tue 15 mar 2011 01:43:38 — witte de withstraat
friendship is not lovership minus
i was just thinking of something.
in the movies, tv, or sometimes in real life, when someone isn't in love they might say 'let's just be friends'. i think i've even heard some real people tell me 'he wants to be with me, but we're just friends now'.
so i guess a lot of people want to think that being lovers is just something you add onto being friends, like an accessory — and that conversely, if you take the lovership away, friendship is what's left over.
i am always confused by that, cuz it doesn't feel that way to me at all. for me, feelings of friendship are totally distinct from the feeling of being in love.
now, it has happened to me once, that someone i was originally smitten with ended up being my best friend. and i'm very glad that happened. but we didn't instantly become friends just by removing sex from the picture. my feeling of friendship for her rose up later, in another spot, as i was dragged kicking and screaming toward awakeness to the value she gave my life. you know who i'm talking about.
but most of the time, ex lovers or lovers denied did not roll over and become my friends. falling in friendship is a different process. maybe it insults friendship, to call it lovership downgraded.
this doesn't mean all the women i fell in love with would not have made worthy friends. that's just not who they were to me, chemically, spiritually, or geometrically.
i think people should consider this, cuz maybe some of us are deluding ourselves.