Staff writer - Nyasha Watson
So this statement might seem a bit trivial. However, I recently had a very enlightening conversation with one of my male friends. We were talking about a recent basketball match and he was getting quite animated in disagreement of all my points. So I was getting a bit annoyed, thus I changed the subject and enquired about the new happenings of his love life.
This is where the conversation got a bit interesting, because he replied by saying that he had two female friends who were potential candidates to be his girlfriend but he was not sure who to choose as yet. First, I applaud him because he is thinking about a monogamous relationship, which I am happy for because of his “history”.
I then proceeded to ask him why he was thinking about those girls because I thought they were his friends. I then jokingly asked him if he has lost his game. He then stated that in this age where AIDS is becoming so prevalent it is safer to form a relationship with someone who is already known to.
Plus, it is a natural succession plan for friendship to be developed into an intimate relationship. This is in contrast with forming an intimate relationship with someone who you are not familiar with. Well, he did not say it in those exact words but the basic idea was there and I was really impressed with how he was reasoning out his prospect for a future relationship knowing as I have stated before his “history”.
Are they just friends...or is there more to it?
Therefore, it is not that a man and a woman cannot be friends, but it is better if they were friends first before they form an intimate relationship. This is so because they would have already been familiar with each other, so the early “nervous” period of a new relationship would have been escaped because they would have already had a bond.
And more importantly, you would have been somewhat familiar with the person’s relationship history, so you would have an idea of how active they have been sexually. Also, you will feel more comfortable asking someone you are familiar with to do an HIV test. What do you think…?
