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Once you put someone in the friend box, can you ever rescue them into the lover box? |
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“In Their Appropriate Box” By Shannon Ray During a night of drink and gossip with friends, no subject should ever be too taboo to touch. One should be expected to answer their current status, shoe size and most embarrassing sexual moment while effortlessly flirting with oh-so-cute bartender across the way. It’s the kind of dialogue that onlookers love to eavesdrop upon. It was on a night such as this; the tabletop queried a thought my way. In this day and age of neutered couples, has our need for companionship out weighed our need to get some? Can we survive on companionship alone? Isn’t that just another word for a friendship with benefits? Is this phase of faux dating what we have to look forward to? Are we doomed to dust off our applicants from our dating reject box just to have someone around for major holidays? Have we settled down or just plain settled? Once, not so long ago, I had a dating mantra. If the thought screaming out my lover’s name during sex was met with a giggle instead of a sigh, they were put into the ‘friend’ box. True story- many years ago I met the “perfect one”- tall, handsome, and quite witty. We hit it off immediately only to my horror of horrors- they shared the same first name as a member of my immediate family. The thought of any family member’s name at any point during an intimate moment sent me running for the hills... Flash-forward to a year later, it turns out that they commonly went by a nickname that bared no resemblance to any name of any of my family members. I learned a valuable lesson that day- research is key. First let me explain the box theory. There are three boxes – the romance box, the fling box, and the above mentioned friendship box. We all have them: only some of us admit it. The friendship box is self-explanatory. Someone you get along with but someone you are not attracted to. In the Fling box are the borderline cases; friends with bonus features. And the romance box is reserved only for those who make your heart do a triple-loopy when they when they fill a doorway. I took measure of my friend box and noticed that it was beginning to resemble a church lost and found pile. Thinking that I may have left a stone unturned, I decided to try my hand at dating someone I wasn’t physically attracted to. I rummaged through my list until I found the ideal candidate: “Dependable”. They looked great on paper. That is, all the critical elements were there: intelligence, sense of humor, and gainful employment. We dated for a few months but the chemistry just wasn’t in place. The sex was mediocre at best. But they had potential in SO MANY other areas. It was like adjusting to platforms when all you’ve ever worn in life was flats There were no butterflies, no last minute outfit changes- what she saw is what she got. For a while I had even convinced myself that you didn’t need the triple-loopy loop to be happy in a relationship. In the end, it felt like I was scamming the both of us. I’ve sworn off friendship dates ever since. It seems once they are in the “friendship box”; they shouldn’t cross over into the “dating box”. But recent trends within my circle have me questioning my beliefs once again. Love is believed to be the best scam of them all, followed closely by true sexual intimacy. It seems that so many have settled for what they can get, instead of what they want. It appears that holding out for ‘the one” isn’t on anyone’s “things to do list”. Why hold out for a Royal Flush, when four of a kind will do the job? It’s hard to wrap your head around a romantic relationship that is nearly sexless from the start. Isn’t that what most of us call a friendship? But there are an uprising of many couples going from one person for a dinner and another for a dessert and still a third for a nightcap. Since when, did the fairy tale start going: “Boy meets girl, Boy date’s girl, Boy sleeps with different girl, and Boy confesses her soul to yet another girl.” The story’s the same for us girls except that we seem to be doing it with more frequency. There are those of us who believe in true love and great sex that last a life span. At times I think we’re a dying breed- the hopeless romantics with a working libido. As for me, I like holding out for the Royal flushes in life. I firmly believe in the holy relationship trinity: companion, lover, and friend. Friendship is key to any relationship but not the only one. The “friendship box” is there for a reason. There should be a difference between a causal friend and a soul mate. There has to be different criteria between the two. I want someone who overstepped my friendship box by a mile and went straight for my heart; someone who is capable of equally melting my heart, thighs, and soul with fierce intensity. So, in the infamous words of the late Marvin Gaye: “If you believe in love, let’s get it on.” |
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