Love help: I have a friend who I love more than anything. - Help.com

If you said to him that you needed space he may have thought you meant you didn’t like hanging out with him anymore. He could simply have been confused.

He could feel that hanging around you makes him unavailable.
He could like you.
He may feel that your friendship isn’t what he wants anymore.

It could be none of these. Ask him how he is doing, bring up the break up or ask how he and whoever are going now. Don’t push him away, us guys don’t usually understand

The replies above said it all, the only thing I’ll add, and I don’t say this to be mean, is…

It seems what’s annoying you is that he won’t reciprocate your feelings towards him, but you seem to be ignoring the possibility that the reason his actions have not shown care for you is because he doesn’t care.

You can’t expect someone to treat you as good as you treat them just because you treat them well. Yes it’s frustrating, but that’s just how it is, not gender specific either.

Cecilia wrote:
I just wish guys could be more understanding.

What you meant to say is “I just wish HE could be more understanding.”

I think it’s best you distance yourself from this guy, mainly emotionally, find someone else to treat as well as you do him, someone who’ll reciprocate it because they care for you enough to, someone who deserves it.

Cecilia wrote:
nah, he would NEVER think that. We have been friends for way too long. He is literally basically a brother. The thought of anything like that is just wrong. He has become a part of my family.

I assumed you did have feelings for him? I mean it seems obvious to me that you do. And I would imagine it’s fairly obvious to him too, sorry, don’t mean to be mean.

Why are you so upset that he’s not being understanding. HE just broke up with his girlfriend. That takes time to process. He’s going through his own emotional roller coaster. Now is not the time to start smothering him with your own emotions and demanding more attention from him. He probably needs his own space, especially from women right now because getting close to girls after a breakup often leads to rebound relationships, which aren’t healthy and confuse/hurt him even more.

Just leave the poor guy alone for a while and if he comes around and starts wanting to have whatever friendship you had with him before again, then decide if it’s what you want, too.

Cecilia wrote:
I wish that he’d turn around and say ‘you are such a good friend to me, and I don’t want to not talk or not meet up, I’d miss hanging out with you. And anyway, what you said is not true, I care just as much as you.’

I guess it’s asking too much.

It might be asking too much… even your unfulfilled wish itself may be the most frustrating aspect. Let me try to clarify a little of what I mean (but feel free to ignore if the peculiar way I do it confuses things more.) Analogous relationship: I love you more than you love me. :) This is true. I’m okay with it. It makes communication difficult because you often miss the fact of my underlying basic pure affection relational-stance toward you. That’s not too frustrating — why would it be?, I’m not asking for anything from you, except very occasionally in small ways. But still, the affection-imbalance exists; for months I only let one person be on my ‘fan’ list — (guess who I was a fan of :) … so maybe by this point in this reply you understand, I like you more than you like me, at least generally, consistently over the months. It’s perfectly obvious to me, and the analogy seems relevant even if the magnitude of emotions and intimacy is much different. So then… why don’t I get upset that you don’t like me as much as I like you? Even times when I secretly was coaxing up support for you but then utterly miscommunicated like I was against your efforts (because the unspoken basic affection was not spoken, perhaps), I didn’t make myself upset about it. I wouldn’t have asked you to care about me as much as I cared about you — not because that wouldn’t be some really cool thing, but because it seems like that’s not quite how things work. Who knows why I’m fond of you? It’s a mystery, not really worth analyzing, minds are so misleading and deceiving anyway — there’s just some natural affection (and if you respond in some way I don’t like here perhaps it’ll completely vanish. Could be?) So who knows why you like the people you like as much as you do?

Hm. Hopefully I’ve communicated something relevant there. The point was supposed to be something about the futility of wishing his feelings were other than what they are, and the possible effectiveness of alternatively altering the shape or form of your relationship — like, I noticed I have an email address for you .. Hey! I could change how we are related in a small way by becoming your penpal! (but not at the moment — see these ideas are all meant for the sake of helping you with your actual plea for help.) Analogously, you could turn to your close guy-friend and say, “I heard you broke up, how about we date and get married and have a family and make an empire and conquer the world and etc etc etc.” — (or your own words, mine might be a bit inappropriate due to somthing or other.)

