Is It a Bad Idea to Date a Friend?

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Dear Mary Beth,
I read your article about how it is good to take risks in admitting your feelings when you are “just friends.” But it all worked out okay for them in the end—they got married. What if it doesn’t? What if you start dating a friend and then it doesn’t work out and you’ve lost the boyfriend AND the friend, and the friend’s family and everything? Is it really worth the risk of ruining the friendship and being left with nothing?

Safe in the Friend Zone

Dear Safe,
Safety is nice, isn’t it? All nestled up in your little cocoon. Not rocking any boats. Just you and your friend. Friends forever.

Or ... until he starts dating Karen. And then he marries Karen. And there you are, still in your cocoon. Only now you’re all alone.

Risk in dating is a funny thing.

I see people taking all kinds of stupid risks. They will date people with substance abuse problems. They will date people they think they can change. They date people who are already married to other people.

But then, somebody comes along who might be an amazingly compatible partner, and everybody suddenly gets a huge case of the “what-if’s.” What if we break up? What if it’s a bad break up? What if it’s a bad break up and his sister doesn’t come to my parties any more? What if it’s a bad break up and his sister and her friends don’t come to my parties any more?

Oh, please.

Look, the whole purpose of dating is to spend time with someone, to figure out if this is someone you may want to spend the rest of your life with. Baked into that system is the possibility that one of you discovers that you don’t want to spend the rest of your life together. And then you break up. It happens every day.

It’s true that if you start dating someone who was a friend, and then you break up, you probably won’t be friends in the same way afterward. But . . . if one of you starts dating someone else, you probably won’t be friends in the same way afterward either. And if one of you gets married, you definitely won’t be friends in the same way any more. Basically, I can pretty much guarantee that in 10 years, whatever friendship you may have left will look nothing like it does now. That’s the nature of opposite-sex friendships in the single years.

So what are you really risking?

The beauty of living chastity, of course, is that you greatly reduce the odds of a nasty break-up, and of post-breakup awkwardness. Most of my long-term romantic relationships were with men who started out as friends. And, for the most part, I am on just as friendly terms with them—and their families—today as we would have been if we had never dated. Their sisters are still my friends and they still come to my parties.

But the bigger question is this: what risk is more worth taking? Is it important to you to marry someone you are attracted to and someone who shares your values? Do you think that people like that grow on trees? Is it smart to overlook someone like that when God places him or her in your life?

My general feeling is that, if you meet someone who shares your values—someone who loves Jesus and the Catholic faith as much as you do, who is free to marry in the Church, whose personality you enjoy, with whom you feel compatible and to whom you are attracted, you have been given a great gift. One that should be taken seriously.

So let's say you decide to take that leap and put yourself out there...what then?

Of course there will be risks. There will be obstacles. What if we risk losing our friendship? What if we live far apart? What if we break up and then still have to work together? What if our friends stop inviting me to their parties? What if we break up and then she gets engaged to the guy in the warehouse downstairs ...

Or, what if this person was a huge gift from God that you let slip through your fingers because you were busy obsessing over peripheral issues that He would have worked out if you had just been open?

Some risks are not worth taking: Risking wasting vast amounts of time in a relationship with the wrong person. Risking trying to change someone. Risking getting involved with someone who isn’t free to marry you.

But when you find that someone who your head and your heart are both excited about? That just may be the time to start taking some risks.

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