Help me not make the same mistake

LegacyUser

Hey all. Regular poster here and what I'm about to share has been brought on by a comment in a seperate PI thread.

Basically the situation is this; I am male, 21, and have a wide circle of friends, established from Primary and Secondary school. I always have company if I need it but I hae always had difficulty establishing friends outside of my circle.

When I started Uni three years ago I was really worried about making friends. But thankfully someone wonderful came along and made it easy for me. This girl had me at ease with myself and I never once worried about where the conversation was going. I've been great friends with this girl for more than two years and has made things so much easier for me in College.

The problem is that I am falling in love with her and I hate myself for it. Two previous occasions I have ruined good friendships because I wanted to take things further but they didn't. I don't want to lose my friendship with this girl but I dread telling her how I feel as I know I would have no chance due to a combination of my looks (though she isn't what society would deem beautiful, to me she is, and I have lost most of the weight that I've been carrying over the years) and mainly because she's such a great personality that she'd have no interest in me.

But I don't think I can bottle it up any longer and I am angry with myself because I should have learned from previous experiences. And another obstacle is that I can't go out socially with her as she travels to college every morning from a different county. I'm not so much looking for people to guide me here, moreso to see if anyone has been in a smiliar situation and how they dealt with it.

Thanks guys!

Red Alert

Ok, to start with your situation isn't as bad as it might seem. Trust me - I've been through this particular thing quite a few times with varied success, and to be honest it's hard to tell how to sort it out. You're bang on though about dreading falling in love, it definitely happens.

Anyway, I'll give a quick rundown of a few situations I've been in:

In the summer of 1st year at university I had a job in a shop, where I met this girl who was always in the same department as me. I thought she'd a great personality, and was pretty good looking. She'd been just out of a relationship and was a year or two older so I guessed there'd be no go there. However we became really good friends and would regularly meet up outside work and kept meeting up very often after I left the job at the end of the summer. Because I thought I wasn't interested in her as a potential girlfriend I was probably very open with her about things... and I began to notice our meetings became longer and our conversations deeper. We'd regularly spend nights on the phone to one another and used to text one another all day sometimes. Anyway after about six months I realized I really liked her after all, but I'd no clue about how to deal with it. So we went out for a few drinks one evening and it accidentally came up..... turns out she did like me after all. And we'd a great few months together. The breakup wasn't exactly pleasant, and we've had no contact since. Was it worth asking her out? Yes it was - as I think something other than friendship was bound to happen looking back on it. Was it worth risking the friendship and losing it? In this case yes too - because I think after the whole mess we were both better people for it, and the reasons we broke up were nothing to do with the fact that we'd been such good friends beforehand. :cool:

In another case I thought I was developing strong feelings for another girl I met at college. This time I didn't do anything about it, mainly out of being afraid of the result rather than anything else. Should I have asked her in the case? Possibly. What would the answer have been? 50/50, I'd say on the whole she'd have just wanted to be friends. I'm still friends with her now and there's no attraction or awkwardness either way.

In the meanwhile I'd had another brief relationship with someone else who I didn't know too well before I began going out with her..... so much easier!

Now I'm faced with yet another similar situation which hasn't yet been really resolved. I did broach the subject with her a couple of times, but I think I got it wrong, she says she's 'confused'. And I've heard it from other people that she does say she likes me. However she and I are incredibly close, and everyone else thinks we're a couple..... complicated isn't it?

I hope this helps a bit! As you can see, you're not guaranteed success, but you're only going to succeed if you talk to her about it.

What you don't mention here is very much about the girl herself - I'm wondering does she act any way differently around you than around anybody else? It may be that she has a very outgoing personality naturally, and gets personally interested in people... or (hopefully) she's acting different with you than most people. Do you spend much time with her alone in college?

LegacyUser

Red Alert wrote: »

Ok, to start with your situation isn't as bad as it might seem. Trust me - I've been through this particular thing quite a few times with varied success, and to be honest it's hard to tell how to sort it out. You're bang on though about dreading falling in love, it definitely happens.

Anyway, I'll give a quick rundown of a few situations I've been in:

In the summer of 1st year at university I had a job in a shop, where I met this girl who was always in the same department as me. I thought she'd a great personality, and was pretty good looking. She'd been just out of a relationship and was a year or two older so I guessed there'd be no go there. However we became really good friends and would regularly meet up outside work and kept meeting up very often after I left the job at the end of the summer. Because I thought I wasn't interested in her as a potential girlfriend I was probably very open with her about things... and I began to notice our meetings became longer and our conversations deeper. We'd regularly spend nights on the phone to one another and used to text one another all day sometimes. Anyway after about six months I realized I really liked her after all, but I'd no clue about how to deal with it. So we went out for a few drinks one evening and it accidentally came up..... turns out she did like me after all. And we'd a great few months together. The breakup wasn't exactly pleasant, and we've had no contact since. Was it worth asking her out? Yes it was - as I think something other than friendship was bound to happen looking back on it. Was it worth risking the friendship and losing it? In this case yes too - because I think after the whole mess we were both better people for it, and the reasons we broke up were nothing to do with the fact that we'd been such good friends beforehand. :cool:

In another case I thought I was developing strong feelings for another girl I met at college. This time I didn't do anything about it, mainly out of being afraid of the result rather than anything else. Should I have asked her in the case? Possibly. What would the answer have been? 50/50, I'd say on the whole she'd have just wanted to be friends. I'm still friends with her now and there's no attraction or awkwardness either way.

