The situation is my best friend confessed his feelings to me about 8 months ago. Without really thinking or even panicking, I friendzoned him. But he immediately said he would accept any decision I made and wanted to remain friends. We still have a great friendship and talk regularly.
The trouble is, if before I sometimes even forgot he had feelings for me, now I’m starting to think what if it’s actually me who can’t understand my own feelings and is missing out on some opportunity?
To give some background, we’ve known each other for 7 years. For 4 of those, he was my close friend’s boyfriend, so I only was just an acquaintance of my. We mostly hung out in her group for computer and board games. At some point, he, I, and a few of her friends started playing games together without her – games he’d always wanted to play but couldn’t because no one else was interested. We discovered shared interests. I never messaged him privately; I respected that he was my good friend’s boyfriend. But he broke up with her – she became a toxic b*tch and stopped talking to me too.
More to say, I’ve never been in a relationship and don’t think I’ve ever been in love. I’ve had certain difficulties communicating with the opposite sex; I’m terrified of anyone confessing deeper feelings to me due to some experience with light stalking. I’ve always pushed people away when that happened. Plus, I’ve been in a couple of toxic friendships.
My calm reaction about his confusion surprised me. Lately, I’ve started wondering: maybe I’m just dense and/or inexperienced and don’t understand my own feelings, or maybe I was disoriented by how love and relationships are portrayed in various media.
He’s a good guy, a gentleman. We share common interests, a specific taste in music, and we both have weird sense of humour. I feel calm talking to him. Of course, that wasn’t the case at the beginning, he sometimes scared me by some slippery comments and flirt. But now I realize that hasn’t happened in a long time. It’s easy for me to talk to him about personal and sensitive topics that I might not even discuss with my other female friends. Honestly, I can admit he’s almost reached the same level as my very best friend, who I consider my platonic soulmate. His light flirting stopped making me tense and scared. I can’t even tell if I might have started responding to it myself.
I can’t figure myself out. Am I just trying to be someone I’m not? Do I genuinely feel curious, or am I just fantasizing about something I don’t actually want? What is love? What romance is? What are relationships? How do people even start dating? All of this is completely unclear to me. Maybe we’re just great friends, and I’m trying to find something in the mess inside my head that isn’t actually there?
Can you clarify for me what love and feelings are, how they manifest? Maybe you can even tell me, from an outside perspective, what might be going on with me?
TL;DR: After friendzoning my friend, I now wonder if I misunderstand my own feelings. I’ve never dated/loved anyone. But with him, I feel safe discussing deep topics. So yeah, I just can’t put a finger on what happening with me and around me.
Comments
Sounds like the foundation for some really healthy love!
I think you should go for it. A relationship doesn’t just start off with a confession. It’s more like trail and error. You won’t actually know if you dont try it out. If it fails you two can always go back to being close friends
Well, it sounds like he’s mature and genuinely a friend that wants to be around you for reasons besides getting with you. And given that his confession didn’t negatively impact your friendship, it’s likely that if you tried a relationship and it just didn’t work out to be a fit, it would still survive. But, if you definitely don’t feel chemistry beyond friendship, then don’t force it. However, when he does have a romantic relationship, your friendship will likely take a back seat and lessen, depending on how much time you currently spend together and how tolerant his new partner is. Think about whether you’d be fine with that, or whether you still want to be his priority.
Sounds like y’all are good for each other. Go for it!
If you are 25 and have never dated anyone, of course this will be confusing, because you have nothing to compare it to. Love and dating is not one thing—it’s however people doing the love and dating want it to be. There may be tropes you you see in movies, but it doesn’t have to be like that, and everyone can make their own rules. That makes it, of course, more confusing, because it’s made up at every stage.
It seems to me that you are uncomfortable with sexuality, if flirting and sex makes you run. You might be asexual or something, and that’s fine too, but it might also be that you can’t quite see yourself as a sexual person yet. It might be that you want to keep things really slow like teenagers and are fearful of someone else expecting it to be like adult. You may have trauma from previous incidents. The thing is, you need to figure this out for yourself.
Personally if you feel safe with this person, that’s the best scenario to explore being something more. Friends to lovers is a common route, and it can be good because there is already a lot of trust built up. It can also be hard because there is always a fear that the friendship is on the line if things go bad. You’d start slow, try a kiss, and then see if that feels nice or weird. Both is okay! But if it’s just only bad then I think it’s not for you, for whatever reason. If you really can trust this guy and are curious, then it might be worth talking to him about. Come up with a game plan about how things will go and what you will do if things don’t go well. See if you are both okay with the risks and on board with your plan. Then have fun!
Most romantic relationships – in my experience – start with attraction and all the friend stuff has to develop later. A lot of early romantic relationships end because of how to deal with each other outside of the romantic parameters.
For you two there would be a strong basis already regarding the friendship. Then the next question is if you are attracted to him.
On a personal note: i had friendships with women and I always wished that a romantic relationship would start there because my romantic relationships kinda went south.