And you’re saying this would be a bad thing?!
Methinks that CrazyCatLady has your answer. Read her last paragraph, then read it again and again until you get it.
You kids today–youth is indeed wasted on the young. Just ask her out, then you know your answer and move on. Frankly in my 50 years nothing good ever has come from being shy. I would not have met my lovely wife if I didn’t have the nads to ask her out. It really is as simple as that. We were just friends that moved into something more. Good luck.
this will end when you get over her and move on.
My story:
I met a girl in San Diego, she had a boyfriend, I had a girlfreind. We all became good friends. We all broke up.
I confessed that I liked her more than in a friendly way, she said she did not think of me romantically. OK, I thought, fair enough.
We wind up sharing a rental house and each have our own romantic lives, and remain friends.
So I move to Burbank and live my life. She winds up getting transferred to Burbank. We stay pals but drift apart. No biggie.
She moves to Pitssburgh with her long-term boyfriend. I move to Akron, Ohio and get married. We stay in touch.
She breaks up with him and I get divorced. Everytime I see her I feel as if I’m 20 years younger and I fall in love with her all over again. I know it’s just me but the feelings seem to be real.
She comes to visit me in Cleveland last year. She just had her heart broken and decided to move back to San Diego. I still seem to have strong feelings for her but I keep my mouth shut.
So last October a reunion brings me to San Diego for the weekend. We make plans to spend the whole weekend together.
She blows me off. I fly 3000 miles to see her and she tells me that she has to work. :rolleyes:
Then, on the last night, in my hotel, she calls me and asks if I want to get together. My flight leaves in 8 hours, I’m ired and want to sleep! I decline.
She is very upset and insulted by this.
Apparently, while we were talking, I mentioned I’d be in Burbank the next week for a Halloween party.
The day after the party there were numerous voicemails left on my cell phone telling me what a bastard I am for not answering my cell phone during the party, as she’d driven up to Burbank and was trying to contact me. I told her many times I turn my phone off when I’m at someone else’s house.
My point being that the affection and attraction are probubly all on your side. If she liked you she’d have let you know by now. Also, she’s not the perfect woman you think she is. You deserve someone better.
I think you deserve someone who reciprocates your feelings. If she’s not sending you signals, if she’s setting you up with other women, it’s clear that she’s not interested in you in that way. If that’s going to break your heart, then you really should limit the time you spend with her. Tell her why if you want, but it may not be particularly freeing. In fact, it may just make things strange.
I had a friend in high school whom I loved in every way except sexually. We just clicked and I loved hanging out with him. There was an ease with him that I’ve never found with another man. I met him because he was friends with my boyfriend. I eventually set him up with my good friend, whom he dated for several years until he broke her heart. Even after our respective long-term relationships ended, we hung out.
And then one night, we got drunk, things got strange and we ended up in bed. Things were never the same after that. And I wish it had never happened because I lost a good friend in the process.
Strangely, he just contacted me via Facebook.
Just don’t be this guy.
Forgot to mention this, but IMO, after three years she knows exactly how you feel but values your friendship. I’ve been there, and ignoring male friends’ crushes worked pretty well. FWIW (I never used to use acronyms before the SDMB, I swear), while guys who stick around hoping to get laid some day are a particular pet peeve of mine (though I have no problem with those happy to flirt and nothing more for the rest of our days), you posts make you come off as a decent guy in a crap situation. And if you’re a good enough guy for this wonderful, beautiful person to be friends with, you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding someone who loves, or at least lusts after you, back.
I was in unrequited love with a girl for a year and a bit in college. I told her not long after we met that I wanted to date her, and she said she wasn’t interested. I was 95% sure that hadn’t changed, but I told her again, a year later, that I still had feelings for her, and she again said she wasn’t interested. We remained friends (barring a brief period when she started dating someone else, and I was a dick about it. I got better), but drifted apart after graduation. I still sometimes wonder how things would be different if she had feelings for me, but I know that I gave it my shot. I have no regrets about my actions, and that makes all the difference.
Tell her. Even if you’re sure you’ll be rejected, you owe it to yourself to try to get what you want.
Well all this is really helpful. I greatly appreciate it.
The way I see myself is this: I’m pretty much the man I want to be already. I reasonably intelligent, I’m funny, I’m decent looking although I’m no Brad Pitt, and believe it or not I’m mostly confident in myself. But I’ve got this little goblin in my head whispering negativity to me and holding me back. Most days I can block out the little bastard but sometimes he overpowers me. The only part of my life I have problems with is my dating life.
