RELATIONSHIPS : Crossing the line from friendship to lovers

Peter confided in me saying he had a problem and was seeking my frank advice. He told me he has been with this girl for a disturbingly long time as friends. He cherishes and truly loves the girl but he has failed to elevate the relationship to another level.“I would want us to date because she is the girl I love and I feel she might like it but I can’t start,” he said. It downed on me that elevating from platonic friendship to dating is a rather hard thing to do yet it would have been easy. You see a girl then you like her and become friends, she responds to the friendship, after developing some kind of good bond and trust, she starts telling you private stuff like how her boyfriend is mistreating her or even about her a certain friend or friends backstabbed her. Before you know, you are offering her a shoulder to lean on and doing things both within and outside your means to make her feel comfortable and happy because you are genuinely feeling that for her. The care you have for her strengthens the bond and you find yourself being with her most of the times, you share virtually everything sharable at that stage, she feels safe with you and you feel it’s beside her that you would rather be. But as you enjoy each other there is a numbing reminder somewhere in your head that she is just your friend, feelings start rushing and everything about her becomes a priority but she keeps on telling you that she appreciates your friendship and she doesn’t know where she would have been without you. It’s really emotionally arresting, you don’t know what to do, she is healing and starting to gain confidence and trust in relationships ever since she parted with her draining boyfriend, you know you have been part of the healing but chances are you think that you will be the one to be with her. This emotional confusion happens to both men and women. A person finds themselves in a queer position because the girl in most cases has started taking you like a brother of sorts and she at times even starts telling you who is hitting on her and even asks you for advice. You feel when you tell her about how you feel it might jeopardise your friendship and she might think that you are capitalising on the closeness for your selfish ends, you endure her talk about how she met a hot guy who was blatantly hitting on her. She needs your frank advice whether to give in to some guys but you are torn between a desire to tell her you dread the mere knowledge of her with other men and not wanting to mingle in her private decisions. Jennifer Uwitonze says she can never be friends with a guy she doesn’t have at least some feelings for, because she has been caught up in situations where boys who she takes to be plain friends have turned out to develop feelings for her yet she can’t be involved with them. There are some cases where feelings between friends have developed spontaneously and they have dated thereafter with some ending up in marriage. When a relationship starts as a friendship, it gets really strong since there is that inner-soft fire that exists between the two, which in most cases endures for a long time. A person yearns for a love that is so near him or her but she or he can’t get it because of the circumstances surrounding the two, and in some instances a person has watched the love of their life be taken away just because they first became friends. Maybe it’s better to make one’s feelings clear to the other and accept whatever reaction is created by it than imagining what could have been. Ends