The Friendship in Relationship

I’m someone who considers my true friends to be my family. We laugh together, cry together, and definitely share our fair share of salacious stories that are never to be brought up in front of mixed company. Your friends can be the bubble to your guts and at the same time be the glue that keeps you together. But what about your dating life? Aren’t you looking for some of the same qualities in a person when you are evaluating a friendship? Loyaly. Honestly. Genuine laughter.

I recently downloaded an app called “The Test”. The game is designed to test how well you know a person by answering random questions like “Have you ever faked an orgasm?” and “Would you drink recently expired milk?”. The player on the other end of the digital line has to guess your answers and together you rack up points based on consecutive responses. The other day “Would you date someone if you knew it wasn’t going to last forever?” flashed across my recently outdated iPhone 5’s screen and my response without any hesitation was “no”. After another round of invasive questions I received a text to clarify my previous answer. Sure, why would I date someone if I was going to put an expiration date on how long I was going to keep them around? If that’s the case, I would not define what we have as dating. Just clearly bored and killing time. I wouldn’t start a friendship with plans to one day put a stop to it. Why would I do that when it comes to dating?

Obviously, break ups happen. Trust me, I’ve been through enough ugly Kim Kardashian cries, bottles of dark liqour, and cycles of Keyshia Cole pre marriage/divorce (“Not Keysh!”) to know that every relationship, romantic or even platonic, is not meant to last forever. And thank God, because we all have that “what the hell was I thinking?” moment when you look back and see clearly what lead to your slipery slope. At the same time, I always hope for the best, but I’m not going to entertain something that is not keeping me simulated. Like… why? I have friends whose Little Black Book is more important to them than the 10 Commandments. That just sounds exhausting.

They say a relationship is a friendship on fire. Well, although I like a little sizzle and spice in my dating life, “on fire” sounds like your in the pits of Hell. Nonetheless, I get what “they” are trying to communicate. Building a friendship within your romantic relationship is pivital to longevity and balance. I love the fact that I can have an open, honest, and sometime comedic conversation about some of the ratchetness that has taken place in our lives. As I go deeper into my late 20s and closer to dirty 30, what really matters becomes more clear. Sure, I’ve done some things in my younger years that I am not proud of, but that doesn’t make the stories any less funny. I don’t have time for a stuffy dating life. I want to rock out at concerts, scream Ariana Grande in the car, get together drunk with grandma, and seal the night with your soft lips. Bae should be all encompassing. Be my homie. Be my lover. Be my friend.

At the end of the day, many can give you a satisfying sexual release, but true friendships are the ones that last forever. There’s very few things that are worse than being in love with someone that you don’t even like as a person.