How can I tell if he has feelings for me when he lives 2 hours away?

[SarahHach]

So here's the thing. I have never been in a relationship with a guy. I'm currently a senior in high school, and I have been rejected more times than I can remember. This isn't the point of my question, but let me emphasize the rejection part. Because of the large number of rejections, I have huge fears of showing any hint of romantic interest to anyone.

I admit that in the past, I may have jumped the gun, got my hopes up, and THOUGHT that certain guys liked me, which in the end, led to my many rejections.

 

Now let me get to my point. This summer, I was at a pre-college program for a month at an art school. I made a lot of great friends, and one in paticular is a guy friend. I am still in contact with almost all of my friends from pre-college, but especially my roommate and the already mentioned guy friend. Now, the first couple months after pre-college had ended, he didn't really communciate with me or any of our friend group except for the occasional update on how he was doing.

Then, one day, after I had left him a message on facebook that he should download skype, he sent me a text saying that he had finally downloaded it and we should talk.

 

From that point on for several months, we have slowly built up a strong basis of communication. We have skype video calls at least once a week for a few hours, and we text each other almost every day, plus we're planning to have a "movie night" over skype sometime this week. This week in paticular, he has been texting me nonstop, and even texting me first, and during school. He's also been calling me on the phone and we talk before we each go to bed. Both of these behaviors are totally NOT like him at all. He NEVERS texts first, and 99.99% of the time, YOU have to initiate the conversation. He still has very short and to the point texts, but it still amazes me that he's even communicating at all. Unfortunetly, he is currently a two hour drive away so I have not seen him in person since pre-college and it would be really difficult to visit him.

 

Now here's the real kicker. Recently, he has been promising me that we will most likely get into the same art school for college and in sophmore year, we'll get an apartment together. He brings this up almost every single time we talk. I mean, the first few times we talked about it, we were slightly joking, but then we started to actually look at apartments on craigslist, and then things lead to "IF we get an apartment together" to "WHEN we get an apartment together."

 

My point after this long rant is that I've found that I am starting to have feelings for him, and maybe I'm just getting my hopes up too much, but do you think he might have feelings for me as well? I mean, I trying to suppress my feelings only because I really value our friendship and if it turns out that he doesn't like me, things would get incredibly awkward between us. But if he DOES like me, then maybe I'm not showing my feelings enough for him want to tell me how he feels, even though I sometimes "flirt" with him a tiny bit.

Also, if things do end up leading to a relationship, how do I get our long distance relationship to work out besides waiting for college to start?

I'm just so confused with this whole situation, I have no idea what to do.

[creighton0123]

I'd say that two hours away isn't all that long of a distance. You're in high school (senior) so both of you must be 17 or 18. If you both have a car, perhaps meet somewhere in the middle on a weekend to get to know one another in person again.

 

Is that an option for you two?

[Ometeotl]

Ya, meeting together would be great.

 

I have had this experience, from my side of it, it is/was best to be friends... but thats unique to us.

 

What I think was not unique to us, perhaps it is idk, was that when we got together in person, it felt very natural and the relationship defined itself without words, organically, instead of the other way around.

 

My idea is always let the real world relationship define things, the internet relationship is somewhat more safely-attachable, but if you are ever to live together, then you may want to find out how each others personalities click in the same space and how your energies vibe sorta speak before thinking about living together all too much. Its still fun to think about, dont get me wrong!

 

Good luck!

[folieadeux]

My SO and I are also about two hours apart…by plane.

 

You’ll be able to tell if he’s interested regardless of the distance…initiating communication, making plans to visit, etc.

 

You guys are both young and in a very transitional phase in your lives right now, which I’ll be honest, may work against you. If you both don’t have the means and/or time to invest in a long distance relationship, I would strongly advise against it and to just stay friends as it will avoid greater problems in the long run. But if you both think you’ll be able to swing it and are on the same page with things, then by all means, go for it.

 

I would work all of that out first before talking about moving in together.