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[Dilemma with bff]


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Hi everyone. I’ll try to spare you all the details and keep this as short as possible. I’m dealing with a situation that I would like to get your opinions on. I have been best friends with a guy for nearly a decade. In 2013 when we went out with some friends, he revealed to me that he was in love with me. I told him that I see us as friends, which he accepted and we have remained friends since. However, sometimes by his actions and his words, I feel that he is still in love with me (e.g. sometime last year he randomly put his whatsapp status as the date in 2013 and the time he told me how he felt about me).

 

He is a Psychology major, an emotional/ sensitive person, an empath, a deep thinker and enjoys intellectually and emotionally stimulating conversations. I am not as vulnerable and open about my feelings as he is (I have told him this) but within the past year he has told me that he has sensed a change in me and said that the quality of our communication is not the same as it used to be. He has expressed his desire multiple times throughout last year to understand me on a deeper level and for me to be vulnerable, open up to him and express to him when I need him (he feels that I am withdrawing from him and I don’t need him). I have reassured him that our friendship means a lot to me, I don’t readily express a “need” or open up as easily or on the same level as him and also that I feel as though our communication styles and expectations are a bit different.

 

There have been times when he will ask me if I am ok or ask if I am going through something personal (to which I tell him I'm not, but I don't think he believes me because he said that he just has a feeling something is wrong). In the past he has also deduced from text messages that I sound "annoyed" or "formal" in my texts.

 

Last week Friday he mentioned to me that he wanted us to talk about something on Saturday. I spent the majority of the day at the beach on Saturday, regaled all the details to him on Sunday and asked him what he had wanted to talk about the day before. He told me that it can wait until later on closer to bedtime when things have quieted down for the day. We watched a show together and texted back and forth that night, but he didn’t bring it up. However, this morning he sent me a message essentially telling me that:

 

- he wants to talk about ways we can develop interpersonal closeness in terms of the quality of communication in the form of a Pillow Method.

-he has been feeling avoided/pushed away by me when he has suggested ways we can be emotionally close/intimate or learn about my wants and needs and has never known me to be withdrawn about my vulnerability and emotional openness.

- he wants all of me, not just the surface parts everyone sees or knows

 

Right now, I am starting to feel like my friendship with him is not good enough. His messages to me telling me how he feels about or friendship and what I am or am not doing is starting to stress me out.

From the sounds of it he wants more than a friendship don’t you think?

I apologize if my message sound a bit all over the place, but if you want to know anything more you can ask me.

 

What do you all think? What should I say to him? I don't want to hurt his feelings or create tension in our friendship.

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CaliforniaGirl

Holy Hanna. He is beyond gone over you.

 

You need to be honest with him. I mean straight up honest. NO wiggle room. "We are GREAT friends but it will NOT go deeper than that. You need to really know that. This will not change. I don't want to go deeper and honestly I have never had just a friend ask me to do that. Ever. It make me uncomfortable. I do NOT want to hurt you. So I need you to drop any romantic ideas about us. If not we can't be friends because I can see that this is hurting you. You decide."

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He's not your best friend because best friends don't have romantic feelings. He's a guy who's in love with you and doing his best to get you to fall in love with him.

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I hate when people make assumptions about what you say, and place expectations on what you do and how you feel. That, would stress me out.

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His message was cringe worthy not going to lie. If you're not interested in more than friendship then just tell him that, if he can't handle it well it's his problem.

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RecentChange

I have female friends, I have guy friends, one I have known for 22 years now - we have a lot of history and our close - I have NEVER had a "friend" desire or express a desire to have these deep conversations etc that he is requesting.

 

He said that he is IN LOVE with you. You know from that moment on, and forever more he will not just be a "friend" right?

 

He wants to take things to the next level - and you want to keep him in the friend zone - those two things are not compatible.

 

Have you dated or had a boyfriend since you two have been friends? How did he take that if you have?

 

How do you think a future boyfriend would feel about you having a "best friend" that is in love with you?

