Should you be friends with someone before you start dating?

You don't need to be purely friends before dating. Sometimes you have a romantic feeling for someone from the start, and it gets difficult emotionally if one party has suggested to "just be friends" for the moment. Other times you've started as friends and don't feel romantic about someone until after you've spent some time around them. The positive side to that is, you already have a good friendship to base your relationship on. It differs with each relationship.

In some ways, it's nice to be friends first. You have some idea of who the other person really is, you've probably seen some of their bad habits and know what to expect.

The downside is that, well, you think you know what to expect. But things do change when you go from friends to dating. The basic dynamics and expectations are different so you have to be prepared to adapt.