Staying friends when you wanted more Reddit

Posting here and not on r/relationships because I want to know how you ladies of reddit feel about this. After a breakup, if it wasn't on awful terms why waste all that time knowing someone so well if there are some qualities of a friendship? In a breakup there are always going to be some feelings of pain and sadness but do you feel it's better to just cut contact or try to stay on good terms?

Tell me your stories! Do you think it's possible? In what circumstances? Why or why not?

This is half a rant and half advice, very good advice at that. I see so many guys telling other guys that you won't get anywhere in romance if you stay "just friends" with a girl. That's objectively false. From experience, every girl I've dated has been a good friend of mine first. And I mean an actual friend, not a "I'll feign friendship until she trusts me and then go in for the kill" nonsense. I want guys who are unsure how dating works, or are insecure, to understand that women simply want to feel safe and like they actually matter, and aren't just a face attached to a body. If you get rejected, that's okay, you can still hang out with a girl and enjoy spending time with them and getting to know them. Not everything is about a step by step code to getting her naked; that's easy to notice and very unattractive.

Tl;dr Treat girls like people and enjoy their company and you'll be way more attractive than if you objectify them

Edit: I cannot believe how much this post is blowing up haha, thanks for the support and the criticism. I'll try to be more active here in the future and am happy to discuss stuff like this further. I'm also not surprised by how many grumpy dudes are challenging me on this

Edit 2: Oof 3k upvotes and whatever Silver means, I appreciate this a lot, this is also my first reddit post that I've ever properly made so thank you for giving me some gratification. I should address some confusion in the replies, namely a lot of people seem confused and think that I'm saying that you should turn off any attraction you have to anyone who isn't a romantic partner, but I'm not. You can have friends that you think are attractive without it meaning anything, I think people are very quick to act on hormones and should think about how many people they see in a day, it's unreasonable to think they all wanna date you. Nevertheless thank you all for this big support

Edit 3: 4k upvotes and reddit gold, thank you so much. My introduction to using Reddit is a pleasant one haha, hopefully people have been helped by this, and I want to especially thank the people who DM me asking for advice or just saying thanks, you're special and awesome beyond compare lol

I met my friend (I’ll call him Jake) at work about two years ago, and we immediately clicked. We got close pretty fast. Throughout the entire time of knowing him, I’ve been in a long-term relationship.

A couple months after meeting, he confessed to having feelings for me. I let him down gently, telling him I like him and care about him, but I love my partner. My partner is aware of this, but he trusts me and doesn’t have a problem with our friendship.

We’ve continued talking regularly as friends, at work, through text, and hanging out occasionally.

He got into a relationship with one of our coworkers, Emma, about 6 months ago, and I was really happy for them. Her and I got along at work, interacted positively on social media, and even played animal crossing together recently. I thought we were cool.

Unfortunately, people at work always talked about Jake crushing on me, and those comments weighed on her. She was insecure of our friendship, and got mad when we hung out together (which wasn’t even very often).

He told me that she recently looked through our messages while he was sleeping and said she felt he has been emotionally cheating on her this whole time. I consider him my best friend, and we have long deep conversations. I don’t think anything in our messages can be deemed inappropriate, but she had a problem with it nonetheless. She wanted him to stop talking to me, which he wasn’t okay with. Especially because there were other aspects of the relationship he wasn’t happy with.

So he broke up with her, and told me that she may be right to be feeling insecure, because deep down he still has feelings for me.

Would it be selfish to continue our friendship as it is? I don’t want to hurt him by being close friends and never anything more, and I definitely don’t want to cause issues in his relationships. I would be sad to have him leave my life since he’s my closest friend, but I don’t want to hurt him.

I walked away this morning from a girl that wanted to be friends. I made my intentions known weeks ago and asked her out. She initially said yes, then had some issue come up and she would reschedule she never did.

I asked her again to go out a few weeks later she said she was so busy, and would check her schedule. But couldn't make any promises.

Today she told me that I can text her or call her, and she will be my friend.

I told her no thanks I have enough friends, and I could never look at you as a friend. And I told her if she changes her mind let me know.

She was so mad. And blocked me everywhere a few minutes later.

Oh well her loss.

They say the first step to getting over it is to admit it, so fuck it: I fell in love. Pretty badly.

Sadly, things didn't work out. I don't know if the other person ever felt the same way about me (probably not), or if they're just self destructive with their relationships. Maybe it's a bit of both.

Either way, it wouldn't have worked out even if they did share the same feelings.

So now we come to hard part: how to stay friends afterwards?

I don't want to lose this person. Aside from my feelings for them, I admire and respect them as a person, and know there is still a lot I can learn from them.

On top of that, the chances of us seeing each other again are high. The chances of us sleeping together again are also very high.

How do I deal with this in a way that'll hurt me the least...?

I dated a guy for 2 months- we had fun, got physical, etc. We mutually decided that we wouldn’t match up solely because of our future plans (he’s looking to marry asap) but we really enjoy each other.

We did decide to stay friends although I needed a bit of time to let the romantic feelings subside. He would text a quick “hey how are you?” A couple times a week, but we stopped hanging out.

At what point do we start acting “like friends” and what exactly should this look like?

This is something I have learned from experience, and took me too long to realize.

Every time I have liked a guy friend and he rejected me, I fought my feelings and forced myself to stay friends, and still be my super kind and giving self. But this always backfires, and will leave you heartbroken and having a hard time moving on.

I have had enough guys using me to get (almost) everything they would from me if they were dating me - the care, attention, ego boost, hugs etc. I have learned that a lot of those should only come if the person is equally interested. I am not saying that you should be mean or hurt him - but rather not offer any "girlfriend benefits" without being the girlfriend. This includes gifts, giving him pills and babying him when he is sick, putting all your attention on him, hoping that he will see how amazing you are.

You have every right to reject being friends with him if this is hurting your heart. It's totally fair to avoid him and cut contact to basics, without putting in much emotion if this is what will help you. And I truly believe this is the only way he will be able to see your worth.