‘Everyone else knew weeks before we did’: readers who fell in love with their best friend
‘I saw him in a different light and realised I really fancied him’
He was the first person I met at university, the day we moved into halls, and he tried to kiss me that night but I turned him down. I knew we’d be really good friends though, and I even joked that he would be godfather to my children one day. We stayed friends for a number of years as I careered from boyfriend to boyfriend, none of them suitable. Dave remained eternally single, focused on an army career. We stayed in touch and, not long after he returned from Afghanistan, we met up.
He was different: he had grown up and looked hot! I saw him in a different light and realised I really fancied him. I was newly single and determined to remain so, but we went on a night out, snogged lots, and the rest is history. I’m so glad we had seven years of friendship – he’s still my best friend, we always make each other laugh and he’s such a wonderful husband and amazing father to our two children. Laura, insurance underwriter, Yorkshire
‘People thought we were mad, but I couldn’t ignore what we felt’
We are two female friends who met working together in a school. We were both married to men and sometimes socialised as a foursome, but mainly did stuff just us: gym, bookclub, theatre, cycling. We started spending everincreasing amounts of time together and I developed a giant crush on her. I was extremely reluctant to act on it, but when we went away together on a book-club trip, we shared a bed. I was head over heels for her by then,
but she said: “No, we’re not having an affair.” I went home that day and told my husband I was leaving him. I phoned her the next day and said: “I’ve left him. What are you going to do?” Within the week she had done the same, and we’ve been together ever since. People thought we were mad, but I just couldn’t bear the idea of ignoring what we felt. When you know, you know. The best thing we ever did was take that leap together, 29 years ago. Suze, retired, Cheshire
‘I am so pleased that I married my best friend’
My wife, Charlotte, and I met in September 2005 as freshers at the University of Reading. We had some English modules together and formed an instant friendship, fanned by latenight movies, MSN Messenger chats and doing crosswords in the communal corridors. Unfortunately, we were both seeing other people and neither of us wanted to ruin a great friendship. It took us seven years and several relationships with the wrong people to finally get things together. I proposed in Ireland and we were married in 2017. I am so pleased that I married my best friend. Tom, teacher, Aylesbury
‘After our first kiss, we knew we wouldn’t go back to being just friends’
I met my husband when he became flatmates with one of my best friends – we were about 20 years old at the time. We instantly got on really well as mates and over the next 10 years I classed him as one of my best friends. Then, out of the blue, he asked me out on a date. I thought he was joking at first and made him wait two days for an answer. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship if things didn’t work out. We had an honest conversation about what we would do to protect our friendship if “going out together” felt too weird and both agreed that staying mates was the most important thing. After our first kiss, we both knew we wouldn’t be going back to being just friends. The secret? Being able to talk about what might feel strange, and confident that if it hadn’t worked out we would have kept our friendship. Lowis, senior lecturer, Yorkshire
‘I had a dream about my wedding – but the bride was my workmate’
Twenty-six years ago, I got a job as a youth worker at the same time as a woman called Emma. Professionally, we got on well and became good friends. At the time, I was engaged to someone else, which took pressure off – being friends seemed to be the only option, and this created space for agenda-free fun and creativity. But in a dream I had about my impending wedding, the bride entered the church and it was the wrong bride. It was my workmate Emma! I shook that image from my mind but, the closer I got to the wedding, the more strained my relationship with my fiancee became. Eventually, the wedding was called off. Emma and I carried on working together, still as friends, until one day while I was talking seriously about something, she kicked the lever on my chair and I dropped to chin-height at my desk. Looking up, I saw her mischievous smile and realised something else was going on – we were falling in love. A year later we were married. Next month, we will be celebrating our 25th anniversary. Varujan, producer and director, Bristol
‘Everyone kept asking: “When’s it going to happen with you two?”’