One of my biggest problems is that I’m overly concerned about being a good person, which is different from just being a good person. I’m so afraid of being labeled an asshole or a creep who only wants sex that I don’t do any of the things that healthy people do to get dates. I can flirt with women if I don’t feel like I have an agenda. If it feels like I’m talking to her only because I want her I start to feel guilty and I back of. I love to surgically remove this part of my personality.
I always look at self help programs with my bullshit detector on. I take what they promise and then dial it down to reality. I didn’t think I be able to have my pick of any woman I wanted and I can see how that dehumanizes women. I see things like this as gold mining. You have to sift through the dirt to find the nuggets of gold. Even though a lot of the gold is the common sense things most people learn by having the nards to pursue the relationships they want. And to be fair, even if the AMP program seems to promise magical levels of charisma, they do seem to respect women as people. Although they do focus on getting beautiful women. And they don’t seem to be slimy like pick up artists. I don’t ever want to be like that.
I think I place too much power in women’s hands. If a woman is rude and insulting I don’t think, “Oh she’s being rude and insulting,” I think, “Oh god I must really be an asshole.” I need to develop a thicker skin.
This post in particular makes feel really good. I worry about treating women like shit and I’m glad I’m coming across as a decent guy. I’m always conscious of being like the guy in that comic linked above.
You’re probably right about her knowing how I feel, too. She really is beautiful and she gets a lot of male attention. She must have learned to recognize the signs by now.
So I think this is going to be my plan: I’m going to Tahiti at the end of June. I’m going to continue work on killing the little demon in my head that won’t let be happy. I’m going to continue going to the gym so that I’ll have a nice beach body for the summer. At some point, when I’m not feeling needy and vulnerable, I’m going to tell how I feel with no expectations of her reciprocating just so I can stop wondering if she might’ve said yes. As Sleeps With Butterflies said earlier, I can keep this torch going for a long time and I think that as painful as it might be, this is the only way I can truly let go. From now until then I going to put getting a girlfriend and getting laid on the back burner and concentrate on my self improvement so that hopefully when I land in Tahiti I’ll be ready to have a passionate island love affair.
Thank you all for your advice. It’s been enormously helpful. If anyone else anything to add please feel free. I’m probably going to reread this thread a couple of times. And if my plan works I’ll update this thread because I know you’ll all be waiting on the edge of your seats wondering if I got some. 
applause. I agree whole-heartedly.
Rejection is sad, but you can move on and get over it. It will be a lot harder to get over it if you discover someday that she liked you too but just never realized how you felt.
YES, sometimes girls who are crushing on a guy but scared to act on it will try to push the guy to date other people. I guess it’s a way of calling the guy’s bluff or something. It’s irrational - but I’ve done it myself.
I have taken the chance of telling a friend I was interested romantically before. In some cases, yes, it turned out to make the other person uncomfortable and the friendship suffered…but I have never regretted SETTLING THE ISSUE instead of having to always wonder “what if?”
False.
As much as women say they want to be appreciated for who they are instead of just a bag of bones, a lot of guys will warn you about the danger of falling into the “friends” zone. IMO you probably shot yourself in the foot. At some point early on, you should have asked her out. Instead, you stayed in the friend zone and she got too comfortable with you. If she had declined, you would have been disappointed but you wouldn’t have built up all these feelings for nothing. If she had accepted, you would have been able to start on a more even footing—as it is, she isn’t out of the gate and you’re halfway around the track.
Now, she has learned via your friendship whatever was interesting and appealing about you that could have made you dateworthy.
A) You receive a wrapped gift. You look at it, try to guess from the shape and weight etc. what it might be.
B) You receive an unwrapped gift.
Which is more fun?
I still want to know what this is about. And now “Jane Says” is fucking stuck in my head.
I was thinking of this thread a little earlier and thought I’d come in to try to explain something from a girl’s point of view. This is true of me and most of my friends, but I can’t speak for all women obviously.
I get that it can be hard for guys to approach a girl to get to know her or ask her out to get to know her better. Rejection sucks. The thing is, I would believe that quite often (most of the time for me and my friends) the rejection comes not because the guy isn’t cute enough, interesting enough, etc… but because of timing.
