Valentine Week - 4

'Platonic friendships provide a fertile soil for unrequited love'

The time comes when I have to finally talk about friendship and love differentiation. 

Here's what a recent study gotta say.

Friendship-Based Love vs. Romantic Love - The research evidences a surprising difference between romantic love and friendship-based love. In order to understand these differences, we must first understand the distinction between "wanting" and "liking." Research has suggested that wanting and liking are two different motivations, which are mutually exclusive. The results of the study show that romantic/passionate love is associated with the dopamine-rich systems characteristic of wanting, while friendship-based love related to the brain areas high in opiates characteristic of liking. The data suggest that romantic love is a motivation or a drive based on wanting, focused on a specific target, rather than a feeling or emotion.

Another study says, 

Men and Women Can't be Just Friends - The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them—a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt—basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends. Women, too, were blind to the mindset of their opposite-sex friends; because females generally were not attracted to their male friends, they assumed that this lack of attraction was mutual. As a result, men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends.

Men were also more willing to act on this mistakenly perceived mutual attraction. Both men and women were equally attracted to romantically involved opposite-sex friends and those who were single; “hot” friends were hot and “not” friends were not, regardless of their relationship status.  However, men and women differed in the extent to which they saw attached friends as potential romantic partners.  Although men were equally as likely to desire “romantic dates” with “taken” friends as with single ones, women were sensitive to their male friends’ relationship status and uninterested in pursuing those who were already involved with someone else. 

Two main drawbacks of these two are,

1. It still does not speak neurologically about why we confuse friendship with love sometimes

2. The studies are not from India and the emotions are always highly cultural dependent

Nevertheless, this is a vast area of research and I must be very bold to call myself a amateur too. Came across a clear line explaining all that needs to be understood,

The first stage of romantic love begins with attraction. Whether you have been best friends for a long time or you just met the person, you begin your romantic relationship when there is that feeling of attraction.

So, you get to decide if you want to seek out if this can happen in your friendship.