Would You Date Your Best Friend?

If you have a best friend that is of the opposite sex, would you date them? You know each other inside out, so surely it wouldn't be such a bad idea. Or would it…?

Let’s say you are out with your best friend and you've had a few to drink. You are looking at your friend in a new light, all of a sudden, he or she is incredibly sexy and the funniest person in the world. Would you act on your new found thoughts? Or would you pass it off as a silly drunken phase?

You know this person really well, you already get on brilliantly, otherwise you wouldn't be friends at all. Maybe, you are flat mates. You have experience of living together already so surely a relationship would be the next step?

Well, it would not necessarily be the best move. Yes, you may know each other, but you get together and you may find all those little annoying habits you once found so endearing are now incredibly irritating!

Being partners gives you more rules, you can now comment and argue about things you possibly wouldn't have done before. You could share a bedroom, but could you deal with the mess in your room as well as theirs? Before, you could shut the door and let him or her get on with living in a messy room, but when you are partners, you can invade each others space more.

Friendship is a great base for a relationship. There’s no pressure of whether or not they'll call or if they like you. You already know they do and will! They already like you for who you are, there’s no pretence involved. But what if the new relationship doesn't work?

You could have possibly ruined a beautiful friendship. Especially if the break up was particularly bad. And then if you lived together anyway, there’s all matter of awkwardness to deal with!

Maybe you have misread the signs and taken their friendliness as a green light to bigger and possibly better things? What if you made your move and they weren't happy with that or vice versa.

Now, obviously, I'm not saying you should or shouldn't. Nobody knows what the future will hold, otherwise we would all have gone out and bought a winning lottery ticket by now, but I think dating a friend is something you should think about very seriously, and even talk about before making any definite moves.

I'm only saying this because I dated my best friend. We broke up within only a couple of months and our friendship has never really recovered! I wouldn't want anyone else to mistake a great friendship for something more, which is what I did. I loved him to bits as a friend, but we argued and said personal things about each other while we were in a relationship that was too harsh to forgive.

The best advice I can give to you when facing this situation is to talk about it properly first, talk about all outcomes and work out if you could recover if it should end! But if you are meant to be together and all works out for the best, I'm glad. I just wish it could have done for me!