friends help: Pretend you have this really great guy friend. - Help.com

It’s not a true love until you are loved back. And if his culture holds him back from loving you, then you cannot have a true love with him.

Not even if you gave yourself to him.

It’s all too easy to “mythologize” a boyfriend, to attribute qualities to him that he does not possess . . . to think he’s the one without having really thought it through.

Time to move on . . . this love was not meant to be.

Let it go . . . we all make mistakes. The greater mistake is to not realize that we have made a mistake.

It’s probably a little of both. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, if you know it isn’t going to happen then why give it more concern than necessary?

Well only you would know whether you love him, but if you do, culture be damned.

verge wrote:
culture be damned.

what do you mean?

This is probably a weird question…but what is true love? How do you know that you have it? :/ These questions are making me miserable right now. I feel like I’ll never meet the one for me. i’m 23 and totally unexperienced with men.

Allthemessylove. wrote:

verge wrote:
culture be damned.

what do you mean?

I mean if you really love this guy, the rest is only as much of an obstacle as you allow it to be.

He’s not under the age of consent, right? I mean, it almost sounds like that may be the cultural issue, but I could just be reading too much into your post.

i thinks it’s good to start out friends
you’ll know each other better
Maybe he’s the one?

Yeah it’s really cultural more than anything. Also it’s nonsense to me to “ignore” cultural issues because I really enjoy being part of my culture and can’t imagine life without it. Also, I really respect my parent’s wishes (something that a lot of others don’t understand)…so here are the main issues.

1. He’s younger
2. His parents and mine don’t like each other and have known each other for 20+ years
3. His cousins don’t want me to have anything to do with him–he’s really close to them
4. My friends would freak if they found out that we like each other LOL

btw to make this more relevant: i’m 23 and he’s 21…so we’re both of age and if I considered this it would probably be a very serious step to take.

I say follow your heart. If you don’t try it out you may regret it for a very long time. If you make a mistake, surely your family and friends (if they’re good friends) will love you anyway, even if they are a bit upset for a while. You welfare and happiness should be the most important thing, surely your culture promotes that?

There’s a certain selfishness that I entertain. If someone is going to love me, she has to love me more than her culture. She has to love me above the objections of any family members. She has to love me above the protestations of her friends. She has to love me more than she cares about my social or financial status. If she could not do that, then she does not love me enough.

Sounds like you have a real Romeo and Juliet scenarios there . . . except that this guy isn’t serenading you from the courtyard or anything like that!

He’s had a year to respond. He hasn’t. Life is too short to wait years for someone to respond. He had his chance. He didn’t act. Time to move on and find someone who loves you more than anything else in this world!

Or, perhaps, I should have said that, since he already “tried,” and you rejected him, that you are not capable of loving HIM more than all those things I enumerated above.

Guess you were the one who blew it.

If I asked a girl out, and she rejected me . . . I can tell you I’d never ask her out again–not without some monumental effort on her part. Guys don’t like rejection. They don’t go back for more of the same.

Looks like he tried. Now you are having second thoughts.

He won’t come back a second time to be rejected–unless he gets one heck of an assurance that he won’t be rejected.

If you want him, you’d better do a full court press–and be prepared to tell your family and friends that true love is not bound by customs or the opinions of others!

Thanks Sherlockian that really put it into perspective for me. Now I need to find out if we really love each other that much but my guess is no. Maybe we click well together but it really seems as if it won’t happen in the long run.