Did I give her the right advice? *ACK Teen Angst*

In My Humble Opinion
1

Okay, everyone, it’s the internet. We all like to be helpful, and we all consider ourselves pretty intelligent (except you lurkers - you obviously realize you’re not nearly intelligent enough to post, whereas we schmucks didn’t catch on). So I think everyone here’s played CyberShrink at one point or another.

Factor into this matter that I’m not quite 19 and it takes on another dimension.

For some reason, people really like my CyberShrinking, so I do a lot of it. One particular girl I talk to a lot is head over heels for this guy she knows, and he seems to like her too. They’ve gone through a couple of false starts, mostly over the fact that she’s going away to college in the fall whereas he’s staying local.

She asked for my advice, and I told her that, if she felt like she wanted to be with him, to go after him. “Life’s too god damned short” were my exact words, I believe.

However, I can’t seem to deal with that myself.

There’s a girl I’ve had a crush on for a while. We had a false start about a year and a half ago, but turned out to be great friends. We talk constantly etc. I’ve been getting the vibe that I want to be with her again, and she seems to be getting more comfortable with me. But she’s going away to college in the fall, whereas I’m staying local. I really don’t want to get hurt or ruin our friendship, and even though life’s massif short, I just don’t feel right about it - so, of course, I’m starting to wonder about the advice I gave the other girl.

Gimme some feedback, Dopers.

2

The teen angst part got to me. I remember it all too well.
Ace, I was going to tell you how long the summers of my youth seemed compared to now and that even though this girl you like will be leaving in the fall, you should spend as much time as you can with her, but I happened to check your profile, and, if I’m not mistaken, you live in Buffalo. I’ve been here since I was 18 and a freshman at UB, and GOD KNOWS, the summers here are short, if not downright nonexistant.
Notwithstanding, I think you should take the advice of a very wise man who once said, “Life’s too goddamned short.”
Oh, and I have always been under the impression that our reason for living is to get hurt and lose friends!! No escaping that.
Best of luck. Spooky.

3

Don’t give up on something before you even give it a chance. When you get old you won’t regret the risks you took, you’ll regret all the chances that you didn’t take. Or something along those lines. Spend as much time with her as you can, if you like her there’s obviously a reason for it and there might really be something worthwhile between the two of you. Yeah, you might get hurt, but you’re bound to get hurt by someone one way or another. Don’t you think it’s worth it to have that chance with her?

Kitty

4

You won’t spend a lot of time regretting the things you failed at, when you look back at your life. The things you never tried will always be with you. The girl who broke your heart will be a dim memory, kind of funny, but not very important. But the girl you let slip away without even speaking out, she will wander around in your memories for the rest of your life, always just out of reach.

Get your heart broken. It hurts, but you get over it.

Tris

" I am ashamed of confessing that I have nothing to confess." ~ Fanny Burney ~

5

Befuddled mom checking in here, with my mother’s advice.

“Write letters. Writing letters is a good way to get to know someone.”

And see, now, you have the Internet, with all its e-mail, chat room, and message board possibilities. Now us old folks, we used to have to go find an envelope and a stamp.

So, stay in touch, but try to remember that what you’re doing at age 19 is nearly always not what you’ll find yourself doing at age 29. And the people you know at age 19 will nearly always not be the same people you’ll know at age 29. Trust me, I know.

It seems like “forever” but it really isn’t.

Also, speaking both as a fairly impecunious (means “broke”) mom who is shortly looking at funding a kid’s college education, and as someone who went away to college and spent most of it mooning around after a guy, I’d like to point out that your friend who’s going away to college is looking at an investment of many thousands of dollars, and she can’t get her money’s worth if she’s got you in her face. Not meaning to sound tactless, but there it is. Give her some space, some breathing room. And resign yourself to the fact that in the usual course of things, she’s going to meet lots and lots of new people.

Also be aware that if you go after her, you run the risk of looking, at best, possessive, and at worst, totally clueless and/or insecure (“I’ll never get another girlfriend, so I can’t lose this one…”) Maybe she’s been looking forward to her New Life At College, and you’ll just seem like Old News. Tactless, again, I know. Oh well.

And what are you gonna do, in the college town? Get a job while you wait for her to have time to see you? She’s got a paper to write, research to do, and there’s this guy in her PoliSci class…

Stay in touch with her, wait for her to say to you, “Hey, whyncha come visit me sometime?”

6

Because I’m 32 and I still go through it all the damn time.

I remember when I was a senior in high school and there was this beautiful red head freshman girl in one of my classes. I could have asked her out, could have dated her, but I didn’t. Why? Because I was stupid. I knew I’d be moving away when I graduated and I knew that long distance relationships rarely work, and I thought I was “too old” for her. Out of all the women in my life that I could have dated, but didn’t, she’s the one that’s woken me up in the middle of the night regretting I didn’t ask her out. Why? Because she was the first in a long line of women I didn’t date for utterly stupid reasons! The simple fact is that if you blow this one off for a stupid reason, you’ll find another stupid reason to blow off another one (and believe me it gets easier to do each time). Go for it, and don’t look back. You might get your heart broke, and you might not, but you’ll never know if you don’t try, and that’s worse than any broken heart could ever be!

7

As one who, in the past, was quite famous for being shy and not having the balls God gave mice, I say: Go for it. It took me the better part of two months, but I asked out one of my best friends, and she said yes. Ironically, she decided after seeing Moulin Rouge, which she hated. But the basic premise of the movie is that you should take that chance, even if it means you could get hurt later, and I guess after I wrote her the letter and told her how I felt about her it struck a chord. Anyway, as of now, I’m missing her and pining for her while she’s in Spain on the school trip, but I know that we’ll be so happy to see each other when she gets back. And that’s the one major thing I have now that I couldn’t have before she came along, no matter what: Happiness. She does something for me when we’re together that I can’t even explain, but I can tell you it’s the best feeling in the world, a feeling of completion, and you can’t find it anywhere else.

I don’t know what will happen to us when next summer comes around and we go off to college – hell, I can’t tell you what I’m having for breakfast tomorrow. But I can tell you that no matter what happens, I won’t regret having asked her to be my girlfriend.