I hope this helped in some small way, despite my general tendency to miscommunicate with you, and I wouldn’t expect helpfulness in return from you, because I like you, more than you like me.

- someone trying to help

I think you need to have a sit down and really have a good think, be honest with yourself.

Cecilia wrote:
And you guys keep saying ‘yeah, you obviously do like him’. And I can completely understand why you would say that. But seriously. People have actually mistaken us for brother and sister. So to be honest, it would just be **** weird if I did. And I always talk to him about guys I like or go out with, and he talks to me about girls he likes or goes out with. You’ll just have to trust me that there is no way he would ever think I liked him, and there is no way that I would ever think he likes me.

There’s allot in this paragraph, so I’ll break it down.

“And you guys keep saying ‘yeah, you obviously do like him’. And I can completely understand why you would say that”
So we both agree that it’s obvious you have feelings for him.

“But seriously. People have actually mistaken us for brother and sister.”
What has that to do with your or his feelings? I think you tell yourself these excuses to hide from the truth, and to avoid having to take that leap and pursue a relationship with him. Remember, you are not brother and sister.

” So to be honest, it would just be **** weird if I did.”
Weird for who? And why? You’re not related.

“And I always talk to him about guys I like or go out with, and he talks to me about girls he likes or goes out with. “
That may have been a bad move. Still has nothing to do with your feelings toward eachother though.

“You’ll just have to trust me that there is no way he would ever think I liked him”
The very fact that this post exists, that you were up at 4am writing it, that you’re back again now, and the fact that this whole problem happened in the first place, confirms without a shadow of a doubt in my mind that you definitely like this guy, probably allot.

“and there is no way that I would ever think he likes me.”
Well, herein lies the problem, I think what’s upsetting you, is that he is behaving like he doesn’t care about you, so you’re hurting because your feelings aren’t being reciprocated. But, remember, he’s just out of a relationship, this is a baaaad time for you to be around, maybe he does have feelings for you? Maybe you played a bigger role in his break up then you know, but then maybe he just actually doesn’t care about you… People change.

What you need to do is back off, completely, for a long time. The easiest way to do this is to busy yourself with something else, you’re usually busy anyway so just throw yourself into your music for awhile or something and leave this situation for now.

Cecilia wrote:
Michael - I am very confused!!!

Ah, it was just the deranged ramblings of a fevered mind. Like I said, if that’s confusing just ignore it. (sorry, I’m in the middle of some really bad cold/flue thing, but thought I had some interesting perspective.) Sorry to confuse you.

Well, I personally don’t think it’s healthy to love someone platonically that much, because they may not believe the same as you, your point of view is certainly a rare one.

Best of luck anyway, and you’re welcome :]

Cecilia wrote:
******** Fourthings. ********. I am now just SO confused. I went out last night with a good friend who I never put much effort into keeping up. I figured I’d distract myself by meeting up with different people. But I ended up drinking, and she said ‘why is your friend _______ not here? Let’s invite him.’ Long story short, she invited him, and he asked to speak to me before saying yes, and asked if I wanted him to be there. My heart went out to him because he sounded so sad. And of course I wanted him there, that wasn’t the point of the argument/conversation we had had.
But I spent the whole night and today while I was with him worrying that I did like him but I didn’t know it. And then thinking I couldn’t like him because I didn’t know it and that was stupid. But then thinking about what you said. And going around in circles in my head. You have just confused me even more!!!!!!! I think I really just need to go back to my plan of giving him some space, and me.

There is never anything wrong with a little bit of space. Take a few days from talking to him. It might seem hard at first but you definitely need to refrain from any contact with him whatsoever. After a few days, I think you will see things more clearly.

Well yeah of course give him space, like I said earlier a couple times, I dunno why it confuses you so much, if you care enough to worry so much then it’s pretty obvious to me you have feelings for him, how many of your other friends to you worry about and fuss over like that?

No problem, I’m glad you made some progress with this :]