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From: dsn@tove.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Friendship before/after SOship
Message-ID: <233@tove.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Jun-85 21:07:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: tove.233
Posted: Tue Jun 11 21:07:53 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Jun-85 06:11:30 EDT
References: <1323@hammer.UUCP> <1560073@acf4.UUCP>
Reply-To: dsn@tove.UUCP (Dana S. Nau)
Organization: U of Maryland, Laboratory for Parallel Computation, C.P., MD
Lines: 34

> seifert@hammer.UUCP (Snoopy) writes:
>
>Why is everyone so afraid of hurting friendships with romance?
>What percentage of breakups are unfriendly?  I can't imagine
>not remaining friends with an SO after a breakup.  If you like
>a person as a friend, then add loving them as an SO, why should
>the liking-them-as-a-friend go away if they don't work out as an SO?

First of all, in a romantic relationship, it's not always clear how strong
the friendship is.  Such things tend to get muddied a bit by other elements
such as sexual attraction.  If the friendship isn't strong to begin with, it
may be harder to keep it going afterwards.

Second, when I have broken up with a girlfriend I have usually felt a
conflicted combination of pain, anger, resentment, and lingering romantic
attraction to her.  The anger and resentment would tempt me to withdraw in
an attempt to "get back" at her; and the pain and the lingering attraction
would also tempt me to withdraw as a form of self-protection.  If you
consider that these kinds of things tend to occur for BOTH parties when a
couple breaks up, it's not so surprising that maintaining a friendship is
difficult.

The time I found it easiest to remain friends with a former girlfriend was
in a situation where we had been close friends before we became romantically
involved, and the feelings of friendship were always stronger than the
romantic feelings.  Thus maintaining the friendship was important to both of
us.  We had both decided simultaneously that we wanted to end the
relationship, so neither of us felt "abandoned" by the other.  In addition,
I was getting interested in someone else, so I didn't mope around and harbor
resentment as much as I might have otherwise.
-- 
Dana S. Nau,  Computer Science Dept.,  U. of Maryland,  College Park, MD 20742
ARPA:  dsn@maryland				CSNet:  dsn@umcp-cs
UUCP:  {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!dsn	Phone:  (301) 454-7932