06-05-2017, 06:35 AM
So... thank you for taking the time to read this - it's much appreciated. I've been having a little bit of a struggle dealing with some stuff, and figured if I could get a few impartial inputs it would help knock some sense into me (one way or another) more than just asking friends and receiving whichever answer they think I want to hear.
Basically my situation is nothing special, but it's been causing me significant stress because of what I can only describe as... inexperience, I guess. Basically my longest relationship to date lasted about 3 months and happened about 5-6 years ago, so everything still feels really new to me and I'm just not as good at this stuff as I probably should be.
Getting back to the point... last year I finally managed to pack up and move from my middle-of-nowhere home town to a relatively bigger city. The move was great for the most part, but as I suffer from mild social anxiety I haven't made a great deal of friends since moving - with most of my time being spent with an acquaintance from my home-town who has since become my best friend.
The problem is that I've been slowly, and steadily, falling for him. This came to a head a month or two ago when he texted me this;
"I don't know if it's me being conceited or immature or anything, and I'm awkward as hell asking. But we're just friends, right? If you had any legitimate romantic feelings toward me it'd be good to know. Sorry to have this conversation, but I won't be entirely comfortable until I've cleared up the ambiguity"
The message really came out of the blue for me, so I kind of freaked out. It reads more as concern than curiosity to me, so my response was to just say "Just friends as far as I know. Sorry if I've been giving awkward vibes".
His response then was "Nah, just making sure I know where we stand, so I know how to interpret you. Having that possibility in the back of my mind makes some things you say feel ambiguous"
We agreed to "talk" about it later, but ended up getting distracted helping his friends do some moving, and the topic was more or less forgotten, and feeling like A) I had been pre-rejected and B) Even if that wasn't the case I had basically shot off my own foot, I more or less put my feelings to one side and decided to just focus on the friendship. After a short while everything felt completely normal again, and we ended up committing to getting a flat together for our next term of college.
The problem is that recently we've been drinking together a lot (by which I mean three times in the past two weeks) and during those times we've gotten a tad closer. The first time we got drunk together ended with us literally holding each other and whispering in each others ears until 6am, and the second time we played an extended game of "20" questions that seemed very much like he was leading it into talking about relationship stuff; asking what my favorite date would be, etc. He also spent a period of time lying with his head on my lap and I nearly died.
Of course, I'm more than aware how meaningless those drunken shenanigans are, but they've managed to cause my old feelings to resurface in a major way. The issue here is that I don't know whether there's any reason to bring my feelings up, considering that while I feel like something is there there's every chance he feels he made his lack of interest plain, and I'm also not sure if it's even fair to bring it up considering we're going to be moving in together - I feel like, especially if he doesn't feel the same way, it would be incredibly selfish to tell him how much I care about him, or even just ask him out, when the result of him just affirming his lack of interest would be an awkward year of living together where our friendship could be ruined...
So, I guess I'd just like someone to bluntly tell me what they think. A part of me feels the risk is worth it and I "owe it to myself to be true to my feelings" because the chance of pursuing a relationship with him is worth the risk, but the other part of me thinks I'm just being an idiot and I need to grow up, move on and not put my friend in the awkward position of having to both reject and live with me, because he is my closest friend and ruining that would just be stupid.
Anyway... yeah. Input would be incredibly appreciated.
Basically my situation is nothing special, but it's been causing me significant stress because of what I can only describe as... inexperience, I guess. Basically my longest relationship to date lasted about 3 months and happened about 5-6 years ago, so everything still feels really new to me and I'm just not as good at this stuff as I probably should be.
Getting back to the point... last year I finally managed to pack up and move from my middle-of-nowhere home town to a relatively bigger city. The move was great for the most part, but as I suffer from mild social anxiety I haven't made a great deal of friends since moving - with most of my time being spent with an acquaintance from my home-town who has since become my best friend.
The problem is that I've been slowly, and steadily, falling for him. This came to a head a month or two ago when he texted me this;
"I don't know if it's me being conceited or immature or anything, and I'm awkward as hell asking. But we're just friends, right? If you had any legitimate romantic feelings toward me it'd be good to know. Sorry to have this conversation, but I won't be entirely comfortable until I've cleared up the ambiguity"
The message really came out of the blue for me, so I kind of freaked out. It reads more as concern than curiosity to me, so my response was to just say "Just friends as far as I know. Sorry if I've been giving awkward vibes".
His response then was "Nah, just making sure I know where we stand, so I know how to interpret you. Having that possibility in the back of my mind makes some things you say feel ambiguous"
We agreed to "talk" about it later, but ended up getting distracted helping his friends do some moving, and the topic was more or less forgotten, and feeling like A) I had been pre-rejected and B) Even if that wasn't the case I had basically shot off my own foot, I more or less put my feelings to one side and decided to just focus on the friendship. After a short while everything felt completely normal again, and we ended up committing to getting a flat together for our next term of college.
The problem is that recently we've been drinking together a lot (by which I mean three times in the past two weeks) and during those times we've gotten a tad closer. The first time we got drunk together ended with us literally holding each other and whispering in each others ears until 6am, and the second time we played an extended game of "20" questions that seemed very much like he was leading it into talking about relationship stuff; asking what my favorite date would be, etc. He also spent a period of time lying with his head on my lap and I nearly died.
Of course, I'm more than aware how meaningless those drunken shenanigans are, but they've managed to cause my old feelings to resurface in a major way. The issue here is that I don't know whether there's any reason to bring my feelings up, considering that while I feel like something is there there's every chance he feels he made his lack of interest plain, and I'm also not sure if it's even fair to bring it up considering we're going to be moving in together - I feel like, especially if he doesn't feel the same way, it would be incredibly selfish to tell him how much I care about him, or even just ask him out, when the result of him just affirming his lack of interest would be an awkward year of living together where our friendship could be ruined...
So, I guess I'd just like someone to bluntly tell me what they think. A part of me feels the risk is worth it and I "owe it to myself to be true to my feelings" because the chance of pursuing a relationship with him is worth the risk, but the other part of me thinks I'm just being an idiot and I need to grow up, move on and not put my friend in the awkward position of having to both reject and live with me, because he is my closest friend and ruining that would just be stupid.
Anyway... yeah. Input would be incredibly appreciated.
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