Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
What’s up, Doc?
There are two interconnected issues I want to talk about.
Early last year, I met a woman and we formed a friendship almost immediately. From the outset, she was very clear that she only wanted a friendship. She had reached a point in her life where her values had changed significantly, particularly in how she approached relationships, and I was completely happy with remaining platonic.
Despite that, our relationship developed in ways that felt inconsistent with what had been communicated. At one point we shared a brief, but intense, intimate moment, which she initiated and escalated. We discussed it afterward and she again made it clear that she only wanted friendship. I accepted that, and I still do.
Since then, however, we’ve become considerably closer. We spend a great deal of time together, our friendship has become increasingly emotionally close, and there have been moments that have left me uncertain about how she sees me. Taken individually, none of these things necessarily indicate romantic interest, but taken together they have made it difficult to reconcile her words with what I perceive through her actions. The intimate moment was completely unexpected given everything we’d discussed beforehand, and the way our friendship has developed since has only added to my confusion.
I do have some feelings for her, although I’m confident they will diminish over time, and I genuinely believe a lasting friendship is possible. I know that part of the reason I feel this way is I’m wired for inconsistency because of my own upbringing. I am not seeking to change anything. What I struggle with is understanding whether I’m misreading the situation, whether she has feelings she hasn’t acknowledged, or whether this is simply a close friendship that I’m interpreting through the lens of my own insecurities. The uncertainty, rather than the feelings themselves, is what I find most difficult.
The second issue is more personal.
Growing up, I was extremely shy and insecure, and although I’ve become far more confident over the years, some of those old beliefs still linger. I’ve improved my appearance considerably, I have no difficulty talking to women, and people often tell me I’m the sort of man that women would enjoy getting to know. Yet despite all of that, I’ve never actually dated anyone. Because I’ve never had that experience, it’s difficult for me to truly believe what people tell me.
This friendship seems to reinforce those doubts.
She is an exceptionally attractive woman and always has been. Earlier in life she had a very active sex life, and I have little doubt that neither of us would have crossed the other’s radar in our twenties. She almost certainly wouldn’t have looked at me romantically back then, let alone become my friend. Although she’s since changed her lifestyle and her values, a part of me still wonders whether I’m simply the “safe” option, whether as a friend or whatever this relationship has become. I’ve always been a kind, dependable, and approachable man, and people generally feel safe around me. The difficulty is that I’ve long associated those qualities with being appreciated rather than desired, and I’ve held the belief that I am not a man that women would ever want. However often the internet or studies might tell me that kindness and emotional safety are attractive, my own lived experience has never really given me evidence to believe it. I genuinely enjoy her company and value our friendship, but it has also stirred up something uncomfortable in me. Deep down, there’s a voice that says, “So now you want something to do with me?”, as though it’s responding to years of feeling overlooked.
My therapist often says that every relationship acts as a mirror, reflecting something back to us about ourselves. This one certainly seems to be doing that, because I can feel resentment beginning to build within me.
Any advice?
There’s Something Different About You
I don’t think these are two separate-but-interconnected issues, TSDAY; I think they’re the same issue. It’s all about how you’re feeling about yourself as reflected in how you think your friend feels about you, which is why it gets confusing. Treating them as though they’re separate issues makes it harder to get at the underlying cause, because some of it is – not projection, so much as the filter you’re seeing things through inadvertently revealing things about yourself.
This is why the ultimate answer to your “first” problem is simple: you trust your friend to tell you what’s up. She told you what she wanted and what, importantly, she has the bandwidth for as she’s going through these transformations in her life. I understand feeling perhaps lines have been blurred after that “brief, intense intimate moment” (whatever that may have been; this is an area where clarity is very helpful), but that’s not entirely surprising.
