I think I may have lost my only guy friend

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I’ve known Guy Friend since high school. We never dated or hooked up, just ran in the same circles. We lose touch after high school. Don’t think about him until…

He messages me on Facebook. It was a completely innocuous message. I was part of a high school alumni group and he saw me and said he’d like to chat again. I thought cool, he was pretty nice in high school. I notice he is in to the same martial arts as my husband and kids so we chat about that and he and I banter and reminisce.

That was two months ago. Since then our messages back.and forth have gotten increasingly personal and innuendo laden. I know someone is going to call me a traitorous whore, but I loved the attention and we never sent noods or anything. He lives several states away, and although I had tentative plans to hang out with him in.a few months, that is likely never to happen.

Why? Because I screwed up. I got caught up in the rush of interest from a guy and took it too far. I seem to have a pathological need to be found sexually attractive by men that I relish any attention I get. When my husband is too tired or working long hours I feel neglected and used to eat my insecurities in.the form of fatty foods but have switched to tons of exercise and lost a boatload of weight.

But this attention got me so high like never before. So I ran with it.
Despite all this, I.really wanted a guy friend. A platonic guy, if only to.prove to myself I could. That I could have the rapport and intimacy of a female best friend (of which I have the best of in the world) in a male without it getting weird.

But weird it did. We’ve been texting frequently for a couple weeks now, and not even always flirty. We really have a lot in common and I found it easy to talk to.him, like a girl friend. But I started to look forward to his messages, like the rush you get with a crush. I even entertained erotic thoughts about him in my head and communicated those to him.

Then my hubs and I get into an argument last night, and I go telling guy friend all about it because my best girl friend wasn’t available and all my other friends are not close enough that I trust them with personal relationship details. Guy friend is super supportive, down right wonderful with just listening, telling me it will work out, to hang in there, etc.

But today…Nothing. I texted hello and thanked him for being a listening ear. He says no problem, that he hopes I’ll be ok. I apologize for being a srama mama and for dumping personal crap on him and he says no problem.

I tell him to text me later, but I can sense something is different. That I once again destroyed my chance at a healthy platonic friendship with a guy.

I texted him about and hour ago after not hearing from him since very earlyn this morning. Here is the text verbatim: (names removed)

"Guy Friend, I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I have never been really good at ignoring something and hoping it goes away so here it is.

I have really screwed up with my over sharing and flirting. I know I have probably scared you away and lost a friend. I don’t have any guy friends because this is always what I do. I can’t separate physical attraction from a good friendship. Either the guy ends up saying or doing something he regrets or I do.

I was hoping that since we knew each other from high school I could finally have a guy friend without all the other BS, but I obviously have issues. Probably because of past issues, but whatever, no excuses. I don’t exspect you to respond to me, you are not under any obligation to me and I know that.

I just needed to be honest with you because I think honesty is the most important thing I can do to show respect. Feel free to delete my number or block me or whatever. Just tell me what you want and I’ll respect it.

Thanks–Me"
No response.

I guess after all this my question is, why can’t I seem to keep a guy friend? WtF is going through his mind? I have I completely screwed any chance of being normal with him? Why do I feel such a profound sense of loss? I don’t love the guy, I’m madly in love with my husband. But this whole situation has me feeling like dirt and I want to know how to fix it.
P.s. Thank you to anyone who.takes the time to read this and thoughtfully respond. I know its TLDR

2

Honestly? Go to therapy. It sounds like you might have some self esteem/boundary issues that are making you unhappy. I’ll leave the gender relation questions to other posters, because it’s always confused the bejeezus out of me, but seriously, a qualified psychologist can help in ways an online message board can’t.

3

Seems to me you’ve done a pretty good job of figuring out why you can’t keep a guy friend. Your real question is a) do I really want this to stop? and b) what am I going to do about it?

Any time someone uses the word “pathological” about themselves, I recommend therapy.

4

Sincerest apologies for my typos. It was a lot to write and my android keypad is wonky.

5

I’ve done therapy several times since high school. Sometimes it’s wonderful and I learn a lot about myself, sometimes it’s pure crap, like the time a male therapist told me in our final session.(after three months of weekly sessions) that I was subconsciously flirting with him and if we had met outside therapy and neither of us were married he would have asked me out.
I was 22, newly married, and so creeped out by this therapist I just terminated our sessions and told my husband I wasn’t going back

6

I appreciate that. Therapy is my ideal outlet but financially it’s not feasible for us right now, and getting someone to watch my.three kids while I go would compound the financial burden since I am currently out of a job and staying home with them
I’ve been a member of this board for a while and think there is a lot to gleen from the collective

7

Yeah, well, regardless of what happens you’ve got a chance to learn something. Whatever mistake you made are understandable but hopefully you won’t have to repeat them again. Honestly I think all/most friendships between male female have an element of what you experienced. Not all, but most. Try not to be too hard on yourself it is a common mistake.

8

He texted back telling it was all ok. I don’t know. Could a guy really be that forgiving or is he just being nice because he’s one of those people that doesn’t want any one to dislike them?

9

I think that there’s nothing wrong between you two. That doesn’t mean the other posters are wrong about you needing to address some issues, but a good friend will be cool with those relatively minor issues. People sometimes just don’t text back much because they aren’t sure what to say. In an in person conversation it’s just an awkward pause. In a text conversation it can mean little or no response at all for days. You’re waiting for him to respond and he’s waiting for you to text something he feels he can respond to. Then you did, and he was probably very happy to get your last text.

