The outcome of dating your friends is high risk, high reward. for my readers that do not know what friendcest is, it is when friends in a friend group start liking and/or dating each other and/or fucking each other, so incest between friends hence the title friendcest. i brought this up briefly in my protocol for exes post, but i soon realized that this needs to be its own post, because im sure many and i mean MANY friend groups have probably experienced it and frankly, every closeknit friendgroup with differing genders and/or horny people, there has ALWAYS been friendcest. i'm not saying friendcest is a bad thing necessarily, but it can have very bad outcomes like: friend group falls apart, friend group takes sides, there's tension, awkwardness, blah blah blah. i wouldn't say i'm necessarily a victim of friendcest but i have plenty of experiences of friendcest and a common way people put it, is that the friend group is getting messy, which i mean isn't wrong but often gives a negative connotation. when i want a bit more outside insight, like always i go to reddit. and one user brought up a really good point: friends to lovers. we are always one to judge messiness of someone's friend group until we go to the classic trope of friends to lovers. might i ask how else does someone become friends to lovers without committing the crime of friendcest? are our friends being prosecuited without due process to get to know each other? friendcest is inevitable and hated on a bit too much, but at the same time the hate is also justified. i think the main problem is if multiple friends want the same person, but is it worse if the two friends know they have a crush on the same person or if only one knows, or if it's a free for all and they play first come first serve (if the other person likes them of course). like this is so complicated but at least (from what i can remember) it has always been two people in the friend group, always pairs, for now... every step of friends to lovers is so messy even with the friends who have no romantic interest, if they care as well because it can cause imbalances in closeness of this friend group. okay but i also have another factor that comes into play: is there a different effect of whether it be friends with benefits or actually dating in the friend group; and does it matter if it's just fucking? ill leave that question up to you. this topic has to much depth and messiness and if i tried to fully uncover it, i think this post would be 10 pages long including citations of my own anecdotes. coming from personal experience, friendcest i would rate a 6/10.