Today’s Featured Comment
Lisa wrote: “just have fun getting to know a new person in your life whether he turns into a friend or a future mate.”
ABSOLUTELY. During the same dating cycle in which I met my now-husband, I also met my best friend. In fact, I met my friend before I met my husband! We chatted online for a minute — NOT on a dating site, but on a general city-wide chat site which nevertheless I frequented looking for DATES in my new city — before he described his looks, and without even thinking I told him flat-out “I’d love to be your friend, but i gotta tell you right up front that I will not be physically attracted to you.”
I DO NOT recommend this kind of brutal honestly to others. (Remember: THROW THE NET WIDE.)
Nevertheless he came over that very night and we fascinated each other, staying up talking until 3 a.m. Within a year, we had each run out our respective apartment leases and established a house-share together; other housemates came and went, but the two of us were the “founding elders.”
He was an amazing resource as I continued to date. I brought my dates home to be vetted by my “little brother” just as other women bring home their dates to be vetted by their families-of-origin. At least half a dozen times he pointed out big red flags that I hadn’t yet spotted. And when I brought home the man who is now my husband, a REALLY weird thing happened: turns out my friend and my date had gone to high school together in the same tiny town an hour away from the big city where we all lived. While they’d never been really CLOSE friends, they hung out often, and had dropped out of touch in the ten years since graduation.
I didn’t get a word in edgewise for three hours, and all three of us were a preferential social unit for most of four years. 
I’m now about as far away geographically as I can get from that friend — on the opposite coast, which happened when my husband enlisted in he military at age 30 — but we’ll be “brother and sister” for life. I’m godmother to he and his wife’s five children, and he is always the first to pitch in both money and personal time whenever I take up a new avenue for my activism/advocacy for gifted & talented teens.
And all because I still agreed to meet with him face to face 15 years ago, even though I already knew that due to his appearance alone he would NOT be a romantic/sexual prospect.
I repeat: THROW THE NET WIDE, because you never know when someone unexpected and wonderful will swim in.
Cheers — Spike
[This comment was originally posted in this conversation. ~ Eds.]
this is very interesting that i came across this. i had a BF whose father did not like him, and did not approve of what he did, and his father died years ago. he has had a pseudo-mentor father. he has done very well in business. he is also into porn,
Well, this topic and options are so exciting that I just have to share what a group of women are doing in France. I hope you can open this link to read and listen. It comes from CBC radio, the Sunday edition --a Canadian website, Michael Enright, air
I have been doing that for 7 years. Tired of it all.