Where the sidewalk ends.

[kirsten85]

Can lovers turn into friends? This is a question that I have been forced to ask myself lately. I am not talking about casual boyfriends or friends with benefits. These are connections that have more potential to become a lasting friendship. No, I am talking about the person that you date, you really connect to, you fall in love with, you in vision

Comments

[nicesweater]

I personally don't think it's possible. I think the "strength" required to make such a move is really the strength to convince yourself of something unreasonable. The passionate, soulful connection you mentioned is dependant on a physical and ideological exchange between lovers that, once discontinued, makes all other exchanges--those made by friends, for example--illegitimate. An attempt to be friends after such a relationship is an attempt to, not forget about, but to disestablish that which has already been established, and this isn't possible, in my opinion, because such an establishment stays established constantly--even after the break-up--for reasons beyond my understanding.

These are just my own convictions, but at the same time, I'm unconvinced that these sort of convictions are subjective. People behave differently after a break-up, one could argue, so such convictions must be subjective. I would tell them that people behave differently because they differ in their knowledge, which is a reflection of their desire for knowledge and their capacity to reason. Those who try to be friends after a break-up, whether they fail or "succeed," success being the equivalent of the denial that knowledge can be gained, simply lack convictions, and on some level, perhaps beyond one's consciousness, they feel discomfort because every human has natural instincts for self-preservation. Our convictions are simply an expression of our capacity to self-preserve. Those who practice such convictions know this because they don't have the discomfort of the conviction-less, but instead, a deeply satisfying sense that one's self is being preserved. What makes a situation like a break-up so hard to thoughfully tackle is the fact that the mentioned satisfaction of the convictional can be just as difficult to sense as the discomfort of the conviction-less.

[nicesweater]

Yeah sorry got kinda carried away.