 

And pillow method? That took me a quick Google (sorry, I got my sociology degree back in the stone ages 02'). It appears to be a method for resolving disagreements. What's the disagreement? He wants to your boyfriend and you don't want him to be?

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I think he's not going to take no for an answer and you need to once again reiterate to him that you are not looking for intimacy with him on any level, just casual friendship. He's pulling some psychology hocus pocus on you trying to make YOU the weird one. Yeah. No.

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TheTraveler
His message was cringe worthy not going to lie.

Holy Hanna. He is beyond gone over you.

 

Eight years...Eight ****ing years this guy has been fawning over the OP and trying to get in her pants.

 

Oyyyyyyy

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OP this is a tough lesson that I had to learn after a few times happensing to me. This guy is not your friend. He wants you. He has been waiting all this time. You value the friendship, he is really just waiting for the day you realize you loved him all along.

 

Except that day doesn't come, and when he realizes this, so will he be. When a man realizes the sex or relationship is never going to happen, he will exit the friendship.

 

Do yourself and him a favour and end this friendship. It will hurt him to continue but also hurt yourself in the long run when he eventually dumps you as a fiend and you realize he was not a true friend afterall.

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He's not your friend.

He is in love with you and trying to manipulate you to fall for him.

 

If it were me I would break this 'friendship'. it's not real at all.

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After you rejected him, he probably thought he could convince you over time to like him "if you would just get to know him better."

 

While you just see him as a (close) friend, he seems to think you two have this deep special connection. So when you started to open up more around him, like you would with your female friends, he took that as proof that it was working. He never accepted being in the friendzone.

 

You will hurt his feelings and the friendship will change, but it's his own fault. He only pretended to be your friend for all these years. You have to be brutally honest and tell him you'll never date him. Otherwise he just won't get it

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todreaminblue

i dotn know if i can help...but i learned something from your post ...i didnt know about the pillow method of communication but i love it.....

 

i am an empath too ....and i can normally feel another's point of view .....can see the perspective clearly and understand not everyone feels the same or says the same thing ...i am a fan of coming back to common ground communication.to avoid confrontation.......avoiding topics that go in circles and hold high passions.......but the pillow method sounds awesome.....

 

 

i do feel that this guy loves you he wants to eb closer to you tahn any other....if you dont feel the same way fro him i think you should tell him ...i dont know if a friendship would be fair on either one of you...as an empath......i tell peopel to eb stright up with me....adn i have conversations called the "lets do the honesty thing".......where everything said is blunt and straight forward no holds barred..questions and answers........when i have these conversations soemtimes i get scared.........i wish i didnt say lets do it..........because they freaking hurt me....but.....i know its the only way to do it......soemtimes i need to be hurt to move on...or i keep fighting...and goign and going and trying to figure out how to fix things that cant be fixed...not by me.....i stay in relationships far past overdue.....years..

 

 

..i have told guys before if i annoy you just tell me to piss off.......or go away...they look at me horrified...and then i say ...i would rather you do that than think it and resent me....and i apologize.....im the type to apologize when a car runs over my foot......like sorry i was in the way...........then guys i date understand.......and im upfront with guys if i feel something..and sometimes ...yep i get it wrong........sometimes...im right.....because i know them

 

he feels you pulling back is he right....or wrong......

 

 

as an empath its so part of us to over analyse..to go deep into words that need to be simple and clear...vibres...body language.....words .....clear cut from the beginning.........sometimes we just need to be told straight up no frills.....i dont know if pillowtalk therapy would be so good for an empath.......theres more words than need be..more chances to analyse and delve deep.....straight up doing the honesty thing goes straight to the point not half a block away from india near the yellow stree4tlight...............thank you for posting though i still think the pillow method is awesome....for different sorts of situations,...........deb

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Thank you to everyone who responded. I really appreciate it. Last night, while thinking about the whole situation and reading some of your replies, I randomly developed a headache to the point where I had to turn in early for bed. It was so strange for me because I don't get headaches.

