Movies and pop culture have often sold a different idea of romance. Two attractive strangers lock eyes in a crowded room, and then poof – instant fireworks. Love at first sight, however, is not that common in real life. In reality, romance plays out by very different rules.Turns out, the person you send memes to in the middle of the night, grab coffee with on a tough day, or call at 2 a.m. might just be your most likely shot at love. A study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that two-thirds of romantic couples start out as friends.
Most studies focused on the spark
This study explored the striking gap between popular belief and real-life relationship patterns. While films and dating culture often sell the idea of instant attraction, data suggest that most relationships grow out of existing friendships. Most importantly, previous studies overlooked friends-first initiation of romance. While examining a sample of previous studies on how relationships begin, the authors found that nearly 75% focused on the spark of romance between strangers. Only 8 % looked at romance that develops among friends over time. “There are a lot of people who would feel very confident saying that we know why and how people choose partners and become a couple and fall in love, but our research suggests that is not the case,” lead author Danu Anthony Stinson, a psychology professor at the University of Victoria, Canada, said in a release. “We might have a good understanding of how strangers become attracted to each other and start dating, but that’s simply not how most relationships begin.“
Why friendship matters
The researchers of this study analyzed data from nearly 1,900 university students and crowdsourced adults. About 66% of the participants reported that their current or most recent romantic relationship began as a friendship. There was not much variation across gender, level of education, or ethnic groups. However, the rate of friends-first initiation was even higher among 20-somethings and within LGBTQ+ communities. In this group, 85% of such couples started off as friends.Most of these participants reported that they did not enter their friendships with romantic intentions or attraction. These friendships lasted a while, before they turned into romantic relationships. The interactions were purely platonic when they were friends. More than half of participants reported that starting as friends was their preferred way of developing a romantic relationship.“Our research suggests that the lines between friendship and romance are blurry, and I think that forces us to rethink our assumptions about what makes a good friendship but also what makes a good romantic relationship,” Stinson added.
