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I Deal With This If I Don't Like What I'm Feeling?: Advice

The person is in love with their best friend and wants advice on how to deal with these feelings. Proximity and similarity are likely reasons for developing these romantic feelings, as best friends spend a lot of time together and likely have many attributes in common. To try to decrease these feelings, the advice suggests decreasing proximity by not seeing the friend as much, and to dissociate positive emotions and feelings from them. However, love is still a subjective experience, so there may not be an entirely objective way to control these feelings. Understanding why the feelings developed can help in dealing with being in love with a best friend.

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patriciasantosx
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52 views1 page

I Deal With This If I Don't Like What I'm Feeling?: Advice

The person is in love with their best friend and wants advice on how to deal with these feelings. Proximity and similarity are likely reasons for developing these romantic feelings, as best friends spend a lot of time together and likely have many attributes in common. To try to decrease these feelings, the advice suggests decreasing proximity by not seeing the friend as much, and to dissociate positive emotions and feelings from them. However, love is still a subjective experience, so there may not be an entirely objective way to control these feelings. Understanding why the feelings developed can help in dealing with being in love with a best friend.

Uploaded by

patriciasantosx
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Problem from the person asking for advice: Why am I in love with my best friend and how do

I deal with this if I dont like what Im feeling?

Advice:

With regards to your first question, one of the possible reasons why you fell in love
with your best friend is proximity. Since he is your best friend, it is very likely that you see
each other everyday. It is very much possible that you do the same things together, talk about
the same things, and you probably are in the same institution with him be it school or work.
Proximity is also one of the major factors in the formation of friendships. In a Pew survey
conducted in 2006, 38% of people married and people in long-term relationships actually met
either in school or work, and some crossed paths in the neighborhood, gym, church and the
like.

In line with this, since the person you are in love with is your best friend, one of the
possible reasons why this happened is similarity. Donn Byrne and his colleagues in 1971
found out that the more someones attitudes are similar to you, the more you will like the
person. Since this person is your best friend, there is a big possibility that you have the same
characteristics as him, and there goes your eminent attraction to him. What is more satisfying
than being in love with a person who has the same beliefs, interests, and attributes as you?

If you are going to ask me how to deal with it in the context of not liking what you
feel for him, aside from trying not to see him or be with him for a while to decrease the
proximity, try not to associate him or his presence with positive emotions or with any
rewarding things or feelings. The concept of reward theory of attraction states that we tend to
like people whose behavior we like and people who we associate with rewarding events, and
even feelings. Hoffman and colleagues in 2010 confirmed this phenomenon of liking (and
even disliking) by association. Although it sounds very negative, one of the supposedly
effective ways of trying to make this love fade is to dissociate rewarding feelings from the
person you are in love with, in this case, your best friend. I am not saying that you should
stop being friends with him, but there is a line - a clear line - between friendship and romantic
attraction. You should know which is which.

However, although there are scientific and empirical data on love, I think this
phenomenon is still subjective. You may try to veer away from it by contradicting the
findings about it, but in the end, as cheesy and clich as it may sound, love is still something
very internal and intrinsic. I do not think that there is one objective method on controlling it.
But there are reasons why you fell in love with your best friend, and everything that I stated
can help you have an idea on how to deal with it at the very least.

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