i like you as a friend aka kill me now please. there's a difference, between a friendship started from "liking" versus one started from "just friends." a friendship started from liking is one in which one party or the other likes the other one. hopefully for the sake of emotional happiness and joy to the world, it's both people liking each other. but as savvy cynical people rooted firmly in reality, we know that's not often the case. a friendship starting from "just friends" is pretty much everything else. the differences can be subtle and there can often be many gray areas but i think for most guy/girl friendships there can be a classification into either of these two categories. an example of a just friend friendship might be a friendship struck up while in the midst of a common activitiy, such as studying, working, playing etc.



but a friendship started from liking has an ulterior motive. a like friendship is fundamentally based on one person trying to get to know the other while wanting to get with them. be it relationship or otherwise. i don't think i need to define "get." now, this kind of friendship can be somewhat less "pure." i put pure in quotes because i don't want it to seem like a bad thing that friendships aren't pure. friendships start for millions of reasons, i'm just highlighting two general ones that i see. a like friendship is fueled by the innate desire to get to know someone to date them. this can lead to all sorts of situations and levels of depth and whatever. but we'll avoid that.



the main question here is, which one is more real as a friendship? actually you can't really answer that because a real friendship is a real friendship regardless of the motivation behind it. or is it? if a friendship starts because one person wants something from the other, is it a truly pure friendship? if i were to be only friends with you to get at your nice car and to get rides from you, is that a pure friendship? a friendship can start because we started sharing car rides but if it's based upon one person getting car rides then i might suspect an unpure friendship. so in this manner, is a "like friendship" a real friendship?



i realize of course that like friendships can transition into real friendships and that often happens, but is it somehow tainted if the like never goes away? then what you're dealing with is not a friend but someone who is always trying to get with you. there can be friends that you're attracted to and might possibly pursue under the right conditions, but to have an active liking, does that interfere with the creation of a real friendship?