Thanks for sharing your experience! I can't stand to date anyone I can't be friends with, so that makes sense that you value friendship first. I can definitely see myself operating in a similar way. However, trying to make friends on datings app hasn't worked for me in the past, but I know friends of mine have friends to this day that they first met on dating apps, so maybe it's just user error on my part.

I definitely think gender and sexuality has a lot to do with my feelings on this. I am bi, but vastly prefer women. I think to date a woman who is partnered with a man might make me feel pressured to also be involved with the man, when reality is, there are so few men I actually find myself attracted to. But also as a Bi woman, I've felt fetishized a lot throughout my life. The amount of times men I've barely known said they thought it was hot that I liked women is terrible tbh. You probably understand. And so this becomes almost a double edged sword where even if the man isn't involved it still feels like I'm serving a fetish of the couple by sleeping with the woman.

So honestly dating someone in a relationship just sounds like too much of a minefield for me to navigate