Hello everyone.

RPW doesn't seem to have a strong philosophy considering males' and females' "just friends". So what I have for you here is the sum of my experience (based on uncountable cases) on the course of the relationship between a married woman and a married man who label one another as a "close friend". and what I need you to do is to report to what percentage does my experience align with yours so maybe we can get to something here.

Before you continue reading, please have in mind that I'm completely against the idea of a married woman having a close male friend.

Also please have in mind that not every case in my experience followed the course that I'm about to share with you till the end, some ended in stages earlier than the final one and some took entirely different courses, however, this course is the mainstream.

Finally, keep in mind that it takes many years usually for the whole thing to unfold, sometimes +10 years.

It goes like this:

Stage 1: they meet in school, a workplace, an internet forum or the neighborhood, they each think that the other one is a nice person

Stage 2: they get closer and more personal, each now knows the other one thoroughly, they work with each other like a charm and communicate on an advanced level that they never thought they would achieve with someone, each thinks of the other one as a close friend.

Stage 3: The man feels something is missing, he finally comes to the realization that he's in love but he must not show it because that's going to be no good, he struggles with this for years, she notices it (most of the time) but decides to ignore it because she still needs her dear friend, he deeply cares for her and she still thinks of him as a close friend but is slightly worried.

Stage 4 (THRESHOLD STAGE. It starts to have a poor prognosis from now on): He can't take it anymore and does something about it (anywhere form a confession to taking sexual advances) she does not welcome it and decides that the friendship is over, he feels broken and she feels sad about how it turned out, things calm down for a while.

Now depending on the man here there can be three outcomes.

Stage 5A: he thinks that the whole thing was his fault because he kept being around a married woman while he was in love with her, he decides to leave her at peace. She misses him from time to time and that declaration of love left a weird feeling behind.

Stage 5B (FINAL): he starts to get annoying, stalking, harassment, you name it, it gets worse and worse, eventually it ends with moderate trouble. Sometimes shit goes down seriously.

Stage 5C: he decides that he's going to do his best to swiftly steal her from her husband in ways more subtle and efficient than the guy on stage 5B. He's not successful eventually and decides to forget about it and move on. However, she was very slightly impressed.

Stage 6 (FINAL. Comes only after 5A & 5C) something happens with her husband or marriage, he (the husband) flies away for months, he gets badly injured from a car accident, he gets depressed, or they have a big fight. The temptation to reconnect with the old friend gets bigger and bigger but with entirely different intentions. She finally does it and the curse is completed!

What do you think?