#1: I have used that on someone I was best friends with. He had feelings for me a long time and he was my confidant (sp?) and someone I could always go to with any problem I didn't want that to ever change. I realized that I had feelings for him about 2 years into our friendship and I also realized that we had come to a point where we would either have to move forward togther or completely apart. Anytime he dated someone they found our friendship strange and became jealous of me because he would drop what he was doing to help me. Neither one of us were going to have a healthy relationship with someone else with the same friendship in place. We dated, talked about marriage, ended horribly, and it's been almost 2 years since we talked. Regret? Not once.

ETA: This is a little bit off the originial question, but I will argue till I die that it's not possible to return to being friends after having dated, especially if it was serious. At least not return to the SAME friendship. I was dating someone from OCtober-January and he also began talking about us getting married and would talk about us moving and kids and all sorts of things. Then out of the blue he decided it wasn't going to work but still wanted us to be friends. HELLO...........two weeks before you broke up with me you were talking about how much of a combined income we would have in Dallas and where our kids could go to school!!! And now you just want to be friends?! HAHA