How to Fall in Love With Your Friends / A Guide to Stay in Love FOREVER

I’m always falling in love with my friends. I can’t help it! When you’ve continuously built up so much admiration, respect, and care for a person, can you truly help not to fall in love with them? Even just a little? I guess it would depend on how you define love. I’m not talking about a sexual or perverted type of love. A selfish or jealous one. Not the romantic love associated with weddings and children. None of those. Maybe another person wouldn’t say “falling in love,” but rather just that they care for or simply love them. But a true friendship isn’t plainly “just” or “simple”. In fact, it can be the loveliest love of all. And to be in love, you first have to fall.

You cannot automatically love a person, even if you really wanted to. It’s the kind of thing that takes a little bit of time or a stronger dose of magic. You fall in love with a person’s qualities, the way they think, their mannerisms, the way they excel, or are passionate about something. These things are not immediate. I’m sure love at first sight doesn’t exist, for that’s just lust— which I do not recommend attaching to friends. But to fall in love with them? That’s something you can keep doing over and over and over again.

Say you meet this really cool guy.. we’ll name him Ted. You don’t really know him yet, so you’re not so all-the-way-sure of him. But each time you hang around, you get to know him better and better. He’s been through hell, but he still radiates optimism. Not only that, he’s so generous–in fact, you’ve never met another person so selfless. He’s tenatious and incredibly self motivated, which inspires you. And before you know it, just like that, you’ve begun to fall in love with your friend, Ted.

It might be construed as an overly romantic, or perhaps dramatic way of looking at it, from society’s standards, but it’s absolutely true. And once you realize how good it feels to fall deeper and deeper in love with your friends, it makes it even better, because you realize that love doesn’t have to be some complicated, far-fetched thing. You can have it all the time, in your every day, with anyone you stumble upon- if you so choose to.

Love doesn’t have to be categorized into boxes, limited to a singular way of thinking, or reserved for a specific person or time that may never come. It can be free and flowy. Love can be anything, anytime, with anyone- if you let it. And if you do, you’ll be a much happier person for it.

Love is never ending either. It has waves and pitfalls sure, just like anything else. It might even have cracks or large holes where it once imploded. Maybe a large field where opposing forces once battled. Casualties that couldn’t be saved in the end, even with all the therapies and surgeries. Those loves always know how to stick to the back of your throat. But they are still loves, after all.

The best loves are the ones that keep developing. Ted gets a promotion, and you’re so incredibly proud and happy for him. He falls into a different type of love and gets married and your heart warms because you know how badly he’s wanted a family. His kids feel like your own kids and you know you would give them a kidney in a heartbeat. Maybe Ted wakes up and wants a new life, so he puts on his swim cap and hurls himself as hard and as fast as he can into a new profession or direction and wow, your love for Ted magnifies, and magnifies, and magnifies.

People are beautiful, frienships are beautiful, they are rare and special and important. And they deserve true love.

It’s not such a weird thought after all, it’s love. It’s profound and beautiful and boundless and I hope you don’t guard it so much. You can let it loose. Let it wrap around the arms your friends. Allow it transform them into family. So yeah, I always end up falling in love with my friends… and I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.