Friendship to relationship

Everyone has best friends in university. Maybe you met them in elementary school and you’ve been friends forever or maybe they were on your floor in first year.

Either way you slice it, everyone has friends that they are extremely close with. More than likely, these friends are the same gender as you. Girls have a ton of girl friends and guys have tons of guy friends. But everyone, no matter who you are, has an extremely close friend of the opposite sex.

You two get along really well, you connect on a deeper level and you probably hang out more than you should. All good, right? Not so much. What happens when you start to catch feelings for your best friend? Do you ask them out? Do you do nothing? Do you change schools all together? Finding the answer can be tricky.

Fourth-year economics student Deanna Scharpf claimed that, “If you know that there is some type of sexual attraction, whether you’re playful and flirty or somewhat touchy with them, it’s probably inevitable and it will happen anyway.” This is obviously the best-case scenario.

If both parties already have some pre-conceived notion that a hookup is going to happen, a genuine romantic relationship will happen organically. But what if you aren’t sure if the feelings you have are legitimate? Should you ask your best friend out on a “real” date to figure it out?

Usually best friends will grab coffee, go to lunch, go to pre-drinks together and find other ways to spend time with one another. This is textbook friendship mode.

But how do you ask your best friend out in order to get them into dating mode? This can sometimes be a slippery slope.

Asking your best friend out on a romantic date can go one of two ways. It can either be a tremendous success and you both live happily ever after or things will get awkward and you will inevitably lose a close friend. Third-year women studies student Chantel Hamel said, “You might as well go for it. If not, you will always wonder ‘what if’.”

But on the other hand, you also do not want to force an attraction that is not reciprocated. The relationship should be natural. “You should always let it happen organically, if you ask them out it could get awkward or catch them off guard,” second-year kinesiology student Kerrigan Brown said.

So what do you do? If you find yourself hopelessly in love with your best friend, it is best that you gauge the situation for yourself. Weigh out the advantages and disadvantages. If you desperately want to take your friendly relationship to the next level, then go for it and don’t look back. Yet, if you feel that you might lose a close friend if you ask them on a romantic soirée at the Bauer Kitchen, your best bet would be to refrain.

All in all, you have got to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. There may be the possibility that romantically pursuing your best friend will not work out the way that you hoped it would. You have to be mentally prepared when deciding to ask out your best guy or girl friend.

“You have to be prepared for a fall out though, it should be a choice not made lightly,” explained third-year communications student Barbara Tavares. Tavares is right. Making the drastic jump from friends to lovers is quite the leap, so you’ve got to make sure you know what you want and that it’s worth the risk.

There is nothing worse than getting rejected, making things awkward and then losing a close friend in the long run. But hey, you only live once.