When friendship becomes love
Once, a long, long time ago, it could have happened before. Simone had visited Lukas one afternoon after school. She wore a self-sewn dress made of a light floral fabric. "And then she pushed her leg up, and for a moment I saw in her more than just her friend." For half his life he had forgotten this scene. Until the day he kissed Simone.
Simone Winkler, 48, and Lukas Winkler, 46, (names have been changed by the editor) are sitting in their new condo at the big table in the kitchen. Behind Luke hangs the oil painting he inherited. Behind Simone is a bouquet of red roses on the shelf. Her little son is playing with his Ü-Ei characters, Simone's big is rehearsing with his band. Lukas gets a bottle of wine from the freezer. It is warm and cozy and very familiar in this round. One senses: The two know each other forever, but their love is young and alive.
Simone and Lukas Winkler have succeeded, as everyone has probably already thought: They have made a friendship into a relationship. The two are in good company. Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem have come together for a long time, also Roman Herzog and Alexandra von Berlichingen have come from deep sympathy to love, as well as the TV presenter Margarethe Schreinemakers and her friend Jean-Marie mouse. The survey of a dating service among 620 singles revealed: A quarter of single men cherish their best friend more than just friendly feelings, after all, eleven percent of women are the same with their best friend.
"That's new," says Ulrike Brandenburg, a sexologist at the University of Aachen. It used to be that, for pragmatic reasons, a widower married the sister or girlfriend of his deceased wife. But such cases were rare. However, it was also much less common for people over 40 to go back to dating. "At this age, many are tired of looking for another partner," she says. "It's not so easy, we're in an age where we have differentiated and clear claims and are not ready to adapt anymore, because more and more men and women are resorting to something reliable and proven."
Simone and Lukas Winkler come from the same village. Luke's father has been pastor there. And Simone, who was then called Baumgart with last name, played the organ in the church. It was shortly after the confirmation, when Simone met Lukas. The parsonage was always eaten together on Sundays, and sometimes she sat there at the table. For Simone, these were special moments. She came from a simple, austere world. "For me, marriage at that time was jail and family even worse," she says. Luke? Family was different. Democratically. Loving in dealing. People talked a lot. "It became clear to me: family can be beautiful." But Lukas did not matter. "He was always too young," says Simone Winkler. And Luke says, "My room was not very attractive to girls." He wanted to be an artist, an intellectual and not a charming one.
Which did not prevent both of them to be friends over the years. Only in the youth work of the church. Then in the study. Later, the paths parted for a while. Both got married and had children. They experienced how their relationships failed. There they met again often, told each other a lot and spoke to courage. "Divorce - that's easy to say," says Simone. "But if you've been with somebody for 12 years, thinking that's for life, and then you have to see how it breaks, you're pretty much destroyed." And Lukas, whose ex-wife went abroad, says, "This is a terrible burden when your child is so far away and you have to fight each time to see it."
When they saw each other, they usually drank quite a bit of beer, and at the end of the evening slimmest Luke regularly said, "I want to marry you and two children of yours," an impossible formula for: Maybe we can solve all our problems that way. And Simone said, "Leave me alone, I'll never marry again." The next week she called him again. Soon they phoned every Wednesday night.
At some point in this time, her friendship has changed. For both. "I've seen Lukas from a new side - as someone who can listen well, give smart answers, so I was quite surprised, because I only knew him as the intellectual with a lot of extravagant talk." Lukas also felt that something was different. And even more: that he was serious with the sentence "I want to marry you". It was not that easy for him. He urged a decision. Simone dodged. "That's when we ended the friendship." Three years was break. Until that Saturday morning.
"I'll tell that!" Says Lukas Winkler. Simone protests. But Lukas then intervenes. For him, the story goes like this: It was at a time when he had made some kind of peace with his life as a single. In the evening he went to his pub, discussed with exciting people, listened to music. "I had nothing to do with women," he says, "I was even a little bit against them, I was tired after the exhausting time with my ex-wife and found that women are annoying."
At Simone it was not much different at that time. With a great effort, many hours of therapy, she tried to rearrange her life. Her conclusion: "Lick me." Name by name has been deleted from the address book. Also the one of Luke.
One day he met a woman he liked. She was standing at the bar. They started talking. It was as if a lock were opening. Suddenly he was able to think positively again: Beautiful times occurred to him. The years in Berlin. The songs of The B-52. The time with Simone. Simone! Was not there something? "And suddenly I thought that three years had gone by and that it would be good to get in touch again, no matter if she sends me away, that this friendship is just too valuable, too special to try Let's get together again, even with non-marriages, because of me. " He sat down and wrote a letter.
Simone listens as he tells his part of the story. Grinning. Impatient. Now it's her turn. "One night," she says, "I was standing in a dream on a long road, I was pretty lonely, and then Lukas comes to meet me, hugs me and says: I love you." The next morning is Lukas? Letter with her in the box. "That really touched me." She called him. Lukas immediately had weak knees.
For a moment, time stood still for both of them this morning. Stop, stop. Wait a moment. Of course, you can continue to live as you did before. But did not you forget something there?
They arranged an appointment. Simone put on a nice shirt, one where you saw a little something. And Lukas decided to kiss Simone. After all this years. "Now we're trying to do magic," he describes the feeling.
