I’m in love with a friend of mine. She’s extremely beautiful and she’s a wonderful person. I was too fucking scared to ask her out and after I spent three years pining away for her I found out that she had a boyfriend. I was too scared to even ask if she had a boyfriend! Then I found she broke up with him and started sleeping a 20 year old pothead. Nothing against 20 year olds or potheads but I just resent how he had the courage to make a move and I stood by the sidelines watching. I’m 29 years old for Fuck’s sake! And this kid had the balls to ask her out.
Now he’s her booty call. I’m still a virgin and this kid (who she doesn’t even seem to like as a boyfriend) managed to get a gorgeous 30 year old woman to have no strings attached sex. I know you can’t control who your attracted to and I don’t feel entitled to her affection or body but still…
I hung out with her tonight in her apartment. I keep fantasizing that she wants me as much as I want her but every time we’re alone it’s painfully obvious that she has no sexual feelings for me. All I could thing of was how if that kid was with her before they started sleeping together he would have been flirting and asking out until she said yes.
All I want is tell her how I feel but I know deep down in my gut that she doesn’t want me. I know I have to move on but I don’t know ho to do that.
If you know she doesn’t feel the same way it sounds like you might need to distance yourself from her. Sticking around in hopes that she’ll change her mind is not going to do anything for your self esteem. Do you really want to be with someone that you have to convince to be with you?
It sounds like you’ve had these feelings for quite a while without having anything in return which give me the impression that you have the stamina to keep this torch burning for a long, long time. That’s a recipe for disaster. You’ll end up resenting her for something that isn’t her fault and be that much farther away from a relationship with a woman who wants to be with you.
I’d start spending time with other people. Good luck.
All you seem to be getting out of this is a chance to beat yourself up. It’s time to stop fantasizing and pining over a relationship that apparently was never going to happen and move on. Start looking for someone else. Heck, ask your friend to set you up with one of her friends.
You’re both right. I have been thinking about putting distance between us. Even though I’m hoping she’ll see me in a new light I’m not sticking around for that. I do genuinely like her as a person although I am exhausted from thinking about this all the time.
I do have the stamina to live with this for a looong time.
She is trying to push me to get a girlfriend. I’m going on vacation in a couple of months and I have
been hoping for a South Pacific romance.
Well if you are looking at distancing yourself anyway…what do you have to lose?
Ask her out, stop putting the pussy on a pedestal, show interest in her physically as well as mentally and emotionally. Women like getting fucked too.
I have someone new in my life…on paper many people would call her out of my league. She is beautiful, she is sexy, she is smart, she is ambitious, good career, nice house in nice area, adorable well behaved kids.
And she seems to like me alot.
Apparently the ‘geeks reach optimal desirablility around age 40’ is true after all.
That’s the big one right there. A woman might be secretly interested in you and be waiting for you to make the first move. But one thing that she would never do in a case like that is want you to get another girlfriend.
If she’s pushing you to get a girlfriend, then she has no interest in being your girlfriend. It’s a lost cause.
You’re going to do yourself a big favor if you manage to forget about this girl for a while and get out.
I’m gonna make a guess and say that you’ve TRIED to go out but in your mind every other girl you’ve come across just isn’t as good as This Girl, and you’ve decided you’d rather wait for the best and forget about the rest. Saying that you’re hoping for a South Pacific romance is a big tipoff to your state of mind - the only thing you can think of that would be better than this girl is straight out of some movie.
This Girl doesn’t want you. If you’re really not sure, you need to ask her. Then you can stop worrying about waiting around for her cuz she’s either going to say “OMG I want you too!” or confirm that you’re just a friend and maybe you can get on with your life.
Stop comparing all other women to her - I know you’re doing it. Go out on dates with other women and then you can see what other women are like and find out independently what you like and do not like in a mate.
And just maybe if you go out with other women and appear more confident and “together” to This Girl someday in the future she will think more highly of you and the two of you can go out. Maybe by then you won’t like her anymore. Or maybe you will.
But sitting around for 3+ years pining over one woman is not doing you any favors. At all.
I have been in this situation from the other side and I can tell you to definitely move on.
Right now you are serving as a ego-stroke, she knows how you feel but doesn’t return the feelings, you will NOT find someone else as long as she is in your life.
Here’s what I would do - or what I did do in a similar situation.
Ask her to be friends with benefits. Does she know you’re a virgin? Ask her for help - friends like helping friends.
The way I see it this has a few possible results:
-she says no, it hurts the friendship and you move on
-she says yes, there’s no magic for her, you move on
-she says yes, it slowly turns into a relationship and all is great
To me the big plus of this approach versus asking her out or proclaiming your love is that there is way less pressure for her. She doesn’t love you back, so if you have any chance at all you have to ease her into the idea.
Whatever you do, I would try something - way better to try something.
Finally, just to brag, the girl I tried this with is now very much in love with me. She sees me completely differently than before and can’t imagine only seeing me as a friend way back when.
Yeah, I don’t think you should do the above. If it works, which it won’t, you’re screwed anyway, because now you’ve had sex with the woman you’re in love with and she thinks it was a casual thing, while you’re at that point probably thinking about her 24/7.
Plus it’s manipulative, dishonest, and disrespectful of the friendship and your friend.
If it doesn’t work, and it won’t, then you’ve been rejected physically but haven’t even gotten the chance to clear your head and talk about how you really feel.
