A friend you can physically touch, fondle and show physical affection for: Sounds good!

Yes, I think it's important to build a friendship first, strong as sex urges may be in the beginning. Plunging into a whirlwind sex romance without a strong foundation of friendship right now is a bit nerve-wracking and anxiety-producing FOR ME, and I think it'll screw me up worse than I already am. So building that soft "cush" of friendship first is important.

I didn't read fully any of the posts. I'll respond based on your first post.

Do I think that friends are important in a full and healthy lifestyle? Yes. I also think it's important to have those friends tangible. But are friends more reliable than a relationship? Definitely not.

I moved across the country over a year ago. So all of my friends ended up on the other side of the country. I still had the friends but they were literally across the country from me. Were they still good friends? The good ones were. It was a good way to weed out the "fair weather friends." But not having them to hang out with was lonely.

My hubby was fantastic! I loved him (and still do) more than anything and he was so much fun to be around. But at the same time he was the only person that I hung out with. It was lonely. Very lonely.

"Friends simply hang out with each other and have a good time, lend advice when it feels it's needed, call each other on their shit, and just love the pleasure of company. "

I wouldn't really describe my friends as that way, I would describe my hubby as that way. He's my best friend. And I'm proud to say that. Our relationship is not at all based and dependent solely on sex and affection. It's a perk, not a requirement.

I do agree that if something was to ever happen between my hubby and I, the friends would be extremely important to help me bounce back. But I COULD do it alone too if I had to.

Anthem: I feel ya wholeheartedly.

Was moved 3 times during my childhood, and it was very tough to maintain "friendships" long-distance...most fizzled out. Or maybe we simply ran out of things to say to each other (it happens). So much better to be in close physical proximity to someone...then you can DO things together.

And, I agree, it's great to have your lover also be your best friend (isn't that the way it's supposed to work?). But I think we also need purely platonic friends around us to balance/level us out and give us some perspective on our lives, as long as they're not persnicketty, codependent types who are meddling in our relationship or marriage! It happens. Can do without the soap opera.

Best to keep "friends" topics clear of "relationship" topics in "friends'" conversations. Certain boundaries need to be obeyed, even if a "relationship" is going sour. "Friends" love to meddle and create drama. Maybe they mean well, maybe they mean to steal you away from your lover, either physically or emotionally (because the "friends" are lonely). Clear boundaries need to be obeyed.

As long as group activities can be engaged in without any weirdness, and advice is only given if asked for, we're all golden.

I keep very few friends for a reason. DS has been a savior to me. But that does not mean that all of my support groups are not a huge part of my life! So I would feel like I am cheating my friends if I had a lot of them I didn't trust.

Right now, a large part of my life revolves around rape recovery and confrontation of toxic parents and childhood abuse. A very large part of my life. A lot of my free time is spent on here, writing my letters of confrontation, and working through rape recovery. That's a very taxing process. And society assumes everyone has parents and everyone has a family and everyone was once a child. Well I don't consider myself to have parents or a family and I was surely never a child. So if ANYTHING comes up about childhood, I have nothing to add. And if I don't trust that person to tell them why, then it becomes very awkward very fast.

So I keep a few friends around and I'm comfortable with that. I have a couple girlfriends I hang out with, both from work. I have one guy friend I get lunch with after work sometimes (purely platonic on both ends)

I will say that I do have one long distance friendship that is thriving more than any other friendship I have. I met my hubby online. I also met this friend (male) around the same time. We have never met in person. But we talk on the phone every single day and he knows more details about my rapes than even my hubby does. He knows more about my day to day life than ANY of my in face friends do. And I'm extremely happy that I have him as part of my life and such a good friend.

And yes I can do without soap opera too. I don't mind helping you through your struggles in life, but don't make struggles where there are none.

Quality is better than quantity.

My last relationship has turned into a friendship. We still call each other and hang out occasionally, go see a movie or something.

I still feel the "pull" of physical attraction sometimes when I'm with her, as I'm sure she does with me (I can tell when she wants me to kiss her), but I'm kinda resisting that right now, 'cause we didn't entirely work on that level (it was mostly about me coming to her and her just sitting there looking pretty). I want a more mutually hot thing.

