"Friends-as-Lovers" Trope
"Friends-as-Lovers" Trope
by Isabella Castelo
When you’re not in a relationship, you look for love anywhere you can. I don’t just mean where you can receive it, but also where you can give it. I personally have a LOT of love to go around, an amount that can be overwhelming to some people.
The place I have found to dump my love is my two best friends. To me, they are the relationship I have never had. Everything you can imagine a romantic couple doing (other than… ya know *wink*,) I would gladly do for my friends. I buy them random gifts, give them flowers, text them every day, call them constantly, try to be as physically close to them as I can… I would even kiss them on the mouth if they allowed it. I don’t do all these things because I secretly am in love with them romantically, I do it because I want to be public about the platonic love I have for them. It’s a love I had never experienced before them, and I would never do any of the things listed above for anyone else but them—I’m no cheater.
Where this intense love gets tricky is that neither of them feels or shows it the same way I do. They’re normal people, so rather than hide away from romance, they have other outlets to designate their love to. The feelings can be confusing at times; I want to feel hurt because in comparison to the vast, seemingly neverending amount of love I show, in addition to the love I want to show but cannot due to the limits of mankind and our universe, their love is lacking. In reality; however, I know they love me very much, and I need to remind myself that their aversion to me crawling inside their skin is a completely normal thing to feel.
In the past, I was not an expert at navigating this uncontrollable love for my friends. My inability to understand it and control it almost caused the demise of the friendship that meant more than anything in the world to me. Having someone love you as much as I love my friends can understandably be a burden to the other party. I pride myself if the knowledge that no one could love anything as much as I love these two people, but looking back this knowledge also made me very dependent on them and fearful of having them taken away from me. Putting myself into their shoes made me understand how stressful and tiresome someone like this could be; knowing that they love you so much trying to express it caused them physical pain is scary no matter how much you love them back.
In the end, I learned to navigate each of my friends' personal boundaries in regard to my affection. Although I still have the same amount of love for each of them, I learned that love is an emotion to be tamed for the survival of relationships most important to you, when necessary. I NEEDED to be less dependent on them and the love I received from them in order to keep them in my life at all. This may sound like they don’t show their appreciation for my friendship, but in reality, they are true friends for forcing me out of this delusion I was living. Being that dependent on people is not healthy for any person involved, and being told of the weight I was putting on them showed me the heavy load I was carrying myself.
Sometimes I still get caught up feeling hopeless in my search for someone or something that can show me as much love as I show it. Navigating platonic love is a minefield of emotions and boundaries that I think are even more complicated than anything romantic. I also think they are more rewarding. With time and maturity, I hope to realize that I don’t need to be attached at the hip in order to have someone next to me. I have definitely come a long way, but I am no expert in this field—and maybe I never will be.
Either way…this post wouldn’t be possible without my two besties, love you to the moon and back (platonically) <3
Love,
Isabella
Photograph: Pinterest