It’s just not a very good plan. The thing to do is the one that you’re really afraid of doing, unfortunately, which is actually a pretty good general rule.
You absolutely can not know for sure until you ask her. And you will regret it for the rest o fyour life if you don’t find out for sure. Maybe “you need to get a girlfriend” was your cue to say “But you’re the only one I really want. . .”
Just ask her out to dinner and a movie. Say “I’ve always wanted to know where our relationship would go if we tried this; can I take you out on a date Saturday night?”
If she says no, move on and don’t look back. This is not a friendship. Real friendship is balanced and honest. This is unbalanced and duplicitous.
And moving on with the hope that it will make you look desirable in her eyes is NOT moving on, and will only make her nauseous when you call to tell her about your latest fling then pause breathlessly to see if it’s working.
All of this is making sense. I wish I could say “No no you’re all wrong,” but it’s ringing true. This sucks seeing all this from an objective perspective.
One thing that sticks in my mind is an offhand comment I read here in a thread I can’t remember buy a poster I can’t remember. He said about his girlfriend or wife, “She’s did that thing some women do where they set you up with their friends when they are interested themselves.” That’s a paraphrase but I was holding onto that for a while in the hope that that was what was happening.
Even though I know she’s not interested I still want to tell her. I’m not expecting her to be happy about it, but I’m tired of feeling like a coward.
As far as friends with benefits goes, she wouldn’t be into that. Yesterday we were at work and a coworker made a joke about me asking for a “favor” for all the help that I give her. (Don’t worry I’m helpful to everyone, not just her.) And she said jokingly, but not really, that if I ever did that I’d see the back of her hand. So I don’t think sex is in the cards.
I’m glad you said this. I feel the same way but I have so many stupid ideas about relationships floating around in my head I started to think that this idea was wrong too.
She is always offering to be my dating coach and wing girl. Maybe I’ll take her up on the offer.
I hope I’m not coming off like a sleaze. When I’m with her I don’t act like someone who’s waiting in the wings. I think I’m being a good friend. It’s just when I’m alone that I start thinking about this and wallowing in self pity. I actually thought I was over her a couple of weeks back. I made my peace with it and I moved on. But somehow the flame got reignited.
Has anyone heard of the Authentic Man Program? It’s a self help program that’s supposed to help men attract women by having men develop Presence. Some of it is a little “woo-woo” but a lot of it seems legit. If you scroll down the page there’s a video clip that’s a good overview. I’d like everyone’s opinion but especially the women. Authentic Man Program (How do you re-title links? I can’t seem to do it anymore.)
Let me tell you a story. My girlfriend was once just a friend of mine. I really liked spending time with her, admired her as a person, but didn’t have any romantic feelings for her at all. I just didn’t fancy her.
And then one night, empowered by a few drinks, she told me that she liked me. REALLY liked me. Up to this point, I’d been completely unaware of how she felt, and really didn’t know how to respond. I turned her down gently.
She spent the next few encounters we had feeling mortified. She called me to apologise the next day, and was generally embarrassed about what she’d said.
Thing is, I wasn’t embarrassed. I was flattered. And the more I thought about it, the more I started to look at her in a different way.
So six months down the line, when she again mentioned how sorry and embarrassed she was for having said something, I said ‘you really shouldn’t be. I was very flattered. VERY flattered.’
Basically, I’d completely come round to the idea, and I now rank her as the love of my life. Thank God she had the bravery to risk that friendship. I couldn’t be happier.
So what I’m saying is, try telling her. She might not fall straight into your arms. But you never know what effect it will have on her in the long run. What have you got to lose?
I would take this farther and say that it may be a sign that she has picked up on how you feel about her, and she is actively trying to redirect your attention away. She likes you as a friend, and she doesn’t want that to get tangled up by an attempt at romance.
Personally, I don’t think that’s a good idea. If you can’t set aside your feelings for her now, you’re liable to tie yourself even more into knots if you’re having to have conversations about dating and sex with her. Spending a lot of time talking about hooking up with women, with a woman whom you want to hook up with but can’t, strikes me as torturing yourself. And I think it would actively hinder your ability to succeed with other women, because you might always subconsciously be holding back, thinking that this friend might finally come around.
It sounds harsh, but I think the best thing for you to do for yourself would be to stay away from her, work on your self-esteem, and try to pursue other relationships, without the distraction of pining for her.
I think that program sounds like the same old crap, repackaged. Frankly, I didn’t make past the first couple paragraphs. Anything that promises you can make any woman you wish desire you is bullshit. No matter how fabulous or confident or charming you are, not everybody is going to like or want you.
Developing Presence (or as I like to call it, enough nards to jump in and talk to people without making a big thing of it) is a good idea. For everyone, in all aspects of life. The only way to get good at it, near as I can tell, is to just bite the bullet and start doing it. It’s really hard at first, and at points you’ll consider changing your name to Stanley because you feel like such a tool. But like everything else in life, it gets easier with practice.
I like to think of it from the worst-case scenario, asking myself “What is the absolute worst thing that could happen?” In the case of striking up a conversation with somebody or asking somebody out, the absolute worst thing that could happen is that they reject you and are rude and/or insulting about it. No fires, no floods, no lightning bolts from above, God won’t kill a kitten, you just get to find out that somebody is an asshole. Finding that out is to your advantage because you now you know to avoid that person, and your life thereafter will all the more pleasant because that asshole won’t be in it.