| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 7:09:57 AM | I know, ideally a marriage or LTR would have both of these things. But, what if you can't seem to find both?
Are you better off with the guy who is like a good friend, a good support system, but maybe you're not really crazy in love with or passionate about? Someone who you like and care for, and who is dependable.
Or
With the guy who you're crazy in love with (after years together), have great passion with, and while you maintain a good friendship... you have some minor personality incompatibilities that make you have to work a little harder at it sometimes to be considerate of the other person and make things work? | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 7:29:30 AM | Good question.
I"m not going to choose one over the other. From my past relationship failures, I think I picked one thing or the other instead of taking the person who offered both. In the end, I'm not in those relationships any longer. First off, I need my mate to be my best friend. The other thing is, I need to be head over heels in love with a person for them to be my best friend. The working harder isn't an issue for me because any relationship has issues, even the best of them do. The difference is, when you have the right person, the working part is really easier. | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 8:32:06 AM | Probably neither. Staying single when you can't find what you want is the best bet for me, anyway - it's much less frustrating than dealing with either scenario.
If I had to choose, it'd be the crazy in love deal...it depends on what the inconsistencies are. If they were huge, I'd just keep things at the level I was comfortable with. If they were small, I'd work with them as best I could. | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 8:38:07 AM | | I would pick the friend, I hate having drama in my life and I would much rather have a partner that I knew I could count on instead of someone I was constantly butting heads with, even if there wasn't as much chemistry | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 8:38:48 AM | Melissa, it depends on the person.
In my younger days I had an extremely perfect male friend, but no matter how hard I tried, I could NOT fall in love with him. He was the type of guy that was a great bread winner, (I was too) was patient, kind, understanding, didn't get bent when my onery 3 yr old threw sand in his eyes.
To this day it seems like it would have been easier to have at least had him, then try and find all that crazy love.
Love is work, and sometimes we do have to work around some MINOR personality incompatibilities no matter chosing a perfect friend, or a crazy in love person.
I think most of us hope for a middle ground between both, and not just one or the other... | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 9:01:53 AM |
Are you better off with the guy who is like a good friend, a good support system, but maybe you're not really crazy in love with or passionate about? Someone who you like and care for, and who is dependable.
Sounds like my failed marriage. I married a man I trusted, I told myself that it was a mature, quiet kind of love. I was full of bullsh!t.
The real truth is that I married a man I had no sexual chemistry with. I liked him, I loved him, but I simply was not all that into him.
I hurt him in ways I can only imagine. I'll never, ever make that mistake again.
The man I am seeing now is a different story. Our relationship isnt as black and white, cut and dry, but we have crazy mad chemistry and I am willing to risk it. Am I really in love? Time will tell. In the meantime, we can't keep our hands off each other. | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 9:06:02 AM | I'd rather do some work to maintain a passionate relationship than be bored by a supposedly easy and secure relationship. Either may fail eventually for various reasons, but I'd prefer to live fully and passionately in that case, while I can.
Of course, I'd prefer to have a relationship with both, and have been fortunate enough to find one. Even so, it still sometimes requires a bit of work, but not very often. | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 9:40:26 AM | Could I have one of each please? With side of hot latin lover once annually?
Perverts that's YEARLY!
Doh.
I'm teasing.
Sort of.
Seriously can't we have both?
I know I am constantly preaching about this society wanting it all and wanting it now, but when it comes to my private and intimate relationships I DO want it all, and I'd love to have it all with MY guy.
Can that happen? I believe it can, but possibly I am the only one who does? | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 9:44:02 AM | | I've been in love twice and both times I had both of these things. We were best friends and I was crazy about them. There were personality differences but even that didn't break us up. In the end, it related back to we had issues we had to deal with separately and you can be friends who are in love and still hurt each other because you suck at relationships. | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 10:22:02 AM | | Depends all upon you: if you need a support system, then that is most important. If you can stand on your own two feet, then a support system isn't so important, so you can substitute with something else in its place. | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 4:26:07 PM | OP, you are 24, so go for the head over heels. If you go for the steady guy, I guarantee you that you would always wonder what the other love felt like and wind up leaving him in ten to twenty years to se what you "missed"
Women in their 40's and 50's are probably smarter to go for the steady type good friend guy. They have been there/done that and are ready for the even keel relationship......just my opinion.
Gone sailing babe  you crack me up | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 4:37:25 PM | Ummmm....LTR = Best Friend, Suport, Passion, Love, Considerate. Just to use your words from your 2 choices OP. Chooseing either or = Failure imho. Don't fool your self. LTR is not a Mult choice question. You need it all, Thats why its tuff to find.
Happy Holidays,
Michael | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 4:45:30 PM | OP, from my perspective, I already have good friends and family who are supportive. I already have kids that I care for.
So in light of that, I would go for a girl I'm crazy in love/lust with. | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 5:53:13 PM | | I think you should at least try for BOTH the friend and the 'crazy, can't live without' thing. If you don't, and end up 'settling'...you're going to wind up a middle aged divorced woman who had a couple of kids, raised them, and then are suddenly filing for divorce in your forties because you needed to 'find yourself'. We have enough of them here as it is already..... | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/12/2008 8:10:36 PM | Are you better off with the guy who is like a good friend, a good support system, but maybe you're not really crazy in love with or passionate about? Someone who you like and care for, and who is dependable.