In the meanwhile I'd had another brief relationship with someone else who I didn't know too well before I began going out with her..... so much easier!

Now I'm faced with yet another similar situation which hasn't yet been really resolved. I did broach the subject with her a couple of times, but I think I got it wrong, she says she's 'confused'. And I've heard it from other people that she does say she likes me. However she and I are incredibly close, and everyone else thinks we're a couple..... complicated isn't it?

I hope this helps a bit! As you can see, you're not guaranteed success, but you're only going to succeed if you talk to her about it.

What you don't mention here is very much about the girl herself - I'm wondering does she act any way differently around you than around anybody else? It may be that she has a very outgoing personality naturally, and gets personally interested in people... or (hopefully) she's acting different with you than most people. Do you spend much time with her alone in college?

Thanks for the reply mate.

Firstly, you are spot on when you say that she has a naturally outgoing personality; she could strike up a conversation with anyone. To answer your question about whether she is the same with me as other people, I don't know would be the answer. In 1st year there was mostly just me, her friend from school and herself hanging out with each other so I'm not sure how she acts around other guys.

I made a mistake in 2nd year when I dropped the class that I had with her for stupid anti-social reason (I knew I'd have to do group projects in this subject-I ended having to do it anyway in the class I kept) so I don't get to see her that much now. Probably twice a week if I'm lucky.

I get mix signals from her. If we go weeks without each seeing each other due to workload I'd get texts from her saying "I'd love to see you" or "I miss you" followed by xxx's. On the other hand though even though she is chatty she has never really confided in me about things that are bothering her, other than college related stuff.

I really don't know what to think and I think I'm giving myself away to her anyway by sending her texts when I'm drunk. I don't say that I like her or anything, it's just that it's obvious by the texting while drunk that she's on my mind.

Elessar

In my experience, unless the girl you are friends with is giving you CLEAR and DELIBERATE signals, I would not tell her how you feel. It would more than likely destroy the friendship and create a horrible awkwardness between you. Of course there is always a chance that it won't etc....but if you value the friendship highly don't do it.

I think a good rule of thumb is never date anyone you work around closely. Rejection could destroy what you had and even if you did date and broke up, "work" would never be the same again.

LegacyUser

Elessar wrote: »

In my experience, unless the girl you are friends with is giving you CLEAR and DELIBERATE signals, I would not tell her how you feel. It would more than likely destroy the friendship and create a horrible awkwardness between you. Of course there is always a chance that it won't etc....but if you value the friendship highly don't do it.

I think a good rule of thumb is never date anyone you work around closely. Rejection could destroy what you had and even if you did date and broke up, "work" would never be the same again.

That's true enough and I can relate to that too. A girl misread the signals I was sending her in my summer job in 07 and it was a disaster when I (gently) turned her down. She was so embarrassed that she spread lies that I was leading her on and as a result, I couldn't go back to that job this summer. Thanks for the input man.

ziedth

In my expierence I was mad about this girl I was good friends with when I was 16 to say 19. Eventually I told her and no joy we decided to stay friends and at the risk of starting my own PI thread I ruined the friendship(and a couple other) cause I couldn't take it. As I look back now it was an age thing but still was awful none the less.

Do I regret loosing the friendship? Very much. Am I glad I told her? Yes. Would I change anything? No way.

I'm engaged now getting married in 2010, I think the experience helped me grow for want of a better word.

If you want my advice tell the girl how you feel, Maybe not say love now just try not to come accross stalkerish. whenever I get faced with an oppurtunity like this I think of that quote...

"The only thing to regret in life is the things you havent done".

LegacyUser

ziedth wrote: »

In my expierence I was mad about this girl I was good friends with when I was 16 to say 19. Eventually I told her and no joy we decided to stay friends and at the risk of starting my own PI thread I ruined the friendship(and a couple other) cause I couldn't take it. As I look back now it was an age thing but still was awful none the less.

Do I regret loosing the friendship? Very much. Am I glad I told her? Yes. Would I change anything? No way.

I'm engaged now getting married in 2010, I think the experience helped me grow for want of a better word.

If you want my advice tell the girl how you feel, Maybe not say love now just try not to come accross stalkerish. whenever I get faced with an oppurtunity like this I think of that quote...

"The only thing to regret in life is the things you havent done".

Thanks for the reply mate and it's great to hear that in the long run you didn't regret telling her how you feel, even though it didn't work. Even though she is a great friend in college, as I said in my first post she lives in a different county to me so maybe our friendship wouldn't last the test of time anyway. After reading your post it doesn't seem like so much of a risk now to tell her that I'm developing feelings for her (I'll leave out the love part), now all I'd have to do is pick the right moment in a college environment to tel her!:pac:

LegacyUser

same mistake wrote: »

mainly because she's such a great personality that she'd have no interest in me.

But sure if you're interesting enough to be her friend, you'd be interesting enough to be her BF!
Or perhaps I'm missing something

LegacyUser

Unregistered wrote: »

But sure if you're interesting enough to be her friend, you'd be interesting enough to be her BF!
Or perhaps I'm missing something

Ha yeah thanks. It's not that I'm suffering from low self-esteem. As I said in my post I have pretty sorted myself out in terms of weight, I'm just a stone-stone and a half away from where I want to be.

It's more to do with her being such an extrovert and me being an the opposite, an introvert. Even though we're good friends, our lifestyles are different.