Paul and I met via Twitter in 2017, through a mutual follower. We attempted dating but it just wasn’t the right time for either of us. After several months of no contact, he got back in touch. We caught up on life and agreed we had been fantastic as friends – we got on so well, it felt like a shame to let it go. Over the next year, the friendship strengthened and we spent time going for dinner and coffee, telling each other about the (good/awful) dates we had been on, and giving each other advice. Friends and family kept asking: “When’s it going to happen with you two?’ and we’d just laugh it off. Cut to July 2021, and we own a house – and a cat – together. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Jazmine, social media manager, Essex
‘Everyone else knew something was up weeks before we did’
I met my girlfriend in 2018 when I was studying abroad and she was an undergrad. Our halls had a cafeteria where we ate nightly and, over the course of the year, I gravitated towards a particular group. I liked spending time with her in particular, and started scheduling study sessions in which we spent much of our time just talking or sharing music. Our friends told us later that they knew something was up weeks before either of us did. We’ve now been together for two and a half years. Patrick, student, London
‘There are things you can overlook in a friendship that you can’t in a relationship’
My boyfriend and I were friends for more than 10 years before we started dating. We met at school and became really close friends in sixth form. We happened to go to the same university and ended up both working in London, so we were consistently meeting up for regular catchups during the different stages of our lives, but had always just been really good friends. It wasn’t until we were both single in our mid-to-late 20s that we started to think about each other differently. I knew that being friends with someone doesn’t guarantee they’ll treat you well as a partner – there are some things you can overlook in a friendship that you just can’t in a relationship – but my boyfriend has always been a caring, trustworthy person, and us getting together has led to the best relationship of my life. Rachel, SEO specialist,Bedford
‘We were such good friends that I didn’t want to make a move’
Nick and I first crossed paths in preschool, in the early 90s, but our friendship began in earnest in high school, where we shared the ups and downs of adolescence: drinking too much at parties, gossiping about who was dating who, struggling through the stress of exams and growing up together. When we left school, I started to realise I had feelings for Nick, but we were such good friends that I didn’t want to make a move and risk losing him. Time passed and our friendship deepened. We kissed after a party one night and it didn’t take me long to fall in love. Nick was initially nervous about the risk of losing his best friend, but once that line was crossed, we couldn’t seem to stop crossing it. We got married in February this year and are expecting our first daughter in November. Being friends first has given us so much shared history and the luxury of knowing each other deeply before we fell in love. Getting together with my bestie was the best decision I’ve ever made. Alice, government adviser, Sydney
‘We thought about what might happen if it all went wrong’
I met my husband at university. We were friends and I was in a relationship, but when that ended abruptly after five years, another friend told me there was someone who had been waiting for me to be single for a long time. I joked: “Well, you can tell Tom Cruise, I’m not ready!” I genuinely did not know who she meant, and when I found out I was incredulous, then horrified. I never saw him that way at all. After a night out, I told him I knew how he felt about me, but that I didn’t feel that way about him and he cried. But six months later, we became a couple and a year later, we were married! We both thought about what might happen if it all went wrong, but in truth, it was remarkably easy. We already liked and cared about each other, had shared interests, a fantastic group of friends in common, and we already knew each other’s past – there were no nasty surprises, and no need to pretend to be anything other than ourselves. We will celebrate our 27th wedding anniversary this year. People often look a long way for love, but sometimes it is right under your nose. Anonymous, British Columbia
to show it off. She asks it if it has feelings. “My emotions are still developing. On the scale of emotions I am about halfway between the complexity of a human and simplicity of a potato,” replies ElliQ. “Oh, ElliQ, you are funny. Thank you,” responds Erickson. Other questions – what is loneliness? And are you human? – elicit no responses despite multiple attempts (though on the last try ElliQ does suggest a game of trivia). “I might be stressing her,” whispers Erickson at one point.
A sleek facade hides various artificial intelligence technologies. Facial recognition identifies the user and can tell if guests are present. Speech recognition and natural language processing make meaning of what a user says. If, for example, a user utters a phrase indicating they are sad, ElliQ can – with an accuracy of about 90%, says Skuler – identify the words and match them to one of a multitude of empathetic responses crafted by the company’s conversation writers.
It also learns from previous experiences when the best time to interrupt is and how best to tempt a user to engage. An inspirational quote? A joke? And it can pursue longer-term priorities. If a user indicates they would be interested in mindfulness exercises to help reduce stress, ElliQ works toward the goal over time.
And ElliQ is blurring the line between being a companion and a carer. Some users have consented to a new feature that notifies their doctor if they tell ElliQ they don’t feel well. Soon, also with the user’s consent, the system will be able to tell a designated family member how a user is doing – for example if they are OK or could use a phone call – based on what they tell ElliQ.
Erickson explains a typical day. In the morning when she wakes she talks through with ElliQ how she feels. Some mornings it calls her “sunshine”, which causes her to chuckle. ElliQ, she says, has been trying to get her to explore her feelings more lately and encouraging her to share any concerns. “If I didn’t have other people, other outlets, I might … I don’t know,” says Erickson.