A lot of people who have realized that they’re in a transitional phase of their lives – where their past behavior, values and ambitions are no longer either compatible with their lives or something that they want to pursue – can have moments where old habits or patterns suddenly attempt to reassert themselves. It often feels like it’s coming screaming out of the clear blue sky, just a massive craving or impulse hitting you with monster truck force. This is often what’s known as an “extinction burst”, where your brain is attempting to resist changes in behavior and routine. Brains are, after all, inherently lazy and prefer to stay in the same routine, even if those routines and habits aren’t helpful or even actively harmful. It’s simply easier to maintain what already exists, while carving a new groove takes sustained effort. As a result: in an attempt to stave off the final moment when the old pattern or behavior is broken for good, your brain will flood you with the urge to go back to whatever you were trying to break.
I think your friend is sincere when she’s saying that she just wants to be friends and doesn’t have it in her to be more. Even if her feelings have changed, that doesn’t necessarily mean that she wants to pursue them or change what you have. Attraction, after all, isn’t a mandate; you don’t need to act on every romantic or sexual urge you may have. But just as importantly: she’s a grown-ass woman, who can handle her own affairs. She knows that you were interested in her when you met. If her feelings have changed and she wants to do something about them, then she knows how to reach you to talk about it. The best thing you can do is assume that she knows her heart and motivation best of anyone, and that she’ll let you know if things have changed.
It’s how you are taking this, and how it’s making you feel, that should really be addressed. You neither give yourself credit for how much you’ve grown or improved over time, nor are you recognizing her growth. You mention how she wouldn’t have looked at you or been your friend the way that she was in her 20s, and… yeah, that may have been true. Or it may not have been. But the fact of the matter is that you didn’t encounter her back then, so you don’t really know. It’s just an assumption on your part. Possibly an educated one, but still an assumption.
The mistake you’re making is that you’re not necessarily giving credence to the fact that neither of you are the same people you were back then. People can have very different feelings about people at different stages of their lives; you may have been wildly incompatible at one point, but fit together like LEGO at another. It’s a little like couples who knew each other for a long period of time before they started dating; they had to become the people who could date each other before it could happen.
Just as importantly, you’re treating “being safe” as a bad thing. This is one of the myths around attraction in general and heterosexual relationships in particular that I think cause a lot of harm: the belief that being “safe” is inherently unattractive and why women don’t fall for someone. That’s not the case at all; desire doesn’t exist without safety, physically and emotionally. It’s a requirement for intimacy, especially emotional intimacy, and without it… nothing can really happen.
People who pursue relationships with someone who isn’t “safe” are often doing so for reasons that have less to do with attraction and more to do with things like attachment styles, emotional wounds and unmet needs. Someone who’s grown up experiencing uneven or sporadic love, or connection with family, for example, will often be seeking out relationships unstable or difficult relationships because they’re familiar. It’s what they’ve been taught love and connection is like. A relationship where they don’t have to struggle to connect or don’t have to perform a certain way to get attention feels uncomfortable and weird. It’s not until they can reconcile things and accept a healthy relationship model that they start to be able to act on what they truly want or need.
Other reasons include things like seeking validation via sex or relationships, trying to “prove” something to themselves or to the world, or feeling like the only value they have is in what they provide to others. It often takes growth and maturation to move past those reasons and become someone who can have and accept a healthier and more rewarding relationship.
The thing that makes the “safe” person truly safe is that they’re not part of the equation that’s motivating them to seek out partners that may not be healthy or safe for them. It’s an opportunity to rest, to fully engage with and open up to someone without fear that it’s going to turn into yet another go with someone who’s ultimately going to hurt them or lead them to being hurt. In fact, it’s often that “safe” friendship that helps spur the growth and change that they need to heal by demonstrating that it’s possible to have that in the first place. And that’s not a friendship they could have if it were happening in the context of the romantic or sexual relationships they were having at that point in their lives. If there were a sexual or romantic attraction, then you wouldn’t have that friend in your life.
Yes, I realize that this isn’t necessarily satisfying to the person who wishes that their friend saw them as a viable dating partner… but as I said: their friend isn’t who they would need to be in order for that relationship to happen in the first place. It’s not that your being “safe” disqualified you from a romantic or sexual relationship with them; it’s that if you weren’t someone they felt that they could trust and open up to, you wouldn’t have a relationship at all. Your friendship isn’t the consolation prize, it’s the prize. The romance you might hope for isn’t happening because you’re not the person they’re looking for – someone who ultimately may not be right for them and may, to some degree, be a form of emotional self-harm.
