Issue with a friend

Chuchoter

Right, so this is very long story, and I've already posted over on pi but always seem to get more answers here.

I'm 17 and I'm a lesbian, I came out to my friend (lets call her Sara, she's 16) last February, and although she said she was fine with it and said she was bisexual, it was obvious to me that she was very uncomfortable about my sexuality in herself. Every teen girl I meet seems to say they're bi, so I don't take much heed of it, at the time she was straight . Anywho, she became very uncomfortable around me: wouldn't touch me/hug me/sit near me/stand near me, she was still really nice but she was terrified of me, and I think that was because I've made her re-evaluate her whole idea of herself as a straight person, because she doesn't know any other lesbians ever.

So throughout all of these shenanigans I was head over heels in love with her, she drives me crazy, but since she was so uneasy around me I got really annoyed (in retrospect, perhaps unfairly) and stopped talking to her as much as I felt she'd lied to me about being comfortable with the whole thing and made me feel so isolated. I did my best to stop liking her...or at least not think about it so much.

NOW, we have a problem. We were at the cinema with a group of friends last week just after coming back in to school after barely seeing each other all summer, and the tension was enormous. She called me back 'because she like the song at the credits' and it was very obvious she was thinking about saying something. I still really like her, but I don't want to like her and I don't quite remember why anymore.

Last year I was all like yay I'm gay and proud and life is great, but now I don't feel so jovial about the matter. I want a girlfriend, I want her, but the idea of actually going out with a girl TERRIFIES ME because so much **** has gone down around my being gay this year between my friends and my family. This is like being a 12 year old boy meeting a girl for the first time. What do I do now?

deirdre_dub

If I may be so bold as to give you just a three word answer to something that is obviously quite distressing.

Give it time.

You are still quite young. Having relationships, both sexual and platonic, with both gay and straight people, will get easier. You'll make more friends and better friendships. The cr*p you've had this year will eventually become a distant memory.

I hope you have a good support system in place. If not, I'd put some effort into creating one.

Take care,
D.

liah

I'm not so sure she was acting like that because you made her re-evaluate certain things. It was moreso that she probably realized you were into her when you told her you were a lesbian, and once she had that into her head it made things awkward for her-- as you said, she was straight at the time, and having to think of a way to handle your feelings for her would have been very confusing.

Are you even sure she has feelings/could feel for you in that way?

Chuchoter

I knew I was making her uncomfortable so I made a conscious effort to act differently, but now (apparently, so she says) my body language is very closed around everyone including her: crossed arms and legs/looking away/little eye contact. I'm like this all the time, but maybe more with her because I didn't want to make her uneasy.I still want to be her friend the way she's friends with everyone else, she's a very touchy feely friend the way all teen girls are with everyone apart from me.

Now in the last few weeks, she's gone from being really worried about touching me at all (as in flinching if our hands bumped into eachother picking something up) and sitting really far away to sitting very very close and now I have no idea what to do with her.:o

@deirdre, probably not a bad idea, I know I'm incredibly inexperienced in the matter, but she sits with me in like every class! :P

Heebie

Perhaps she thinks you only told her to try and get into her pants? You did say that you REALLY liked her.. and she might very well have taken another look at your behaviour before you told her and decided that you'd been trying to "get with her" for some time. or.. perhaps she started construing every action of yours around her as potentially sexual.. but she just wants a friendship?
Or.. perhaps she's homophobic.. or afraid that if anyone finds out about YOU.. they'll automatically label her and she'll feel ostracized.

As someone else said, you need to give things time. It sounds like she's not going to be someone you end up spending a lot of time with no matter how you might act. She may eventually loosen back up around you.. but you can't live your life hoping that's going to happen. If she's going to come around.. then she will.