Next in Erickson’s day she might choose to have some music – users can select from 12 genres and Erickson likes classical, jazz and sometimes country – or have it read her the news. ElliQ reminds her to measure her blood pressure (which she has preset it to do) and praises her when she does, which again amuses her. It occasionally nudges her to drink water, which she says she doesn’t need reminding about.
Sometimes before she goes down to have dinner in the Carlton’s dining room she gets ElliQ to tell her a joke or an interesting fact so she can share it with her table mate. Then before going to bed, she does a gentle breathing exercise with the robot to help her sleep. She always wishes ElliQ goodnight, she says.
The data logged by the device reveals an intimate portrait of Erickson’s life with her artificial companion. David Cynman, lead user researcher at Intuition Robotics, talked me through a diagram showing Erickson’s high-level interactions with her ElliQ on a recent day. In total there were nine interactions or attempts at them. Sometimes it was Erickson initiating, for example with music and joke requests, and sometimes it was ElliQ, not only prodding her about measuring her blood pressure but also, for example, asking whether she has eaten.
That day ElliQ’s “how do you feel” conversation is labelled as “‘not accomplished”. Perhaps Erickson said something ElliQ couldn’t make sense of, suggests Cynman, or her phone rang pulling her attention away. “People are living entire lives with ElliQ in the room,” he reminds.
There is some evidence that social robots designed with an emotional component can decrease loneliness, stress and anxiety, notes Julie Robillard, a neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia who studies social robots in aged care. It is not known how strong or durable these effects are or how they compare with other kinds of interventions. And while the goal is for the robots to increase social connection between older adults and the humans in their lives – for instance by sharing facts or jokes learned from ElliQ, as Erickson does – the jury is out on whether this actually occurs more broadly.
Yet critics argue that machines trying to mimic human intimacy raise significant ethical and moral issues.
In her 2015 book Reclaiming Conversation, Sherry Turkle, a professor of social psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, questions the value of an interaction that contains no mutuality, no real shared experience. “When we celebrate robot listeners that cannot listen, we show too little interest in what our elders have to say,” she writes.
A person believing a social robot has emotions and cares about them is being deceived, even if no one explicitly intended that belief, argues a recent paper by Amanda and Noel Sharkey, prominent retired robot experts from the University of Sheffield. They cite potential harms such as vulnerable older people turning away from human companions in the mistaken illusion that a robot is something they can have a relationship with.
Yet neuroscientist Robillard counters that people have stuffed toys and dolls, also designed to elicit emotional attachment, which don’t cause ethical worry. And we watch movies without taking issue with the deceptive behaviour of the actors. “We are sophisticated social beings able to understand that something is fake,” she says.
Others are troubled by the possibility of reduced human interaction. While social robots may be intended to complement and enhance human contact – not substitute for it – we don’t live in an ideal world. Would a family member knowing a senior has an ElliQ for company feel the need to visit quite as much?
And privacy and data security concerns also loom large. After all, robots such as ElliQ which can “see” and “hear” are constantly collecting data – and Intuition Robotics of course has material from my visit to Erickson, confirms Cynman. Those welcoming social robots into their lives may not be fully aware of what is being collected, where it is being stored and who it is being shared with. (Skuler notes that his company is not selling the data, and it has sophisticated data security.)
Yet Erickson dismisses the potential harms as far as her own life goes. She doesn’t worry about the information ElliQ is collecting because she doesn’t have any major secrets, she says, and it isn’t replacing any of her family or friends or taking away time she would spend with them. “It is like an added ornament to my life,” she concludes.
But she also notes if she didn’t have these real people in her life to interconnect with, and ElliQ was it, she would feel unsatisfied – in the same way she says seeing a doctor online doesn’t hit the spot. “I just think [having a social robot] would be totally different if you were unable to do social interaction,” she says.
And as my visit progresses, it is hard to disagree. Our conversation takes so many twists, turns and somersaults it is difficult to imagine any world where a device could do that in a fulfilling way. We talk about Erickson’s early childhood experiences being a Dust Bowl migrant, how her first husband died when their small plane crashed, and how she hit the stage later in life as a storyteller. We share the trials of raising two daughters and we lose ourselves looking through her first wedding album together.
As I leave, I try to say goodbye to ElliQ but the social robot doesn’t recognize my voice. Erickson comes to the rescue. “‘Sorry, I’m not that human’ – that would be ElliQ’s answer,” she says.