There are many intricate details concerned here, so it might take me a while to lay it all out for you.
I became good friends with “Daniel” several years ago. (FYI: I am a mid-20s woman; he is an early-30s guy). We met through mutual friends. When we met, I had a boyfriend of about 6 years. I was also just out of college, and a lot of my old friends weren’t around anymore, so I was happy to have made a new friend. We shared a lot of the same interests and had a good time together.
After about a month or two, my long-time boyfriend and I broke up and I was very unhappy. Daniel was a good friend to me during this time. It was sort of clear at the time, but really clear in hindsight, that Daniel was romantically interested in me from the get-go, and he saw his chance to move in. I was never interested in him from the beginning, mainly because I wasn’t attracted to him and he just wasn’t “my type.” But I really liked him as a friend.
Anyway during this time I was kind of depressed over the break-up and there was one night we went out and I got pretty drunk. To make a long story short, we started making out and we had sex. The next day I was very upset over this because I did not want that to happen. I was just drunk and reeling from a bad breakup and it just happened.
So we came to an understanding that we were just to be friends. I explained to him that I did not want to ruin our friendship, etc. So time went on and we remained good friends. There may have been one or two more times where there was some drunken fooling around between us, something of which I am NOT proud of, but that happened because of my depressed, drunken state.
But all in all, I ended up considering Daniel a very good friend–actually a best friend. Although I always kind of knew in the back of my mind that he was still interested in me as more than friends. But he didn’t act on it or do anything about it so it was OK. And, I really cared a lot for this friend and enjoyed his company. We have had some really great times together. And what I really loved about him the most is that we can really talk to each other, for hours and hours…about anything.
That’s not to say that we always got along, though…we both are very opinionated people and would sometimes get in arguments. So there was one period where we got in some stupid argument and we didn’t talk for like 6 months (his choice), which made me really sad. But eventually we became friends again and all was good.
I should also mention that during our friendship, we both dated other people with no problem.
So that covers like a year and a half, approximately…Then came a time when my old boyfriend, we’ll call him “Jerry,” and I got back together. Then Jerry and I moved in together. I could tell that Daniel did not like this, and acted jealous sometimes. Then a little while later, Daniel moved to another state, about 8 hours away. So from that point forward we didn’t really see each other a lot, but we talked on the phone a lot, e-mailed a lot, and I really missed him!
Then after not seeing him for like 6 months, he came to visit me. I was so excited to see him! He was supposed to spend the weekend with me. That first evening we went out to an old favorite bar of ours. We were having a great time. Then later in the evening, after drinking and getting kind of buzzed, he started becoming all “touchy feely” with me, which is something he used to do all the time which annoyed me. You know, he would put his arm around me, touch my shoulder or arm, etc. It just made me uncomfortable because I am not a “touchy feely” kind of person. I would have felt the same if it were any guy who weren’t my boyfriend–it was nothing personal against him.
So I delicately tried to move farther away from him, and he just scooted closer. Then he started to notice I was getting uncomfortable and he started saying “what’s wrong? why can’t I touch you? What’s your problem?” And I tried to be really sensitive and nice and I said something like “I just don’t like to be touched, I am not touchy-feely, and need some personal space.”
Well, he blew up and started yelling at me. He said some pretty mean things to me. Then he started implying that I wasn’t so innocent, because in the past I had fooled around with him, and implying that he might say something to my live-in boyfriend Jerry. I tried to just bite my tongue but that got me mad and I told him I was not going to risk Jerry finding out about my past indiscretions, etc. Then he said he wish he had never come to visit me and he was going to leave, etc.
So he stormed off and said he never wanted to see me again and that this was the last time we would ever see me, etc. That was the last time I saw him. Then he wrote me like two nasty e-mail shortly thereafter, which I ignored, and that was the last contact.
That was almost a year ago. I know the argument was pretty bad, but I feel like it was a stupid argument and there were so many other good times. I think about him occasionally and miss him as a friend. I’d like to think that we are adult enough to put the weirdness of the past behind us and move on.
Question: should I contact him and see if he wants to reconcile our friendship? I was thinking about writing him a letter. Or should I just let it be? I just think it would be really nice to catch up and see how he is doing, and repair our friendship, whic was one of the best ones I have ever had…
Thanks for reading such a long post. I really need some advice!