You’ve met someone new. You click instantly. You start spending tremendous amounts of time together and quickly form a friendship that leaves you wondering how you ever got along without this person. It’s a different bond and relationship than the one with your significant other. You’re not planning your lives together, dealing with finances, or figuring out living arrangements. It’s all about supporting each other while navigating these issues.
Call it a friend crush, a kindred spirit, but if you’re experiencing any of the following, you might be in a friend love:
1. You text each other constantly, ferociously. You’ve barely finished typing a text to your friend, when the next one pops into your head and you crack up picturing your friend’s reaction. When something funny happens, you tell your significant other first, then have a reflex reaction to grab your phone and share it with your friend.
2. Your texting continues late into the night. You should be sleeping or spending time with your significant other, but your friend just sent you a Facebook snapshot of an insane post from a stranger and it leaves you “distexting” (discussing disgusting things via text) if Facebook has become some people’s free, open therapy plan.
3. Speaking of therapy, your new friend is happy to listen to you vent. You call to complain to them about everything from your inability to fit into your favorite pair of jeans, to the annoying thing your significant other did and the rude, hygienically-challenged person who sat next to you on the subway and clipped their toenails during the morning commute.
4. You’re down to participate in your friend’s spontaneous plans to do nothing. Your friend is so enthusiastic about a trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond that you can’t help but feel enthused as well.
5. You become invested in your friend’s family and know their parents, siblings and friends by name and personality. If one of these people does something to upset your friend, you find yourself becoming upset as well.
6. When you meet to do something together, you’re often dressed alike. This is because you’ve shopped at the same stores and put on a clean pair of jeans for the same outings. Similarly, you’ve made an unspoken pact not to shower on a lazy Sunday.
7. Your day doesn’t seem complete without checking in with each other. Your significant other doesn’t understand the constant need to call and text with your friend multiple times a day, but this is non-negotiable.
8. When your friend gets slighted by a group of unfriendly, superior-feeling types, you feel the need to plot revenge with or without your friend.
9. When your friend posts something on a social media website and nobody responds, you’re the first to jump in with a supportive, even if slightly made-up, reply.
10. Your friend sporadically springs for your morning or early evening coffee just to be nice. You pick up a couple of your friend’s favorite doughnuts on your way to meet up.
11. You start finishing each other’s sentences. You know what your friend will say by facial expressions, before any words are uttered. Sometimes you can talk to each other simultaneously, all the while listening and responding to the statements and questions being exchanged between you. To the outside world, it sounds like you’re interrupting each other. To the two of you, it’s just how you converse.
12. When you’ve had a terrible encounter, your friend will declare it the most “hideous circumstance known to mankind” and try to help you resolve the pangs of its aftermath. This is in contrast to your significant other who will hold you, kiss you and tell you that, “tomorrow will be better.” Both serve essential purposes.
13. You appreciate the quirky side of your friend. Like their obsession with quality paper products and upholstered furniture, and their random distaste for sneakers.
14. When you tell this friend about a success in your life, he or she is genuinely happy for and will celebrate with you. There is no room for jealously, just mutual appreciation, in the friendship.
15. You get called out when necessary. When shopping at a deeply discounted retail-clothing store, your friend is not afraid to stop you from buying a patterned, brightly colored top that you’ve labeled as “really funky” but is actually “dizzy spell inducing.”
16. You are never worried that your friend will cancel plans, be late or throw an attitude. Flaky is not part of her vocabulary.
17. Your friend is your biggest cheerleader when you’re going after something you want. He or she always encourages you to go for it. This friends sees you in the way you’ve always wanted to see yourself.
18. Your friendship energy is palpable. You feed off each other’s moods. Strangers start asking if you and your friend are related or “just best friends.”
19. You start taking on your friend’s personal anecdotes and jokes as your own. You start sentences with references to such tales like, “My friend _____ told me this funny story that….”
20. If you were back in grade school, you would have bought “Best Friends” necklaces and worn them everywhere with or without your new friend around. You’d have a person to mark down in your Slam Book next to “Who is your best friend?” You’d know all this friend’s favorite movie stars, who they secretly have a crush on and be willing to pass notes for them during class. People would probably find your friendship as a form of co-dependence. Maybe they’re jealous. Or maybe there’s truth in it. But what do you care? You’re in friend love.
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