Or
With the guy who you're crazy in love with (after years together), have great passion with, and while you maintain a good friendship... you have some minor personality incompatibilities that make you have to work a little harder at it sometimes to be considerate of the other person and make things work?
If it was me, either of those kind of guys, and this is just my opinion, I'd really dump you as fast as possible if I knew you felt that way about me.
Why don't you flip flop the situation and see how you would feel.
Melissa Melissa, I'm with you in a relationship because you are a good friend, a good support system for me, but to be really honest, I'm not really crazy in love with you nor passionate about you. I really like and care for you but if I could say one thing on what I really dig about you the best, it's that you are so dependable.
Melissa Melissa, I'm so crazy in love with you, we have great passion with each other, and we are such good friends too for so long ... you have some minor personality incompatibilities, things that bug the crap out of me and I wish weren't a part of you and I'll probably do my best to change those things about you, but mostly it's my way of rationalizing things I think I can live with now but probably won't be able to live with in ten years when the natural progression of that "passion" wanes. But never mind all that, I'm going to really work hard to make things "work out" between us.
A couple of questions for you.
Did you ever stop to think that maybe what you are drawn to in terms of "spark" and "passion" might not actually be the most healthy choice for your emotional and mental well being in a relationship? What about every guy you dated in the past and felt a "spark" for, did all those men work out for the best for you? Is this "passion" something that has always been a reliable barometer for your long term happiness in your life?
Would you like to get married one day and have a man term your best qualities and the reason for your union as your dependability? Or that he would labor to work things out when he realizes those "minor" things are probably the things he overlooked in pretty much all his relationships and probably became a big deal later?
If you married someone like that, who thought like that, I can tell you one thing for sure. They will always be looking for the next person down the road instead of facing the person they are with right now. That's a person who is a ripe candidate to be emotionally disconnected and self driven to emotionally cheat on their partner.
So if you pick a mate like that, if you put the shoes back on your feet instead of theirs, what do you think you will probably do before it's all said and done if you pick one or either of those kind of men?
I would hate to be a man who was chosen in a way that most people pick their sandwich lunch meat at the store for the week. I feel like washing my hands now. | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 12/18/2008 11:04:34 AM | Short term, the one you're in love with seems to last the best. Long term, the friend seems to work the best as you fall more in love with personality over time.
Most people try to do the reverse. They only date the friend for a few dates, and date the passionate non-friend for years. That never works, because friendship is then put in the short term, and passion in the long term. So friendship doesn't have the long term it needs to bloom into love, and the passion is there for so long that it burns out, and then, only the friendship can sustain the relationship, and it isn't there. So in both cases, it fails.
If you want success in your relationships, then the simplest and most likely way is to only date the guys you feel passionately about for the short term, say 3 months, and end it there, unless everyone else says that you are like best friends, and to date a best friend who you don't feel passionately about, for at least 6 months, to give the friendship a chance to blossom into love and passion.
Granted, that is the opposite of what most of us do. But that is why most of us fail at our relationships. Do you want to fail at your relationships, or succeed?
I leave the choice in your hands.
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 2/2/2009 9:03:59 AM | Don't deny yourself the chance to experience all that life has to offer. Love and passion do not come often, when they do - grab on! Just be sure you've learned from your past mistakes.
I would propose one caution. If this person shows NO signs of personal growth over those years.. well then run. You will continue to evolve, they may not.
Good luck with your choice :) | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 2/12/2009 12:45:06 PM |
With the guy who you're crazy in love with (after years together), have great passion with, and while you maintain a good friendship... you have some minor personality incompatibilities that make you have to work a little harder at it sometimes to be considerate of the other person and make things work? this looks good to me: friendship, chemistry, passion, you spent years together...so what's the question? The first case you have a good support system and in second one you don't. So what?? Eventually you won't need the system - you can support anyone yourself...but the passion and crazy love doesn't visit you every year when it's in a package with a friendship - I'll take it any day | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 2/12/2009 1:01:12 PM | I think the question would be harder if you made the passionate relationship a little more volatile than some minor personality incompatibilities. When someone is having this thought process, usualy the personality incompatibilities are pretty wide. The problem that prompts the question is trying to figure out whether the passion is worth continuing to try to fit the square peg into the round hole.
There is also a difference between not being crazy in love or passionate about and having no attraction. I never had that totally head over heels feeling with my first husband but that didn't mean that there was no passion between us, it just wasn't that crazy I'll die if I don't have you thing. I think if we had been older when we met, we would probably still be married. One of my friends said that she was surprised when we split, not because she didn't know we fought about things but because he and I were such good friends.
The second guy I could deal with but if the personality differences were huge I would never stay with someone because of the passion. You need to like the person in addition to the swinging from the chandelier.
Short term, the one you're in love with seems to last the best. Long term, the friend seems to work the best as you fall more in love with personality over time.
Good point Scorpio, and you are right, most people choose the short term person for the long-term relationship, as you said, the other way around. | |
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| LTR's: Best Friend or Head Over Heels in Love
Posted: 2/12/2009 2:28:08 PM | ~OT~ I've done it both ways and am still (or is that once again??) single, so I don't think it really matters which one you pick. If I had to pick, I'd take the passionate relationship ~ I bore easily and NEED the fire to keep things interesting to a certain degree. JMO  | |
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