Science says: most relationships arise from friendship

Relationships that start as a friendship: I have always been a bit skeptical about this myself. Call it old-fashioned, but I prefer to believe in love at first sight. I have no experience with relationships that ever started as a friendship. In fact, I couldn't even be friends with someone I might fall for. How does it work for people who decide to exchange their friendship for romance? Do you not see potential in each other at first and then suddenly do? Or do you start as friends with benefits? By the way, that's also something I often have my questions about. Well, as I said, I am a layman in this area.

That's why I was very surprised when I read that most couples actually start as friends. What is that all about? Researcher Danu Stinson from the University of Victoria has been researching relationships for twenty years and decided to conduct more extensive research on friends who eventually become lovers. For this research, various publications and studies were compared. Well, apparently I'm not the only one, because Stinson was also quite surprised by the results.

More than half (66 percent) of the participating couples were actually friends first. That friendship lasted an average of 22 months (almost two years) before romantic feelings blossomed. Did they expect this? No, absolutely not, the majority did not intend to start a relationship with a friend. Also, two-thirds of the married participants were first friends. Quite bizarre, right?

According to Stinson, the result shows that our traditional view of relationships is not always correct: ‘We often think that we should experience romantic feelings immediately upon first meeting. But you can also slowly grow towards each other, for example from a friendship. The line between friendship and relationship is increasingly blurred, I appreciate that this definition is a bit messy nowadays.’

Well, for me it's also a lesson to adjust my old-fashioned view on love. If I ever find myself single again, I will take a look at my friend group. Who knows what might develop after 22 months.

Source: metronieuws