Opinion on dating your best friends enemy?

[Anonymous]

So long story short, my best friend who is female has a cousin also female. They do not really like each other and my friend did not approve of me talking to her a year ago. Well we ended up talking a month back. We have just went on our second date and we are hitting it off. I really like this girl which is really rare since my break up a couple years back. She’s the first girl I have found even remotely interesting and I just want to keep seeing her but I feel bad about my friend. They are are close family but their relationship isn’t great.

[SteveSmith1985]

Your friend is going to have to grow-up enough to accept that you're gonna date whoever you click with and have those feelings for. If that happens to be her cousin who she hates... then so be it.

You're not doing anything wrong. You're not betraying your friend by getting involved with her cousin. She won't like it. But she has to basically suck-it-up-and-accept it. Depending on what's going on with their relationship, it's possible that this ends up being the first step to some sort of uneasy truce. You are now someone who is important to both of them. Hopefully they can keep that in mind in how they act towards each other (and towards you).

I think you owe it to your best friend to be straight-up about what you're hoping to do with her cousin (the... dating part...) before you do it. You're not "asking" (insofar as... she has no right to say "no"). But in another sense you ARE asking. Basically you're asking out of respect to your best friend. But... that same respect for you, should prevent her from reacting inappropriately. Hopefully she understands that this is 100% your call, and that she needs to support you as your friend, like she usually would.

But I see no problem with this. (and I'm the first guy who would see a problem if this weren't all on the up-and-up).

[LazerBean]

My best friend is a good person with good judgement. She wouldn't be my best friend otherwise. If she had an enemy, I would assume that person must have something terribly wrong with them and certainly wouldn't date them.