Mutually hot is good. I personally can't stand the girls that just want to be fawned over.....

Me neither. Once I pulled my head out of my own ass and looked at her objectively, got kinda disgusted with being with her. Dunno why I still hang out with her. Bored and lonely I guess.

Thanks, Anthem.

I understand the bored and lonely thing....more on a different scale of circumstances, but I still understand. Pulling your head out of your ass is (honestly) an extremely hard thing to do. It's very hard to look at things objectively if our mind was trained (by whatever source) to look subjectively. Our parents, teachers, peers, and society as a whole all plays a part in how we end up viewing others. All of that motivation to think one way makes it very hard to think on a different platform.

I find that a happy medium is always the most healthy. If you are totally submissive and insist on just being fawned over and taken care of on hands and knees, then you're not a healthy person for someone to be with. However, the opposite can be said as well. If you are totally independent and want no help emotionally, physically, financially, etc., from your partner, that is also unhealthy.

I say this a lot, my hubby and I are a team. We help each other out financially by sharing financial responsibilities, combining accounts (cell phone, health insurance, etc) to reduce our monthly payments as a whole, support each other's goals and dreams (which sometimes includes putting ours on hold if our partner is actively pursuing theirs, and visa versa, and sometimes the dreams can be pursued simultaneously), and most importantly in my opinion is we support each other emotionally. My hubby has seen me cry...fuck he's seen me curled up in the bottom of the shower sobbing. He's seen me balling my eyes out while sleeping and had to wake me up because I was having a panic attack during a night terror. And I've seen him cry too. His Mother wrote him an emotional letter about his life growing up and her point of view about it and it made him upset and cry. There have been other moments I've seen his eyes well up with tears as well. We have celebrated together at feats accomplished by the other, or together.

All of that is extremely important for a successful, healthy, loving relationship. A mutual one. A REAL relationship. The girls that just want to be fawned over don't even BEGIN to have the capability of being that half of a relationship. At least in my opinion. lol.

This explanation, too, is one of the reasons I see such a huge difference between friends and significant others. And also why I say my hubby is my best friend. I do not believe that "just friends" just platonic friends are capable of this level of commitment and fulfillment in a person. That's why I find healthy relationships so precious.

@anthem,
Beautifully stated.

Wow, very moving, Anthem. Your part about "balling my eyes out" rang true for me last night. My mother reminded me of how my brother had his head in his hands and sobbed when he was undergoing chemo for his (terminal) cancer, and, to this day, I regret not being there to hug him and cry with him. So I dreamt that I was there, it took me right into his chemo fog, when he was so weak, near death, and that sick state freaked the hell out of me, so I woke up, then felt guilty for not being able to handle that, and wept.

Thank you :)

@koolman

hey, it's okay for waking up and crying. You're still trying to process that time for whatever reason and working through the grieving process.

Dreams are nice because they are God's gifts to allow us to work through difficult experiences little by little. Obviously, you were ready for that dream because, you didn't psychologically supress it and it was allowed to occur.

I do the same thing myself. you aren't alone, my friend.

That thank you was aimed at Whispering. I guess we posted just about the same time :)

I guess I can be moving at 8am when I first wake up at times haha

@koolman

" so I woke up, then felt guilty for not being able to handle that, and wept."

I disagree that you were not able to handle it. The fact that it freaked you out or even that you wept does not mean that you were not able to handle it. I feel that you did handle it. You may not have handled it the way that society deems is appropriate to "handling" something successfully, but I see it as handling it 100%. Being honest enough to tell us you wept, to tell us that it freaked you out. To tell us you struggled with the dream and the emotions within it. That's handling it.

It has been three years since my rapes ended by the hands of one man. In that time, only 5 men out of the probably more than 100 I have met in those 3 years have I allowed to have physical contact with me (a hug). Only 5. One of those being my hubby. The 5th one actually just hugged me for the first time today. Does that mean I'm not "handling" my rape? Not at all. I am handling it in my own way, in my own time, and I am healthy because of that. That's exactly as you are handling it. In your own way, in your own time, and you are a healthy person because of it. :)

Thanks.