Would You Ever Date One of Your Best Friends?

Have you ever made a marriage back-up plan with a friend? Like, "if by the age of 35 we're still single we marry each other?" Well, two friends in New York experimented with the idea, dating each other for 40 days. They started the experiment in March 2013, and have just started uploading daily entries to their website this month.

The two New York designers, Jessica Walsh and Tim Goodman, have been friends for four years. Single at the same time, they decided to give it a go and try to build themselves a relationship. They agreed on six rules: Seeing each other every day, going on three dates a week, seeing a couples therapist once a week, going on one weekend trip together, filling out a daily questionnaire on their experience, and not dating or sleeping with any other people.

The rules actually seem to make sense for these two friends with different dating problems. Walsh "is a hopeless romantic who jumps into relationships too quickly," while Goodman "is afraid of commitment and tends to date many girls at the same time," according to the 40 Days of Dating website.

"We have no idea if [the project] will inspire other people, but we would highly recommend it," explained the two friends to the Huffington Post. "The experiment and the self-examination was very insightful. We went into the project thinking we'd just learn about love and relationships, but came out learning an incredible amount about ourselves, and have both made positive changes in our lives. It's important that we all find some time to work or reflect on our habits and fears."

So why 40 days? Apparently, it takes 40 days to break a habit, so Walsh and Goodman wanted to embark on this project to shape up and get out of their dating ruts. If this had been a Nora Ephron movie, these two friends would for sure have ended up in love. More realistically, because they're already so close, it makes sense that they were able to teach each other some valuable lessons they can take into their next relationship. The daily entries are worth reading, and Walsh and Goodman just seem like two normal single people — quirky, slightly neurotic, and with lots of funny and enlightening stories to tell. Is this the beginning of a DIY dating bootcamp?

Image: Nick Page on Flickr