10

Two rules I have with platonic friends.

I don’t say anything to them that I couldn’t say in front of my SO.

I never say anything to them about relationship problems.
I have no idea why, but I feel like if I bitch to a man friend it’s a betrayal, but bitching to woman friends isn’t.

11

I think it is ok, maybe he was a little shocked but still ok or maybe he wasn’t even bothered at all. Give it a few days to settle down and you will know a bit more than you do now.

12

Well… you’re telling a man who is a dear friend, but who is not your husband you have erotic thoughts about him, and you are also reaching out to involve him in the interior of your personal relationship issues with your husband.

Any man with a spec of sense and decency is going to see that this relationship has gotten beyond buddies for you and has become emotionally dangerous and disrespectful to your marriage and your husband. I’m not sure where you want this to wind up but, honestly, you seem vastly more concerned about the status of this friendship and keeping this guy as a buddy than the integrity of your marriage.

If that is how you are ordering your priorities your I think you need to look at the big picture.

In the overall context your friend pulling back from this growing whirlwind is the smartest thing any rational and ethical man could do. You should be glad he’s doing this not bemoaning the loss of your buddy or trying to pull him back in the loop.

13

I think a guy could be that forgiving, and injecting erotic or romantic elements into the conversation crosses a line into gratuitously dangerous territory with little room to maneuver before bumping into a cheating situation, but there’s no reason you can’t pull out of that territory and still remain dear friends. And I think there’s nothing inherently wrong with strong deep emotional attachment as long as it doesn’t also enter romance. It’s dangerous, but so are cars, and we manage with those.

The biggest question is how important it is to you that this have a romantic element, and why, and what you choose to do as a result.

14

This is interesting and I wish I understood. I feel equally free to discuss relationship problems with friends of either gender. I gather that discussing relationships could be a step along the way to cheating, but almost anything could. Is it about that?

How well does it work to exclude an entire gender from your relationship support network? Isn’t an important perspective totally missing that way?

15

You made it weird.

This is you making it weird.

I suspect it was the flirting and innuendo that destroyed the platonic thing, not the oversharing.

He wants you to stop [del]teasing[/del] flirting with him. You don’t get to have both - if the relationship is platonic, you don’t get to have the ego-boosting sexual tension as well. You think he’s going to engage in all this sexy talk just to make you feel good about yourself, all the while knowing it will never lead anywhere? Of course he’s pissed off.

It’s not clear from what you’ve posted that that’s what you truly want. If you really didn’t want the relationship to escalate to sexy times, you wouldn’t have allowed it to go in the direction it did. See you being weird above.

“Stupid bitch, leading me on like that. WTF?”

Not necessarily. For starters, stop the fucking flirting bullshit! If you want a platonic relationship with this guy then act like it.

OK.

STOP FLIRTING WITH HIM

16

I understand your view and can understand why you’d think I wasn’t concerned with the integrity of my.marriage.
I am infact, very concerned. I told my husband everything that had happened between Guy Friend and me, and while he said he was hurt by my initial dishonesty, he trusted me. My husband is one of a kind for sure.

On a side note, I’ve also has fantasies about my best girl friend and told her about it too. She just laughed and told me to.stop being such a perv.

17

His response:

“No I’m good. :-). I don’t want to delete or block your number and I am a very good listener and don’t “burn bridges” so to speak so I really don’t mind. I also don’t feel like you’re over sharing. And flirting is kinda nice because I don’t get much of it so I’m appreciating the attention. Now on that note, I still think we can be friends and you can talk to me and tell me things and if you need advice I’ll give it to you or if you just need someone to listen I can do that too. I’m sorry if I didn’t talk much last night if that’s what you think this is about that you “scared me off” you’ve done nothing of the sort. I instead think that you can confide anything you want to to me.
Does that make sense? It was kinds rambly”

So maybe you could be wrong about his reaction. Or do you.think he’s jerking me around? I don’t think so myself, he seems pretty genuine. He may just be the right kind of guy to be friends with and finally.break my dysfunctional relationships with men.
My husband satisfies my.romantic needs, and is very willing to.communicate with me when.either of us are dissatisfied with something, but I also feel it would be worth while to make a male friendship work. I am getting the feeling Guy Friend could be the kind of guy who could handle that with out resenting a girl for not putting out.

18

Again, I really appreciate all the feed back. It’s helping me process and contextualize this whole thing and give me some much needed perspective

19

People have gotten divorced over less than you have engaged in to date with this buddy. I’m kind of bit surprised your husband, being informed by you of what has happened, has not asked you to cease and desist with this emotionally intimate and dangerous (to your marriage) relationship. That you are determined to continue to hang onto it despite the obvious risk issues does not signal someone who is overly concerned about the integrity or future of her marriage despite your claims of how important it is to you. At some your husband is likely to get sick of this nonsense and bail.

You seem to think that you can keep two male attention plates spinning at the same time. One or both is going to fall.

20

Wow… your bending over backwards rationalizing to keep this guy friend’s attention focused on you while still being a married women is stunning and borderline delusional. Unless your husband gets off being emotionally cuckolded I’m not getting why he would put up with this.