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So there is this murky line which makes dating life extremely confusing.
And that is going from being friends or friendly with someone for awhile with frequent interactions to going out on dates as dates.
He has seen you in good days and bad days, with your ups and downs, pretty much knows you in a casual sense as a friend.... and now you are going out, and suddenly, you are expected to dress up, put on make-up, be all date-like...
Don't you think it's a bit more unnatural going from friends to dates than just starting off as dates initially?
Are the rules different?
That's one of the hardest transitions because the progression of regular dating doesn't really apply. There are pros and cons. From my personal experience, it hurts more to end something with someone that you were originally friendly/good friends with, because the connection is deeper and therefore the rules of dating of "how long did you go out for?" don't really apply. Hence, its important to communicate. Like I always (annoyingly, I know ;)) say, I don't read minds and I don't expects to either.
ReplyDeleteI definitely hear you on the issue of going from friends to dates can be harder than starting off as dates. My husband and I joke that had we been friends before, we never would have dated because I would have put him in the friend zone forever. Luckily we were set up on a blind date and the fact that he could be my best friend worked for us, not against us.
ReplyDeleteBut I do get the challenge. There were a few guy friends I had that I was very close with- talked to, did shabbos meals together, shared our emotional issues with dating- and at a certain point we decided to give dating a shot. Needless to say, none of them went past a few dates, and some ended pretty badly because of the expectations. The friendship from before was for sure ruined, but we knew going in that our 'just friends' status was going to end EVENTUALLY whether we dated each other or not. I don't regret taking those risks because in all those cases, we both knew that if we didn't date each other, we'd always wonder if there was something there (and let's not forget about all the people putting pressure on us to just give it a shot).
I do want to mention that point you made about getting dressed up with makeup and stuff when you're used to just being friends. FYI: many guys don't like it when girls put on a lot of makeup....most guys I know would prefer a girl with less than more, so if you like you're 'expected' to put makeup on and get all dressed up, the expectation may be coming from yourself. We women are hard on ourselves like that.
But the part about doing things to impress each other-- yes, that's important, and if getting a little dressed up is part of that, then do it. This dynamic happens in marriage all the time-- you live together, you're roomates, you see each other in pajamas, etc. When a married couple goes out on a date and the wife gets dressed up, it's not because it's 'expected' but because in a relationship, you want to invest energy in it. There are so many other people in our lives that we dress to impress- why not our spouse? That doesn't mean we should go overboard, or that a wife should be expected to always be dressed to the nines at all times. But I really believe that no matter how stable we are in a relationship, we always need to do things to make the partner feel that we care enough to spend time and energy on them.
Bottom line: I have friends who married their best friends and friends who married their blind dates. Everyone has a different script to their story. What's important is to be respectful and considerate no matter who it is-- common courtesy is often forgotten in dating. And if basic midot is not enough of an incentive for you, just know that in our circles, you never say that you'll never see someone again. just wait, honey, you will, and you don't want to look back and feel bad for how you may have handled things.