 

I'm realizing now that I have to be honest with him - which is stressing me out because what I say can potentially change our friendship. He is a great friend and I care about him very much, but there is no denying that the lines in our friendship are starting to get a bit muddled.

 

He can be very passionate/expressive in the way he types, but sometimes his messages to me sounds like something a boyfriend would be sending to his girlfriend.

 

Anyways, I'll be back later after I come home from work to respond to you all.

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He is full-on after you. Of course, those are not "friend" missives. A guy who is a friend isn't going to bother with all that or feel the need to go deep.

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Do you want to be his friend or his lover?

 

It sounds like he wants you as his lover. If you can't accommodate that, you need to tell him that you don't see him as a romantic interest and then leave him alone and drift apart permanently. I think to insist he remain your friend knowing that he wants more is cruel.

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CaliforniaGirl

And here's another way to look at it, OP.

 

Someone who would hold onto a one-sided association (love) possibly (psychiatrist's hat here) doesn't want an actual relationship. Think about it - no mentally stable, emotionally comfortable, self-loving person gives his/her entire romantic heart for years without getting like in return.

 

You can "love" a person (in a non-romantic way) as in: you care about the person, but to go to these lengths, to hang onto literally nothing romantically/sexually probably says more about him than it does about you and/or than it does as your and his friendship together.

 

If you were to turn around tomorrow and say "I want you," it would be a mess. I can all but guarantee it. He'd mess it up deliberately somehow because he doesn't want something real.

 

I had something like this happen...pursued for a year, finally came around, IMMEDIATELY he "saw issues." WHAT. THE. Yeah. It was A MESS from there. He didn't want a real relationship. He wanted to want. This was backed up by the girls he "wanted" after me (which I saw first-hand not due to seeking him but simply because we went to the same school.)

 

You're doing him a favor if you cut this off now. He will hurt but he'll be forced to look inward and wonder why the hell he's doing this and why he doesn't want to actually be loved and responded to.

 

Either way he needs a DIRECT "no" from you. Direct. And no, no special pillow methods or anything else. NO friend ever asks for that. It's just...weird. And an "in," or he thinks it is. Just no.

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Do you want to be his friend or his lover?

 

It sounds like he wants you as his lover. If you can't accommodate that, you need to tell him that you don't see him as a romantic interest and then leave him alone and drift apart permanently. I think to insist he remain your friend knowing that he wants more is cruel.

 

He's not about to let her drift away. If she wants to leave, she will have to block him and tell him she has no interested whatever in him.

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Just tell him he is over stepping his friendship boundaries making these demands on you to be more attentive emotionally...if fact it's making you feel sickened. Tell him you know what's going on, and the best thing to do is to part ways permanently. Block/delete....possible restraining order. Make sure all your social media is set on "private"...he will be stalking you. Be safe.

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He wants much more than friendship. He wants emotional intimacy and sharing at a deep level. He wants sexual intimacy. You have said you want to be a friend. I assume that means you don't want a relationship with him. He wants friendship but he wants more than you do. I don't know what you can do here other than to reiterate that you see him as a very close friend but that it cannot be more. It is a shame but he is feeling drawn to you and you are not feeling the same.

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This guy wants way more than a friendship. He has already expressed his love for you.

 

I'm afraid when all is said and done, you can't maintain a friendship with him anymore. There will be loss. You will lose a friend, he will lose a potential girlfriend, mate. It is not fair to him, and it's not fair to you.

 

Perhaps these feelings he has captured is your subconscious effort to pull away, because you also sense he's reaching for more. As an empath, he notices, you may not. To you, nothing is really different.

 

This situation really hurts. It seems like he has been waiting in the wings, just waiting for you to come to your senses and fall for him. He's reaching breaking point, it seems, in that he's practically giving you an ultimatum, which is why it was so hard to bring it up when he said he would. He knows this could divide you.

 

I don't even know how to approach this, but you may find you have to break off your friendship. You will have to let him know you're not interested in him romantically, obviously, and from there he may distance himself from you because it hurts too much.

