Friendship

True Friendship is a beautiful thing but is not valued in today's society, and apparently it wasn't as many as 50 years ago, either, when C.S. Lewis published his philosophical "The Four Loves"; a book which, while defining "Phileo", elaborates on the love between friends and how perception of it is easily skewed by those who have never experienced such love.

Has love between you and your friend (specifically "Best Friend") ever come between you and the rest of your friends because of their erroneous perceptions of and assumptions about your relationship with your particular friend?

How have you dealt with gossip?

Do you find it difficult or easy to be aromantic and be in close relationships with others, and for what reasons?

I have a friend (she's female, I'm male) who I am very close with, and because of that almost everyone that sees us together tends to ask if she is some kind of love interest (in the romantic sense). I always explain that we don't like each other like that, and then just kind of laugh at it. I figure that if they want to completely misunderstand me, that's their loss. On the other hand, having people mistakenly think I have a girlfriend (or two or three, in some cases) doesn't really harm me since for guys that often earns them respect (which, of course, is completely stupid and something I don't understand).

Oddly enough I think being aromantic gets more in the way of my friendships with other guys. My friendships are my most important relationships in my life, while for my friends, they are merely placeholders until they find a girlfriend. Not only does this mean that I feel I care a lot more about the relationship than they do, but this also leads to a sense of impending doom as we grow older and my friends start getting into relationships that might very well end in marriage. I find that its seen as totally acceptable to ditch me at any moment if it's for a girl, yet that hurts and makes it hard to trust the people who would do that. I end up having to find the few who don't ditch their friends as soon as they have a romantic partner, and have close relationships with them.

I think I had to deal with these assumptions with any close friend who is female. Why do people have to assume this about opposite-sex friendship? The don't assume anybody gay for the same kind of relationship with the same sex. Especially, I had to deal with gossip about my best friend when I was in graduate school, who was assumed my girlfriend despite we denied it and had no intention in being romantically involved.

This happened with me and my best friend's little brother (he's two years younger than me). We would talk to each other a lot because we were both obsessed with this video game (Kingdom Hearts... yeah, yeah, go ahead and laugh ). Anyway, people thought that we liked each other. I did end up going to prom with him, but we were just friends.

Yeah, it bugs me when people assume things about my opposite-sex friends. My best friend in college was a guy, and we were not interested in each other like that. And other guys I wanted to be friends with back then, it would get weird because if I wanted to hang out, they or other people would assume it was a date. Or if they had a girlfriend, she'd be upset if the dude talked to me.

Now that most of my friends are married with lots of kids, I don't even have a "best friend" anymore. Their romantic relationships seem to have come between us in a lot of cases.

amyb wrote:

Now that most of my friends are married with lots of kids, I don't even have a "best friend" anymore. Their romantic relationships seem to have come between us in a lot of cases.

None of my friends have gotten married yet, but I suspect that the situation you just described will eventually occur for me. At least I'll still have my ace friends. ^_^

Friendships are the most important relationships in my opinion. I feel like the connection goes far deeper. It is based on what you have in common, but there is also an unconditional bond that is almost impossible to break. Well, that is how I see it.

ASexualRomanticaStarfish wrote:

Has love between you and your friend (specifically "Best Friend") ever come between you and the rest of your friends because of their erroneous perceptions of and assumptions about your relationship with your particular friend?

No, I don't believe so. Typically, my closer friends are of the same sex (for annoying societal reasons that I will rant about later in this post*), and people tend not to assume that a same-sex relationship is romantic as quickly as they assume the same for an opposite-sex relationship. I do however have one fairly close male friend from high school, and people then would ask me if I liked him. That was kind of annoying. Apparently, I had to like him since we spoke regularly and were of opposite sex.

* For some reason, people seem to gravitate toward people of the same sex for platonic relationships. I don't know if this is just my experience, but I find it harder to become close friends with guys than with girls. This is not because I find that girls would make better friends. There are a ton of guys that I would like to be friends with and think I would get along with well. The problem is that they seem to be a tad more dodgy and evasive when it comes to being made into friends than girls do. Some of this, I think, is due to our society still holding onto that traditional view of friendships being same-sex...or perhaps people feel awkward being friends with members of the sex that they are romantically/sexually attracted to? Whatever the reason, I wish it would go away so I could have more guy friends.

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How have you dealt with gossip?

Hm...I'm usually quite oblivious to gossip that exists about me. So...I do nothing at all.

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Do you find it difficult or easy to be aromantic and be in close relationships with others, and for what reasons?

I'm historically somewhat bad at making friends, though I'm getting better. I think this has nothing to do with being aromantic so much as being introverted. I now have at least two close friendships, and they are both awesome. Being aromantic has almost no impact on my friendships, though it makes me less likely to enter into a romantic relationship (in fact, I would bet lots of money against that ever happening).

amyb wrote:

Now that most of my friends are married with lots of kids, I don't even have a "best friend" anymore. Their romantic relationships seem to have come between us in a lot of cases.

I dread that happening, but at least I have several years before it should.