You might be surprised by the answer.
Best friends are hard to come by. These are people in your life who you've grown to trust, value, and love, likely for years. But what happens when that last L-word, love, turns into another: lust? Is having sex with your best friend actually a good idea?
According to Mary Kay Cocharo, LMFT, starting something romantic with a friend could be your best idea yet. “I know that people are always afraid to do that, but from my perspective—I’ve been a marriage therapist for over 30 years—the couples who start with a solid basis of friendship are in a really good position to last."
Compared to people who meet as strangers, Cocharo says couples who start as friends—especially best friends—have a much better foundation. People who just get attracted to someone they see across the room have a lot of pheromones, Cocharo says. "Sometimes in that chemical cocktail, we’ll get attracted to someone and start a relationship and when those hormones start wearing off, we find that there’s absolutely no foundation to build a relationship on.” But if you already have the emotional relationship in place (hello, friendship!) and then start to get intimate, you've got a much better shot at creating a healthy and happy future.
So how do I tell my friend I'm interested in them?
Ideally, Cocharo says the conversation would come before you actually decide to have sex with the person. She recommends saying something like, “Listen, can we sit down and talk about something important?" Then, "Sometimes I feel like there’s potential in our friendship to be romantic, and I’m wondering if that ever crosses your mind..."
This approach puts you in a less vulnerable position (phew): You're not telling them you're in love with them or want to marry them. You're just gauging their interest.
Of course, sometimes the sex happens first (especially if there's alc involved). In that case, Cocharo says that you should still have a "what was this conversation?" afterward. It might be uncomfortable in the beginning, but it's the best time to make sure that you two are on the same page when it comes to whether or not the sex meant something more than sex.
What if my friend doesn't see me the way I see them?
That's okay. "Real friendships can endure," Cocharo says. If you have this conversation before or after the sex and find out that the feelings aren't mutual, don't be too hard on yourself. "This is not about me. I’m not being rejected. It’s just not a good fit for the other person," Cocharo recommends telling yourself.
Just know that you might have to set some new boundaries in your friendship. Maybe don't stay over their house after falling asleep during movie night. If you have actual romantic feelings for them, not just sexual ones, you might even have to take a break from the friendship.
Just be honest and say, "We're friends, we will always be friends, but I'm taking the next few months away from you to calm down my own feelings, attractions, and attachment to you. And then we can pick up where we left off as friends." As Cocharo says, "if it's really a good friendship, it can tolerate that."
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