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He's not about to let her drift away. If she wants to leave, she will have to block him and tell him she has no interested whatever in him.

 

[]In 2013 when we went to a movie together with some friends, he revealed to me that he was in love with me. I told him that I see us as friends, which he accepted and we have remained friends since.
Back in 2013, she needed to cut him loose, put him on block and tell him she wasn't interested. She didn't do that. Now she's got this on her hands.

 

She has been feeding him false hope by maintaining this "friendship" knowing that he wants more for 4 years now. It's no wonder he's not cutting back on his ardor. If I knew a friend of mine developed feelings for me that I can't return, I don't continue seeing him for another 4 years. If that hurts his feelings, then that hurts his feelings. His feelings are his to manage--it's not my job to manage them for him.

 

When someone professes love for you, the kind thing to do if you can't return them is to stop spending time with them so that they can process the disappointment and get over you and move on.

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I think it is all a bit creepy and smacks of control and manipulation too. These "I'm a victim, you are ignoring me, I want you to be vulnerable to me" type messages are so intense they are scary.

Tell him straight and get him out of your life asap, no good will come of this.

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@CaliforniaGirl – I am not a blunt person and I don’t like the idea of hurting his feelings or being so direct because I have never spoken to him this way before, but thank you for suggesting what I could possibly say to him. It’s a solid place for me to start.

 

You also brought up some valid points in your psychiatric perspective on the situation. It has given me something to think about. When we met (school), he was in a bad place emotionally. He and his then girlfriend’s relationship was going downhill (ultimately it ended), plus there was tension at home for him. I was there for him during those times when no one else was and he has held me in a high regard ever since.

 

I’m not 100% sure that he wants a relationship either. I’m not convinced what he feels is romantic either (and definitely not sexual. He has never tried to make any moves on me in a sexual way, ever), I just think he has a very strong emotional attachment to me and desperately wants to prove to me or convince me that he can be that person I can feel safe, secure and understood around. He wants to feel needed by me. He wants me to show him a certain level of vulnerability with him because that is what he does with me, so he feels that I should want to do that as well.

 

Being emotionally vulnerable is not something that is easy for me. The only person who I have truly been vulnerable with was my ex who I was in love with - and that came so naturally to me at that time. It cannot be forced or persuaded.

 

@basil67 and @GemmaUK Do you think he feels that what he has said will make me fall in love with him? Sometimes I feel overwhelmed when I read his messages. I understand what he wants, and he seems to think that repeating himself every couple months will make a difference, but I’m just not able to be the person he desires me to be.

 

@BaileyB Same here. He has said to me many a time that he knows I haven’t been myself and something is up just by the way I am typing through text or by me taking a day or two to respond to him. He admitted to feeling anxious and self conscious when he doesn’t hear from me because he interprets me not wanting to talk as boredom or indifference.

 

@goldway90. Thank you goldway.

 

@RecentChange. He is analytical and a deep-thinker, so I understand his desire to want to have deep conversations. It’s just the way he is wording his requests in recent times that makes it seem like he is putting pressure on me and almost making me feel a little guilty because “it’s him” and he is feeling pushed away because I am not meeting his expectations.

 

I have had a boyfriend since we have been friends and he was also in a relationship when we met. He didn’t meet my boyfriend. After he told me how he felt about me, I barely spoke to him about anything having to do with my relationship. It would have been too awkward for me. Even when me and my bf broke up, he didn’t know about it initially. I told him eventually and opened up about not getting closure and staying with my bf longer that I should have, but in my mind it’s like it is weird talking about the opposite sex with him. He has not dated or spoken about dating anyone since he broke up with his ex either.

 

A future boyfriend wouldn’t be thrilled about having a best friend that has openly said to me that he ‘wants all of me’ and requests pillow method talks with him. @preraph You are right. The potential for me to develop and maintain a healthy relationship is questionable if our friendship continues on this path.

 

I’m not sure what the disagreement is. I can only guess that maybe the way we have been communicating.

 

I'll be back tomorrow guys.

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