I think part of what’s got you hung up is that you’re seeing this from a position of “well she got all the ‘fun’ out of her system and now she’s ready to settle down”, when often the “fun” she was having was not that at all. Sometimes the “I’m having such a great time, wheeeee!” is coming through clenched teeth and a tone of voice that says “I will convince myself of this if I say it enough times”. The change is often less “I’m done having ‘fun’” and more “wow, I spent my twenties seeking something that wasn’t good for me, and now that I know myself better, I can actually find what I both want and need.”
This isn’t true of every person who has a wild sex life when they were younger, don’t get me wrong. But often we behave in the ways we think we’re supposed to and don’t really reckon with it until later.
(And when I say “we”, I truly mean “we”; this is behavior that spans all sexes, genders and sexualities.)
The problem is that we, especially men, tend to get told very different stories about what it all “means”, and we take it on board because it validates our frustrations. What your experiences “taught” you wasn’t that “being safe and approachable” is the opposite of being desired. That was what your thwarted desire taught you, combined with what shitheads with toxic and hegemonic views about sex and gender preach.
And I would point out that those views tend to be very male-centric, in that they make the men central to women’s behavior but also that these are traits that men find appealing in other men and so they assume women must feel that way too.
However, if you pay attention to media that’s popular with women – especially when it’s written by and for women – the romantic leads aren’t the romantic lead because they’re unsafe and unreliable assholes. The core of the character is always – always – a journey towards becoming someone who is safe. The qualities that make them a good romantic partner for the Happily Ever After are almost always there already; sometimes they need to be brought to the forefront, but they’re always a part of that person. In fact, most of the time, the relationship finally happens – or is affirmed – because the male romantic hero finally dealt with their bullshit and can be the person that the heroine needs him to be.
And sometimes, it happens because the heroine has finally dealt with her bullshit and is able to be who she needs to be in order to accept the person who’s been trying to love her.
This is something that I think you haven’t fully processed yet, and that’s part of why it’s fucking with you. That feeling of “Oh now you want something from me?” is coming from a place of aggrieved entitlement, because it doesn’t reckon with that “well now she’s in a place where she can actually pursue something that’s more in alignment with her highest, authentic self”. So rather than being a case of “oh, now this person is convenient for me”, it’s “Oh thank GOD I’m over that past phase and I can have something that isn’t going to make me want to die inside.”
A lot of getting past this is to recognize that what you’re feeling is based out of expectations and misunderstanding. The view of “oh she has her wild days for fun and then settles down with the ‘safe’ guy” is often projection; a view of “well, if I had the option, this is precisely how I would be,” and directing it outward. The reality of it is often different and much more nuanced – and often not as flattering to the people involved as you would think.
If you want to start getting past that resentment or that feeling of “oh sure, now you want something”, you’re going to need to start recognizing and dealing with the idea that this is based around the idea that you were being denied something that was “rightfully” yours, and that’s not the case. Yeah, it sucks that you didn’t have the experiences you think you should have or think you wanted to have. But you didn’t, and – importantly – they only feel like something you should have had because you never had the reality of it. You only know what you think it would have been like, and the fact that it never happened means that can always be exactly what you would have wanted, and thus something that you can always be sad about having never experienced.
The best thing you can do is let go of the past and focus on the present. Looking back on what didn’t happen just means that you’re going to miss out on what is happening or could happen. And then you’re just going to be stacking on even more resentment and regrets for what could have been, if only.
Acknowledge that you didn’t get what you wished when you were younger, but let that go. Say “it’s a shame that this never turned out the way I hoped, so what can I do today to make things better for who I am now.” You’ll enjoy life a hell of a lot more… and set yourself up for a future where you aren’t bitter about your past.
Trust me: your future self will thank you for it.
Good luck.
