05-19-01
Dearest AskPixie,
Imagine my delight at not only having come to your site to entertain myself inbetween exceedingly boring web classes (classes about the web, not classes being given over the web) not only to find original and compelling content, but also an answer to every dilemma (sp?) facing my poor head! Wonderful is not the word for it, but rather something exceedingly wonderful.
One word problem that is taxing my mind lately goes like this. Let's hypothetically say that there exist somewhere in this world a young man and a young woman. And let's assume that these people have been friends for an approximate length of ten years. Let's say that these people at the length of ten years decide that they would like to end the friendship portion of the relationship and begin the sexual portion of the relationship. Now, let's assume there's a date at which they will meet to end this friendship -- they have some drinks, talk about when they used to be friends, etc. All the things friends do, as this is their last night purely as friends, hypothetically of course. We could get into the issues of "can friends be friends with sex," and you may well feel the need to address this issue in your response to me, if you do indeed respond, but my question is this, at what point can this be considered a long term relationship? I mean, it already is a long term relationship, but the dating portion is to start one night after that long term relationship ends. Maybe this isn't so interesting, but I'm bored.
-- TJM
TJM, your hypothetical sitution and resulting question is an interesting one.
On one hand, you have an extremely long-term friendship, but on the other, you have a burgeoning relationship -- should you define a relationship as being the point at which one starts twiddling hoohoos with another.
I do believe that friends can still be friends with sex, because I've seen it happen, and the term "fuck buddies" doesn't exist for no reason. I've seen some beautiful relationships start as platonic friendships. However, I am confused as to why having sex automatically equals relationship in your scenario.
To me, romance creeping into the friendly activities is the hallmark of a changing relationship, followed by dating, and then the hot monkey sex. Lots of relationship-relationships exist without sex (those crazy virgins and otherwise chaste people!), so I hate to see you make that your defining point. But if you must, you must.
So, according to my sources*, the actual length of your overall 'relationship' is divided into a 'pre-sex' friendship and a 'post-sex' relationship, the 'post-sex' part the relevant portion here. The duration of your relationship-relationship begins on the day that the sexual or romantic act occurs, and ends in the far distant future. The ten years of friendship, on the other hand, is relegated to being an anecdote you get to tell the grandchildren someday...
"Grandpa, tell us how you and Grandma met."
"Well, Tommy, it all started about ten years before the hoohoo twiddling began..."
In short, your long-term relationship begins when you consider yourself and your partner in crime to have begun dating, and hopefully never ends, unless you really want it to do so.
--pixie
*It's amazing the things I get to talk about with my clients at work! They are an amazing source of inspiration and enlightenment**.
**Plus, they give me money.
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I'm fairly certain that more than three people out there want to know something. I expect that each and every one of you reading this has at least one question burning inside of them, yearning to be set free and answered by yours truly.