If my friends and are out to have fun, I am not interested in getting picked up. It doesn’t matter what he says when he approaches, the answer is no. Obviously if he’s Alex Rodriguez or Jonathan Rhys-Myer I’m going to make an exception, but 99.9 out of 100 times it is “no” before he even says a word. That’s not me rejecting him as a person, that’s me just rejecting the idea of getting asked out.
So many girls are already dating someone, have their eye on someone like the OP has on this girl, just got out of a relationship, just not interested in dating right now, or any number of reasons that are all internal issues. Some girls are going to welcome being approached at any time. That’s great. Some girls (ahem) are going to pretty much always say no to a stranger. Grocery store, pumping gas, library, out on a walk, at work, at the pharmacy, at the mall, doesn’t matter where - my answer is currently no. I can’t be alone in feeling this way, so I would imagine the same could be said for a lot of women.
So, as much as that rejection can hurt do try to not take it personally. I would be willing to bet that more often than not, it’s not personal at all.
Hope that makes sense.
What the hell is jane’s train?
So basically, go ahead and ask her out, only do it at exactly when the perfect moment of planetary alignments, solar incidence, magnetic fluxes, tidal influences, and hummingbird migration patterns are in exact balance. Gotcha.
Stranger
What a load of bollocks.
Just for the record, sometimes this is not a bad thing. I fell in love with my current boyfriend because being friends with him gave me a chance to see what a great person he is.
At one point during our “just friends” phase he hinted about being interested in me but I brushed it off because I was preoccupied with the stereotypical “Jerk Guy” at the time and wasn’t at all thinking of my friend in “that way”.
However, after several years of friendship, an unexpected life event happened that showed me my friend’s true character (in a good way!) and it made me see him in a whole new way. I then developed a crush on him and finally admitted my feelings to him a few months later. We’ve been extremely happy together ever since. We have an unbelievably healthy and honest relationship because we started off knowing each other so well and genuinely caring about each other.
So being friends with a girl is not always a death sentence for any romantic potential. I think the girls who do totally rule out dating guy friends are missing out!
To be fair though: sometimes guys do wind up in the “Friend Zone” simply because there is something about the guy that the woman just isn’t attracted to, never will be, and nothing the guy tries to do will change that.
This was a good post. One of my closest friends is someone I’ve known since I was in middle school some 14 years or so ago and I’ve had a crush on her pretty much the whole time. I regretted for a long time not saying anything, and when I finally did, it was one of those “man, I wish you’d said something sooner” sort of responses. At this point, she’s not interested in me, and I’m not particularly interested in her, save for the “what if” thoughts, but our friendship is more or less as good as it’s ever been.
I’ve also been in the other shoes where I’ve had a friend pining for me, and I’m glad that she had the courage to tell me, and I’m glad I had the courage to say that I just wasn’t interested in her that way rather than making up excuses. I didn’t always handle it well though, and it was a little awkward at times, but she’s since moved on and is getting married soon, and we’re perfectly fine as friends (though we have naturally drifted apart just by the nature of such things).
My point is, don’t just swallow it and move on, because you’ll probably regret it for a long time with the “I wonder how she felt” thoughts. Even if you’re 95% sure she’d say no, that 5% will nag you. And if she actually is a good friend, she’ll be okay with it and do what she can to help you move on, and if she’s not it’ll turn up and make it easier to see if you are genuinely her friend or more just her friend because you’re attracted to her. Either way, any relationship, even just a friendship, should have a basis of trust. Put it out there, and then decide if it’s conducive to you to remain friends and you can move on, or if you just need to let her go completely.
This seems more like a “Cup half empty, cup half full” disagreement, rather than an objection against fact, but I’ll be interested - slightly - to hear you defend your opinions.*
Are you both trying to say it is better to have never cared, than it is to have cared and been hurt?
- I suppose “opinions” is a little too generous!
You stated that it was better to have loved (unrequitedly) than to never have loved at all.
This is wrong. I’ll agree that it’s better to experience reciprocated love, even if it will inevitably end, than to never feel love at all, but to postulate that the pain and suffering that is endured because of unreturned feelings can somehow have a positive effect, is wrong. There is no benefit to having to endure such torture. It doesn’t make you a stronger person, it just makes you doubt yourself; it destroys your confidence. It weakens you as a person.
I would much rather be incapable of feeling love than have to live with a string of unfulfilled hopes and dreams.
Or maybe I’m just bitter…