A “Relations” 3-part Series - Part 2: Differentiating Friends and Lovers

“The only difference between friends and lovers is about four minutes.” (Scott Roeben)

This post was originally going to just be about intimate interpersonal affiliations - everything from one-night stand, to flings, to friends-with-benefits, to short-term relationships, to long-term partnerships, and everything between - but I've since come to think that that wouldn't be interesting enough and miss an important other way that people connect: friendship. So what I've decided do is distinguish between friends and lovers and point out that the difference between the two kinds of relations isn't as substantial as, I think, most of us think it is.

So what are we talking about; what does it mean to be friends with someone? It means that you enjoy, and want to, spend time with that person; you want to have shared experiences. You find him or her interesting, fun, trustworthy, or whatever criteria you use to choose your friends. This is slightly different from being friendly with someone; to be friendly with someone is to have him or her as an acquaintance. An acquaintance is someone you get along with well enough, but you aren’t sufficiently motivated to become full-blown friends with. This could be for any number of reasons – you don’t have the time or interest in developing another friendship, you just aren’t motivated enough by his or her personality, you aren’t on the same emotional/intellectual/cultural level, or whatever. True friends are those who you want to keep in touch with; people you are proactive about getting to know better. Friendships take time to grow; you don’t just go from being strangers with someone to being good friends. Friendships need to be fostered and maintained, or they’ll die. As you become better friends with someone you’ll get to know him or her better; there’ll be greater trust along with a deeper and more meaningful bond (those developments are reciprocal).

And what about lovers; what does it mean when you have (or want) an intimate interpersonal affiliation with someone? Clearly one of the requirements for this is physical attraction or, at the very least, the absence of repulsion. After all, if you're desperate for affection, or physical intimacy, you might settle for someone that you ain't really attracted to (but who still meets a minimum threshold of acceptability; the individual has to be able to turn you on). This is what’s needed to get an intimate affiliation started but, for it to last, chemistry is necessary. What I mean is that, were you to become involved with someone with whom there's a mutual attraction, it can still die if at least one party isn't satisfied. This isn't so much one person’s fault, I would say, but an incompatibility; that is, a lack of chemistry (call it a disparity between expectations, desires, needs, or whatever). Some kinds of affiliations require more than this attraction and chemistry. Let’s call the ones that don’t require anything else type-A relationships (e.g. one-night stands, flings, booty calls) and the ones that require more type-B (e.g. short-term relationships, long-term partnerships). The minimum additional thing for type-B relationships would seem to be a tolerance of the person's personality. But, ideally, you'd want a more substantial form of companionship.

Restricting our focus to only friends and type-B relationships, did you notice the difference between the two? The presences or absence of sexual intimacy. Lovers are simply friends-plus-sexuality. As noted friendship comes in degrees; but as does the emotional bond you have with your lover. The greater the friendship, the greater the bond. The same is true for lovers. More often than not, though, the bond you have with your lover is deeper (or of a special kind) than that with your friends. But, at its core, the kind of bond you have with a lover is of the same sort that you have with a friend. It's just because you tend to spend more time with a lover, and the way you spend that time is of a more intimate sort, that you develop a slightly different connection; but, fundamentally, the connection you have with a friend and a lover is the same. If you want to give that variant kind of connection you might develop with a lover but not a friend a name, it’d be love. But let's hold off on that until next time. So, in review, friendships are relationships without physical intimacy; type-A affiliations are sexually intimate relationships with people who aren't your friends; type-B affiliations are friendships with a romantic inclination.

You might think that I’m reducing all romantic affiliations to friends-with-benefits here, but that’s not really the case. I do think all romantic affiliations are friends-with-benefits, but I’m using “friends-with-benefits” in a more literal sense than how it’s colloquially used. I’ll clarify the colloquial sense of friends-with-benefits. But before I do that, it’s worth noting that the colloquial sense is a hard kind of relationship to describe; is it type-A or –B? I’d say it straddles the two types. The colloquial sense of friends-with-benefits is friends you’re intimate with but the connection you have is of a reserved sort. You aren’t committed to the development of that friendship beyond its current state. More often than not, the kind of person you’ll have as a friend-with-benefits is an acquaintance. The colloquial sense of friends-with-benefits refers to relationships where you want something more than a type-A affiliation, but not a type-B. Typically, when you start a type-A affiliation you don’t know the person (or at least not very well). When you start a friends-with-benefits relationship, in the colloquial sense, you do know the person beforehand. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.