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| Tips Section: Flirting & Finding Yourself a Date | |
| When friends cross the line |
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If
you’ve never been there, surely you know someone who has. I’m
talking about the incredibly awkward and uncomfortable position of
letting down a friend whose feelings toward you have turned from
friendship to desire. It’s not a fun place to be. I’ve been there at least a couple of times — once in high school, when I was too immature to handle the situation and ended up losing the friend, and again after college, when a co-worker confided in a friend that he had feelings for me. Luckily, I chose to be mature about the latter relationship and put great effort into maintaining a friendship that I still cherish today. But it’s not always that easy When you’re approached with the words “I’m in love with you” from a friend you really care about, what do you say? “Well, geeez, I love you, too, but not like that!?” You have to walk gingerly. Sometimes it’s worse when you don’t hear the words at all. When you both know the feelings are there on the part of one, but neither is willing to admit it. You end up skirting the issue until someone is silently brooding or suffering, and you run the risk of ruining a good friendship. Take my friend, Doug. Soon after he broke up with his ex, he developed a very close friendship with a girl he felt he could confide in. They shared similar experiences and up-bringings and had long talks about life, love and family. Soon those long phone conversations and dinners were misconstrued on the part of his friend. It didn’t help that Doug is a very warm and affectionate man by nature and has no qualms about touching and hugging all of his friends. Not only did Meg feel she was being treated like a girlfriend, she came to expect it, demanding more and more of Doug’s time and attention. So Doug had to nip it in the bud. It was suddenly very obvious to him that there was more than friendship on the mind of this woman, and mutual friends had warned him as well. But he didn’t know what to say. Meg had never admitted she was in love with him, and when he tried to intimate as much, she laughed and denied the suggestion. Plus, Doug, being the quintessential “nice guy,” didn’t want to hurt Meg by flat out stomping on her tender heart. So he started separating himself from the situation. He stopped calling. Started making excuses when Meg would invite him out. Basically, just ducked out of the uncomfortable picture for a while. Was it the right thing to do? Doug says no. Meg was hurt. Confused. Angry. Frustrated. Doug had changed, and because Meg wouldn’t admit her feelings, and Doug couldn’t talk about them, it appeared to be unwarranted behavior. Of course, this wasn’t necessarily Doug’s fault, but he has a few words of advice for the unfortunates who find themselves in a similar situation: “Try to be an adult and face the music from the start, even if it’s painful for one or both of you. If the feelings are painfully obvious, lay them out on the table. It’s okay to have a cooling off period where you put a little time and space in between those feelings, but if you plan to completely disappear for a little while, you have to tell your friend what’s going on. If your friendship is worth saving, he or she will understand.” Susan Hayden |
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