I just read a Tweet from @GoogleFacts that said, “An average of 2 friends are lost every time someone falls in love,” and thought to myself…that shouldn’t happen.

But it does, because we place the obsession of one person’s love above the steadfast love of our many friends.

Photo Credit: Dragon Todorovic (Creative Commons)

It amazes me how easily we ditch friends the moment a potential love affair enters our sights. We bail on Bachelor evenings and bro nights, we skip a study session or workout, all to spend time with a new interest. Then we go as far as to keep the boy or girl that caught our attention away from our friends for far too long before we actually allow them to meet because… “I didn’t want to introduce them without them being the real deal” or whatever excuse comes to mind.

And that’s why we lose friends over love—because erotic love outshadows agape love. Because we think some new fling is more important than a lifelong friendship. Because we think we must play to the emotional and physical needs of our love interest rather than support, enjoy, and journey with our best friends. 

If you do any relationship right, you should never lose friends.

Remember all those heartbreaks where your friends let you cry on their shoulder or complain to them or say “I told ya so”? Well, your friends know you pretty well and if you want to gauge if the next person you want to date is worth it, make them hang out with your friends within the first couple dates. You’ll get the honest feedback you need right away from your friends rather than discovering it months later on your own.

I think dating is all wrong when we create a fantasy for ourselves to date in. It can happen in two ways:
#1: We create a world where we can date this person and not let them near anyone else—no friends, parents, coworkers involved.
#2: We become someone we’re not—city girls become country gals, the non-athletes become sport heroes, the nice become naughty.

If we create a world for our dating to exist outside the actual world we live in, the relationship is bound to fail because reality is the only place dating can survive.

You have to be you. You need to pull dating into your life rather than leave your life for dating. Friends and family are forever, dating rarely is. I think the quickest way to see if the person you’re dating is a lifetime investment, is by showing them your life, raw and real. Ask them to come to game night, invite them to a family birthday party, make them go to Hot Yoga or hang with the guys for a night. That’s how you keep your friends and that’s how you keep dating real.