I get it. I hear it every day.

"My boyfriend is my best friend!"

Sweetie, that's not a good thing.

Boyfriend and Best Friend should be two entirely different roles. Not to say that they aren't similar, but they should never be one-in-the-same.

A boyfriend (or girlfriend) is someone who can give you love and affection and attention. They're someone to listen to your problems and tell you you're right, even when you might be wrong. They're someone to emotionally console you and make you feel better. They support you and understand you without judgement.

Now, this could be misconstrued in several different ways. No, I'm not telling you your significant other shouldn't be honest with you. Honesty and openness are some of the many things necessary when you're in a committed, adult relationship. But if you feel like venting to your SO, they should be the person who agrees with you, no matter what you may have done. I don't care if I tell my boyfriend I robbed an ice cream shop because my blood sugar was low, he should tell me I was right. Honesty is important, but so is emotional support.

A best friend, however, should not be as supportive. They should obviously be there for you, but they should also tell you when you've done something wrong or are overreacting. Your best friend should always be a little bit more honest than your significant other. They should tell it like it is and never hold back. If I told my best friend I robbed an ice cream shop because my blood sugar was low, I would want her to say: "Well then you should've just bought some ice cream, ya dope."

Having a SO who loves to do the same things you do is tons of fun. Going to book stores and wandering around for hours, visiting coffee shops, skateboarding, running, playing video games - whatever. It's always nice to spend some one-on-one time with your girl/boyfriend. You wouldn't date them if you didn't enjoy being around them.

But when your SO is your best friend, they can often (most of the time, unwittingly) monopolize your time, keeping you away from your other friends. You might even be doing it yourself, without noticing at all. It happens when you and your SO are close. But you should never put your other friends on the back burner and ditch them for your boo.

My best friend Jess and I have this dynamic down-pat. There are some things that she knows her boyfriend, Zach can handle better than I can. He is her emotional support system. I am too, but he gets her in a way that I don't think I ever could (mainly because we both suffer from depression and would feed into each other). However, Jess will expect me to tell her if she's maybe being a bit dramatic or worrisome.

She's never put me on hold or broken plans with me because she wanted to do something with Zach. If anything, he'll tag along. The three of us are good friends, and they know how to stick to "friend" mode when they're around me. She knows that time with me is just as important as time with him, just in a different way.

Lastly, if you and your boyfriend break up, (God forbid) you not only lose someone you loved romantically, but also someone you loved platonically - someone who was there for you in so many ways. My ex-who-shall-not-be-named was my best friend for the two years we dated. We rarely spent time with anybody else and we grew dependent and overly attached to one another. We could feel ourselves getting sick of one another. This spiraled out of control, and we wound up hating one another fiercely by the time our relationship ended.

I wound up painfully alone. I had absolutely no one to talk to about the break up. I had no shoulder to cry on and talk to about how mad I was and how much I wanted to burn everything he ever gave me. All of my friends were his friends first, but my very best friend of all was someone who now hated me and never wanted to speak to me again. He began dating someone else immediately, and publicly called her "his new best friend" as well as his girlfriend just to spite me because he knew I was having a hard time with this particular break up.

This advice, of course, may not be for everyone. If you've found your soul mate, I congratulate you. The very first friend I ever made married her high school sweetheart. So did my older sister. They've been together for 15 years, and they're only 30. If you and your SO are like a well-oiled machine, who am I to tell you what to do? I'm not your mom. Live your life.

The moral of the article is this: try not to put all your eggs in one basket. Have a best friend. Have a boyfriend. But make sure they're two separate people.