendship or a relationship. You may want to sit him down and tell him how you feel, and why. Ask him to slow down or back down a little, if that is what's making you uncomfortable. Whatever it is, if he doesn't comply and keeps pushing for a relationship, or sex, or whatever and you're not ready for it, then drop him. Don't feel like he will be your only chance at a relationship. Also don't let him rebound off of you. Is he recently out of a relationship with another girl? He may be projecting his feelings for her onto you, if he's still hung up on her.

Just take things slow, and talk a lot when stuff comes up.

[42_42_42]

A successful romantic relationship has friendship at its core. My husband is my best friend and vice versa. If you aren't friends to begin with, when the excitement of new romance wears off, the relationship is most likely going fizzle. There have been times in my 8 years of marriage when I wasn't feeling the romantic love for my husband, but I was able to stick with him until I got it back because the foundation of our relationship is our friendship. Even when I haven't felt *in-love* with him, I've still loved him as my friend.

Secondly, I don't know anyone who has been able to remain friends with someone they have broken up with. I'm sure it happens (rarely), but the usual reality of it is that there are very strong hurt feelings when a break up happens and often one partner still feels romantically attached when the other one has stopped feeling that way. Sometimes both stop feeling that way around the same time and the relationship ends on good terms, but that's the exception, not the rule. So, for him to say he wants to be friends even if things don't work out as romantic partners is setting up an unrealistic expectation.

Thirdly, I am in complete agreement with Kinkoid's opinion of the "broken heart" thing. Anyone who has not had their heart broken hasn't lived among others. You don't even have to have actually been in a relationship with another person for it to happen. It's a lame excuse, used so the person can be stand-offish and not really committed while expecting so much more from you than they ever plan to put into the relationship. It sets up an easy-out for them and leaves you constantly hanging, uncertain of your relationship's status. In short, it's bullshit.

Finally, my read on the situation from your description of what the guy's said is that what he really wants is a "friends with benefits" scenario. IMHO, someone (usually the girl, cause, face it, it's typically the guy who wants this set up) always ends up getting hurt as a result. It's a bad idea. I urge anyone who has someone proposing this to run, run as fast and as far as you can from that someone. Someone who really cares about you has your best interest at heart and anyone who wants "friends with benefits" is thinking only of themselves. What "friends with benefits" really means is all the benefits of being in a relationship (sex) with none of the commitment or devotion or meeting the emotional needs of the other person. It might seem like fun at first, but in the long run, it robs you of all the wonderful things that a real relationship provides, and that we really need. It's one thing to have a fun night or even a few days long fling knowing that it's only about sex with someone you're never going to see again. It's another thing to have ongoing sexual relations with someone you see frequently and with whom you have some kind of emotional bond with. It really limits your ability to find a true romantic partner, as well, because you're already in a quasi-relationship.