"A thousand times touched / nothing has happened a thousand times / a thousand and a night / and it has zoomed in," sings Klaus Lage. But why does something happen suddenly? What triggers this spell? Simone and Lukas Winkler say: This incredible coincidence! The dream. The letter. And that both came on the same day.
If two people who know each other for a long time want more, they have to do something for it, "says sexologist Ulrike Brandenburg." And actively. "All of us, she says, have learned that eroticism - paff - suddenly comes on its own is, a gut feeling, a neurobiological phenomenon, but there are also active approaches to eroticism, according to the motto: "We like each other so much, and before we go back to search, we could just try it together." Ulrike Brandenburg encourages "wild thinking", talking about sexual fantasies, trying things out. "That's where the emotional bond that unites two is enhanced by the possibility of developing eroticism," she says. that is much more than they thought. "And suddenly there are the butterflies in the stomach, which were missing all those years.
In "Lokus", a cozy pub on Marheinekeplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg, two women are sitting, ordering latte and a sumptuous breakfast and grinning at each other. These are Anja and Anja Kofbinger, friends for 18 years, a couple for 7 years. Here, in this café, they kissed for the first time. Touched a thousand times. Nothing has happened a thousand times. And then suddenly.
It happened on a sunny day in May. The one Anja - she is a travel agent - woke up and thought, "Yeah, I'm fine, I feel strong, I look great, it's the perfect day to fall in love with a beautiful woman!" Anja is lesbian. She had just recovered from a chaotic affair and for the first time in a long time she felt like new again. In this mood she met with friends for a picnic. She saw the girls sitting in the meadow. And was disappointed. "There were only so many familiar faces, how was I supposed to meet someone there?"
The other Anja - she is for Alliance 90 / The Greens member of the Berlin House of Representatives - was on that sunny May day awakened wonderfully strong. She was solo for exactly half a year. "I'm fixated on data," she says, "and thought: Oh, how nice, the sadness is over, the sun is shining, the air is great, I felt liberated." So she went to the picnic.
Anja and Anja had met at softball. "I thought: Oh, what a funny woman," says Anja, the politician. They celebrated parties, birthdays, even Christmas together, and almost went on vacation together, but that somehow failed. But each had their own life, their own loved ones.
But the sunny day in May was not over yet. The girls were sitting on the bank drinking Prosecco and moving on to the pub."I suddenly thought: I have to kiss this woman," says Anja, the traffic clerk. "Why, why, I do not know, but I just did it." They went to her house pretty soon. "It was one of the best first nights of my life."
For the two women it is clear: Without the magic of this Mayday, this simultaneity of feelings of departure would not have been "the big bang", the decision for each other. They would have been friends, nothing more. It took the concentrated power and the positive energies to blow up the existing patterns. But then they danced step by step into a new life, first through a wonderfully light summer romance and then into a binding relationship.
According to a study by the University of Bochum, love, which grew out of a friendship, is above average. "Such couples have a much lower injury and aggravation potential," says Ulrike Brandenburg. "Others have to struggle to sort out what everyone has in their packs in the first few years, so the other one is familiar, I know a lot about him and I know his little ones, and he means so too." Assuming, of course, that in the years of friendship you were not just always nice and friendly to each other, but allowed conflicts.
Lukas and Simone Winkler appreciate the broad common ground in their relationship. "I know a lot about him," says Simone about Lukas, "I know where his behavior comes from." He, too, knows almost all her history, her childhood home, her study friendships, her broken loves. That makes the relationship different than others. It connects what was, with what is. Both have the feeling: this foundation is strong. Why did not you think of it earlier? Maybe because there was always something different and needed the magical moment, so that they had the courage to cross the line between friendship and love.
Anja and Anja Kofbinger also say: It has made many things easier that they have known each other for so long. This cautious approach, the time when one finds the other only great and it takes a long time to get on the more difficult issues, fell away. It also helped to know each other's patterns and then said, "The way things went with him and that does not work for us." - "After one year it was clear to me that I would marry her," says Anja, the politician. The other Anja, on the other hand, knew that past loves had always held her friend for only three years - and then, when it came to duration, consistency, had put an end to it. Therefore, marriage was out of the question for them. Both were amazed at how much new things there were to discover. The physical, of course. "But the depth," says Anja, the politician. "I had seen Anja as a smart, good-looking woman - but I had seen her fears only marginally, and they too were important to me now because they naturally shape our relationship." In Anja and Anja two class clowns meet each other. Two people who like to entertain others. "I thought it was nice to meet the serious Anja," says Anja, the traffic clerk. And her friend says, "And I thought you were not shaken."
"Tap your shoulder and be happy that it has been possible to integrate eroticism into your friendship," says sexologist Ulrike Brandenburg. "Take this as an incredible gift, but do not change anything that has worked well all these years." She recommends a close look at the friendship: What are the anchors that have done you good? Who has told his best friend, the best friend for so long the stories of other loved ones, should not suddenly create short reins and expect that they keep in touch with no other woman more and are only there for them. But preserve the piece of freedom that has shaped friendship.
Anja and Anja have actually partnered - on the day exactly three years after the first kiss. One Anja accepted the surname of the others. The two are now called the same, as a sign that they belong together. But each has her own apartment.
The sexologist Dr. Ulrike Brandenburg died in May 2010. The former chairman of the German Society for Sexual Research has made a significant contribution as a couple therapist and doctor and has made new solutions in her field worthwhile.
