Secret Signs It’s More Than Friendship!
Feelings can get a promotion, too. In fact it seems like the perfect way to gain a partner for life, by getting to know each other as friends first, before a relationship develops. Make a friend and you can conquer anything in life together, including a partnership and daily togetherness. Yet thing are in truth rarely more complicated than when love comes from a friendship. For one thing, these things don’t often work in parallel, meaning: One person will fall in love more quickly with their friend than the other. For another thing, it’s not unusual for feelings not to be reciprocated. The question is, how does one go about this tricky business? Sometimes the risk of ruining a solid friendship to get closer makes people hold back. It’s worth being sure of the situation from the get-go. The first step is to be clear about your own feelings. In this article we’ll share the eight clearest signs that love is in the air.
1. You’re jealous
Your best friend is in a relationship and it makes you hit the roof to see them together. Congrats! Jealousy is not just a painful or unattractive character trait, it’s also an unmistakable sign of where your affections lie. Hardly any other emotion takes a hold on us more strongly than jealousy. We’re powerless against it; there’s no mental trick in the book that can fight it. It arises from the wish to have another person all to oneself, preferably to possess them. Friends, by contrast, are totally immune to this sort of possessive thought.
2. Your feelings are dictating your behavior
If you notice yourself acting awkward or childish when they’re around, you might still be able to counteract your feelings. Try not to come across as a teenager in puppy-love, don’t use every opportunity to come in close contact with them or pepper them with innuendos. If love really is to develop from friendship, you’ll need to proceed with painstaking care. It’s better to tap the breaks and stop seeing them for a while until you’re really sure what you want to do with your budding feelings. At this early stage, it would be a shame to embarrass yourself or risk losing a stable friendship.
3. You’re having intense daydreams
When we’re falling in love, every thought circles around our potential partner. We can’t help it; we’re constantly drifting away from reality and giving ourselves over to intoxicating fantasies, day and night. Our very cognitive reasoning is possessed by this one person. This is not something that happens with friendship. So if you find yourself lost in an interior world of romantic or even erotic thoughts, your feelings are clearly departing from friendship in the direction of love.
4. Others no longer interest you
Are you consistently meeting interesting people who have an interest in you only to realize that you can’t muster anything in return? That’s probably because your focus is clearly on someone else, your feelings already sealed, signed, and ready for delivery. If we’re not in love, we remain open for new encounters and some flirtation now and then. We can’t help it, nature has programmed us so that we don’t miss a single opportunity to pass on our genes. If you don’t feel this way because you already have a partner in mind, it’s because you’re already thinking of creating a new future with them.
5. You can’t wait to meet up
Spending an evening with a circle of friends is always great. We look forward to exchanging stories and that companionable feeling that comes along with it. If you, on the other hand, you look forward to a meeting with a particular person with a racing heart, like for a date, then there’s clearly more at play than just a friendship. You might notice yourself spending more time getting dressed or in front of the mirror than you would if you were just meeting up with friends for a low-key evening. The difference is we don’t try to impress friends; they like us the way we are.
6. It’s never enough
A good sign that it’s love and not just friendship is a certain yearning for one another. If you can’t get enough from a certain someone, it’s clear you want more than just fun. Friends tend to have lives very independent of one another. You might meet up by chance or set a time to hang out and then go your separate ways. If you can’t stand going a day without seeing them and parting is such sweet sorrow, it’s love, at least on your side of things.
7. You can’t stop talking about them
One of the clearest signs of being in love is that you can’t stop talking about the object of your affection with others. Sigmund Freud put a fine point on it with the proverb, "When the heart is full, the mouth runs over. Observe how many times you feel compelled to mention her or him in conversation with others. If you are in love, you’ll find yourself wanting to talk about your love interest at the expense of anything else. But be careful, for this is a dead giveaway. Not exactly a good tactic for hiding your feelings, not to mention the fact that constantly steering the conversation toward the object of your affection can become quite tiresome and annoying for all those not directly involved.
8. You long for physical contact and intimacy
This last point is another instance of Mother Nature’s magic. It’s natural to want to touch someone for whom we have romantic feelings. Just sitting next to one another is no longer enough for you. You might get distracted by wondering what your love interest looks like under their clothes or how their gorgeous hands might feel on your body. This is the natural course of things when friendship is developing into love. There’s hardly any clearer signal than that physical urge, which exert itself in your head as well as in reality.
Our conclusion
Friendship or love, which one will win out? Roughly quoting Charles Dickens, this phase of transformation from friendship into love can be described as “the best of times and the worst of times.” Who wants to risk a friendship, only to perhaps not be reciprocated? On the other hand, there is hardly a more auspicious start to a partnership than when it is preceded by a long-lasting, solid friendship. There will always be a residual risk. Really the only clarity is you’ll get is a straightforward conversation. The good news for all those who might be left alone with their deeper feelings: A true friendship can withstand such romantic lapses. If you've ever found yourself in a similar situation, feel free to leave us a comment.