How friendship turns into love?

This means that sometimes the spark of romance between two strangers later promotes friendship-based intimacy to develop, but quite often the opposite progression occurs: Friendship-based intimacy develops between two friends over months or years before they start to experience romantic interest and sexual desire for ...

psychologytoday.com - How, and How Often, Friendship Turns into Love | Psychology Today

How do you make a kiss hotter?

If you want spicier kissing tips, here are some other suggestions: Make some noise (read: soft moans). “It can trigger sexual desire and be...

Last updated Dec 3, 2022

What does it mean when a girl looks at your chest?

Men: If a woman seems focused on your face and chest, she sees romantic potential. A gaze that wanders from your chest to your hips to your legs...

Last updated Jan 10, 2022

Do you really know who the “One” is? Your true Soulmate?

Promotion

When you imagine people falling in love, how do you see it happening?

Specifically, do you imagine two strangers falling in love after going out on a few dates? Or two friends gradually developing romantic feelings for each other? More generally, do you think the majority of people who become romantically involved started dating as strangers or after forming a friendship first?

A recent study, by Stinson and colleagues from Canada, suggests popular journals and textbooks tend to “focus on romance that sparks between strangers,” but a large portion of romantic couples start out as friends, and many people looking for love prefer the friends-first route to romance. The study, in press in Social Psychological and Personality Science, is detailed below. The authors searched online databases for studies on relationship initiation. They used terms like “friendship,” “friends with benefits,” “first date,” “relationship beginning,” and “attraction.” The search was limited to 11 highly influential journals—for instance, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Archives of Sexual Behavior, Sex Roles, and Personal Relationships. Analysis of data showed only 15 out of 85 or 18% of papers reviewed had focused on friends-first initiation. Simply put, the majority of studies emphasized romantic relationships formed between strangers. The authors found similar results in their second investigation, which examined the cited literature in two commonly taught textbooks on intimate relationships. Specifically, only seven out of 38 or 18% of citations concerned friends-first initiation.

Do most romantic couples start out as friends?

To learn how common friends-first romantic relationships really are, the researchers performed a meta-analysis of seven studies (N = 1,897) conducted in their labs between 2002 and 2020. Most romantic couples started out as friends, the results showed, with the percentage of the friends-first romantic couples varying from 40% to 73% (weighted average of 68%). The percentages of friends-first initiation were also higher in married couples (particularly those under 30 years of age) and in same-gender or queer relationships. Lastly, 42% of friends-first married couples reported having had a friends-with-benefits relationship with the person they later married. Again, this was even more prevalent among queer and same-gender couples.

Do schools ban phones?

According to the U.S. Department of Education, 77% of public schools prohibit cellphones. Since 2019, Forest Hills School District in Michigan has...

Last updated May 21, 2021

What determines who you fall in love with?

Romantic love occurs due to a combination of general attraction and social factors. When another person is attracted to you or likes you, that can...

Last updated Jul 24, 2019

Promotion

What is the best way to find a date?

To learn more about the nature of friends-first romantic initiation, a final investigation was conducted. Participants (N = 298; 50% men; 47% in a romantic relationship) were psychology students from one of the samples in the previous investigation. They were asked to indicate the best way to find dates by selecting from a list of options: blind dates, a friendship naturally turning romantic, mutual friends, school, parties, workplace, church, family connections, bar, social media, dating services, etc. The top three most frequent responses regarding the best way to meet a potential romantic partner were the following: Friendships that turn romantic (47%), getting to know a potential partner through mutual friends (18%), and meeting at school, college, or university (18%). To compare, only 0.3% chose going on a blind date as the best way to meet a future boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse. In fact, going on a blind date and using an online dating service were the least frequently endorsed responses.

Friendship as a relationship-initiation strategy?

Those in a romantic relationship who had been friends first also answered questions about the length of their friendship and their original intentions for initiating the friendship. So, what had been the reasons behind friendship intentions in those in a romantic relationship who had been friends first? Only a small portion reported having been sexually attracted to each other from the beginning or intending to use the friendship as a romantic strategy:

The respondent being attracted to the partner: 12%

The partner being attracted to the respondent: 18%

Neither (attraction developed later): 70%

In short, as the authors note, “the vast majority of these university students did not enter into their friendships with romantic intentions or attraction.”

Friendship and dating as a two-way street

Is it better to show a house empty?

Staging an empty house is just as important as staging a fully furnished one. It might even be a bit easier to do since there's no need to...

Last updated Sep 13, 2020

What makes a guy like you more than a friend?

If he notices your new haircut, a change of mood, or an important date, it might indicate that he considers you more than a friend. A guy who...

Last updated Dec 16, 2022

Promotion

To put the findings reviewed in context, let us recall a prominent view of how romance forms, which says: Men’s passion and desire “sparks the initial interaction between potential romantic partners and then passion-based intimacy [i.e. romantic interest and sexual desire] and friendship-based intimacy [i.e. feelings of understanding, warmth, interdependence] continue to develop over time in tandem.” However, the findings discussed here provide less support for this view and more support for another view that argues the relationship between the two types of intimacy (passion-based and friendship-based) is a two-way street. This means that sometimes the spark of romance between two strangers later promotes friendship-based intimacy to develop, but quite often the opposite progression occurs: Friendship-based intimacy develops between two friends over months or years before they start to experience romantic interest and sexual desire for each other.

Takeaway

When two friends become romantically involved, some might argue these “friends” were always sexually attracted to each other; or becoming friends was simply a strategy or tactic to achieve a romantic goal. However, the present data on participants’ intentions when forming friendships show 30% were motivated by romantic interest and sexual desire...but 70% were not. Therefore, we need to question the view that the only way intimacy can develop is as a result of a man expressing his romantic attraction and sexual passion to a woman (in heterosexual relationships). Instead, friends-first romantic initiation, whether initiated by a man or woman, appears to be quite common. Perhaps more importantly, the data shows becoming friends first is often considered the best way to initiate a romantic relationship. So, it is time researchers started to pay less attention to blind dates and more to how some platonic friendships turn into love and to why this is the path to romance that many people prefer.

Facebook image: novak.elcic/Shutterstock

psychologytoday.com - How, and How Often, Friendship Turns into Love | Psychology Today

Which planet is known as God?

Saturn (mythology) Saturn Saturn wearing his toga “capite velato” and holding a sickle (fresco from the House of the Dioscuri at Pompeii, Naples...

Last updated Feb 23, 2020

What is the soul of man made up of?

The soul is the seat of personality; man's will, intellect, and emotion all lie in the soul. The spirit is the part with which man communicates...

Last updated May 24, 2021

Promotion

How do you test for PDA?

Echocardiogram. Sound waves produce images of the heart that can help the doctor identify a PDA , see if the heart chambers are enlarged, and judge...

Last updated Jun 28, 2019

Promotion

What is Aquarius true soulmate?

Gemini is a true Aquarius soulmate sign because a Gemini person needs freedom just as much as an Aquarian does. Since these two are outgoing and...

Last updated Dec 30, 2020