Friends before, can you be friends after?

LegacyUser

Hi,
Just wondering if anyone can advise.

Friends with someone for 2years and we were very close, always hanging out and doing stuff together.

Anyway I called it up as it was wrecking my head and wanted to see if it could go anywhere. I just said that I liked them and would they like to date.

Fast forward a month and It didn't work out and although they said it was that they were in a bad place I knew it was me. I am fine with this and to be honest I have a lot of stuff to sort out, personal issues and the like and in reality it was a good thing as I can focus on myself and get my head sorted for when the next person comes along.

I don't regret making that move but I do incredibly miss the friendship. I am very friend focused and seen as we were great friends before it wasn't like just some person met in a club. I contact them regularly and they are being incredibly polite and answer back but I always intiate the contact. I do still fancy them a lot but I know that they don't want me and I have to respect that. I just want us to be able to hang out and not dwindle into a meaningless aquaintance whom I have an awkward hello with when I bump into them.

Anyway, is it possible to get back friends after that line has been crossed. Should I just leave it and move on. Was the friendship never there and they had strung me along and when I didn't live up to their fantasy they just lost interest.
Any advice greatly appreciated and any personal experiences would be helpful.
Cheers.

longneck

sadly,i have just been through something similar.i pushed things along because my head was wrecked with all our contact but yet did'nt seem to be going anywhere.the result is - no more contact!!i have figured that i was either just a pastime and an ego boost or that he just does'nt want a relationship with me.hard to accept but i'm having too.i miss our chats and the fun we had,but life is too short and moving on seems to be the only thing to do.

rediguana25

Friends for 2 yrs - that's too much to throw away. The only way you can be friends though is if you talk... Once he knows your not interested in a relationship he may be ready to get back to the way yHou were. Perhaps he's just afraid your still interested in a way so not initiating contact etc. Take it slowly but find away to let him know you just want to be friends..if he is still not interested then move on. But worth giving it another try I think.

LegacyUser

longneck wrote: »

sadly,i have just been through something similar.i pushed things along because my head was wrecked with all our contact but yet did'nt seem to be going anywhere.the result is - no more contact!!i have figured that i was either just a pastime and an ego boost or that he just does'nt want a relationship with me.

I've been on the other end of a similar situation. A close male friend wanted things to go further. When I said that I wanted to be just friends, we haven't had much contact either. He wasn't an ego boost to me. Things just became inevitably awkward. Maybe your friend genuinely liked just hanging out with you and when you told him your feelings, he just didn't know how to act around you anymore.

rediguana25

Exactly why sorting it out n letting him know u just wanna b friends could help- although by the sounds of things u still like him- can be hard to be friends with someone you still fancy

freyners

went out with one of my friends about a year ago, didnt work out either. Id known her for a long time and when we broke it off it was incredibly awkward at first, so much that neither of us enjoyed going out. After a month of this i called her to set things straight...we've known each other for a long time, we have too much to lose by continuing like this. I told her that no matter what happens between us i rather be her friend than nothing at all. Things eventually got back to the ways things were a couple of weeks after that.
It was harder to get over her because of it but i know myself it would have been worse if we let the awkwardness destroy our friendship, so my advice OP is to call your friend and lay it out there, tell (him/her sorry not sure) that you miss the friendship you had. It saved the friendship i have with her, were still as close as we were back before we went out.

Chinafoot

Friends_or_not wrote: »

I do still fancy them a lot but I know that they don't want me and I have to respect that.

If you still have feelings for this person then I don't think you can be friends. Not really.

Be brutally honest with yourself..did you always fancy this person from the start of the friendship or is it something that has developed recently? If the answer is the former then I don't think you had a genuine friendship to begin with. I firmly believe that people of the opposite sex can be purely platonic friends with no feelings on either side, but if there have been feelings there from the very beginning, then I don't believe thats a true friendship as there is always going to be part of you holding out hope.

I've been on both sides of this scenario. I had someone who I thought was one of my closest friends tell me he'd had feelings for me for years. I didn't feel the same way and in a way I actually felt cheated. I felt that he had abused my friendship in an effort to get closer to me. I'm sure there are plenty that will disagree with me but thats how I feel about it.

In the other scenario, I fell for someone I had known for years and had no previous feelings for. I drunkenly spilled the beans one night and they didn't feel the same way. He tried to stay friends but I found it too hard and I cut contact. He said he understood. When we do see each other now its not awkward, it's nice to catch up.

OP, for your own sake, you should leave things to settle with this person. There is no point in trying to be friends when you have unrequited feelings. You'll only wreck your own head. Take some time out to get over this person and then maybe try again when you have moved on. Its a pity that these things don't always work out but you need to be fair to yourself and your friend.

LegacyUser

Same type of thing happened with me recently enough and have to say I'd agree with Chinafoot. Was friends with a girl over a year and at the start of this year we had a chat where she told me she thought of me as more than a friend. I'd started to feel the same way, hadn't said anything as wasn't 100% sure and didn't want to risk a friendship where we got on really well but we decided we'd give it a go.

To be honest I found it a lot harder to adjust than I'd thought it would be, going from friends to a relationship was for me at least very strange, never tried it before. Found I was acting differently from before when I was around her, almost on eggshells which annoyed the hell out of me and in hindsight I think her even more so.

Anyway I was slowly adjusting, apparently not fast enough as all contact ceased about a month into it. Right after the last night we met up when she asked me to go on holidays with her at the end of the summer. Left the next day in great form and got one text a week later saying she had too much on at the moment to see someone.

Was confused by the whole thing, more so as she had been the one talking and planning months down the road. Really disappointed by the way it ended, not so much that it ended, more by the way I was just blanked. Hadn't done or said anything bad that I can think of, and have giving up wrecking my head trying to think of a reason.

I miss the friendship we had, hadn't realised we were in touch quite so much until contact ceased.

If you wish to try and get the friendship back on track OP up to you. Me personally?

To be honest I've wished since that she never brought the whole thing up. Not sure if I could go back to being friends and 6 months down the road being told all about the wonderful new guy she met and pretending to be happy for her, that's not what a friend does.

LegacyUser

OP here,
Thanks for all the advice, from the posts I see that it may or may not be possible. I suppose when it comes down to it if we stop being friends than that's just the way it is. I'll continue on the way I am and see. It is hard when you are trying to stop thinking about a person but remain friends. I already feel better about it as it was very brief. But you kind of feel like a stalker sometimes when all you want is it to go back to the way it was.

Thanks again and by the way we're two guys, sorry for misleading but I wanted experiences from people and didn't want anyone to feel they couldn't relate.

Cheers