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Singer/songwriter Samantha Murphy has a fabulous song At the Laundromat" ♫ that describes a woman spending her rent money on new boots, new hair cut and color, all for the purpose of going out and finding a new guy—only then, she meets HIM over a pile of dirty clothes, yep, at the Laundromat.
“No makeup on, don’t even think my hair was combed, and it’s love, it’s love, it’s love!” she sings in the catchy refrain.
Recently, as I’ve listened to my friend Amanda* describe her string of first and second (and very rarely third) dates with men she’s meeting mostly online on big dating sites, I’ve been thinking about how many of the more recent couples I have talked with have built their relationships out of friendships that unexpectedly turned into something more.
My friends Amira and Jacob, for example, worked together ten years ago, but never saw one another as anything but colleagues. Every so often, after each of them had moved on from the consulting firm, they got together for coffee. But finally, one night two years ago, what had been feeling like a get together between two old friends turned into what felt like a date. ”We were walking through the city, and it had gotten really late,” recalls Amira, who was raised Muslim, “ I looked at Jacob and realized I wanted to put my head on his shoulder. He put his arm around me, and we both realized something had changed.”
Jacob, an observant Jew, felt the same way. “Amira had grown up since I’d last seen her,” he recalls (he’s ten years older), “She had a seriousness about her and a depth that I felt very connected with. I needed to see where this could evolve.” After two years of dating, complicated by a cross-country move, the two turned into a committed, co-habitating couple, and, last month, decided to get married in the fall.
“I was definitely looking for someone, “ Amira says. “But I didn’t see Jacob as someone I could date—or love—until that night we got together. That was when I realized our friendship could be a lot more.”
“Did you think it would get as serious as it has?” I asked.
“No, not really,” Amira told me. “He was a great guy, but we were so different, I didn’t think it would work out. An then, it did.”
Listening to Amira, I thought about my own relationship with A, and how, almost two years ago and between boyfriends, I’d invited him over for dinner, as a friend. Even though I didn’t think he’d make good boyfriend material for me, I liked him, and felt we should get together before I got all caught up in dating (again).
Yet when A came over, and we started to talk, I had a wonderful time; sometime before the end of that night, I knew he’d touched my heart. Only, like Amira, I didn’t really think we were going to become serious with one other; at the beginning of it all, it seemed like what we wanted in a long term partner was NOT what we saw in each other.
“I thought you were amazing, and you got everything I said, right away,” A recalls, “But you were in a corporate job and I was political; I didn’t know about the activism in your earlier life, or that social change was part of your values.”
“And I didn’t think we’d really have as much in common as we do,” I said. “But you were my friend and I liked you.”
Like Jacob with Amira, A was dubious about where our dating might lead, but because we got along so well, he decided to see what could happen. “There was a moment, perhaps 7 months in, when I started feeling like things were going to work out,” A says. “It was when you said some things that showed you really got me, and you cared about my being happy.”
Are there signs that someone you consider a friend is better off as—or will someday become—partner material? Or is this one of those random things that sometimes flower and take hold, surprisingly enough?
In my case, there was the fact that while I didn’t consider A a boyfriend prospect, something about who he was totally touched my heart (not to mention I responded to his humor, kindness and smarts).
