In one episode of Friends , Joey decides he wants to be in a long-term relationship. She suggests that she and Chandler work so well because they were friends first βmaybe he should try that.
In a classic Joey interpretation, he takes this to mean he should hit on his existing female friends. But according to social psychologists, she was right. A study published Monday in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that roughly two-thirds of romantic relationships begin as platonic friendships. Stinson tells Inverse these results challenge outdated, dominant narratives about romantic relationships and reflect a more accurate reality.
How the discovery was made β Stinson and colleagues first reviewed a sample of previous studies about how romantic relationships begin. They found that nearly 75 percent of studies of those studies focused on a romantic spark between strangers.
Only eight percent focused on friendships that later develop into romances. They then performed a meta-analysis of seven studies they conducted in their labs. This varied slightly among age, gender, and ethnic demographics. Nearly half of the students reported that their preferred way of developing a romantic relationship was by being friends first. This far surpassed other options like dating apps.
To Stinson, this finding suggests a few possibilities. Among university students, "friends-first initiators" were friends for one-to-two years before beginning a romantic relationship. Stinson says this length of pre-romance friendships means it is likely that the couples were genuine, platonic friends before transitioning to romance.
