Thursday, 11 June 2009
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Why Do My Friends Want to Date Me?
Last month, one of my super close buddies told me that he has more than platonic feelings for me and I haven't talked to him in a month. This guy, let's call him Dave, has been friends with me for the last three years and is the closest person to an older brother to me. We hang out every now and then when our schedules cooperate, he tells me about his relationship woes or distress of the life of a bachelor, we debate about various of nonsensical things that amuse us and we've confirmed time and time that guys (buddies in particular) that "fall" for me are silly. He used to ridicule their methods, their reasons and lack of understanding in how I work... "I am so glad you and I are just friends; I don't think I can handle you as a girlfriend, knowing how you are and what you do." I loved the fact that he was a cool, smooth, attractive person who wasn't interested in me in "that way" either. It was a great match.In April I was over at his place with my spread of goodies on the floor, watching Dumb & Dumber. He was wearing his Lululemon sweat pants (I make fun of him for that) and I was wearing my ripped faded jeans, funny slippers (he has cow slippers for me at his place, hahaha) and a giant oversized sweater. In short, neither of us ever glam up for each other when we have our movie sessions. I don't have a problem with that either. So much to my surprise, as I was sampling my assortment of snacks, he sits down next to me and I smelled cologne.
Me: "Are you wearing Armani?"
Him: "Yeah, you like it, don't you?"
Me: "Yes...but why?"
Him: "Oh I thought I test it out."It was weird but okay, I shrugged it off and giggled along with the dialogue of Jim Carrey. The parrot died, I laughed until I hiccuped and he chuckled as he patted my back. Then his hand lingered on my shoulder. I could feel his hand resting on my shoulder, fingers ever so slightly caressing me, and I made a weird face before I can pretend to be ignorant about it.
Him: "Is it weird?"
Me: "Yeah, kinda...What's going on with you man, you've been acting funny today."
Him: "That's all you noticed?"
Me: "Is there something you'd like to talk to me about?"He's not one to beat around the bush or to bait me with these passive crap so I tensed up. In my head, a tiny voice whispered: "oh crap, you don't think....nah, not Dave..." and I shook my head gently and laughed. He took that as a cue and reached for my hand. I literally jumped about an inch off the floor and backed away from him. He then tucked a loose strand of my hair behind my ear and I backed into the couch.
Me: "Dave?"
Him: "I know this sounds super unexpected but bear with me okay?"
Me: "Erm, okay... "
Him: "For the last two months, I've been dating a lot, you noticed right?"
Me: "Yeah...It's going well, isn't it?"
Him: "Well, not really..."
Me: "Why not?"
Him: "Because I realized what the problem was..."
Me: "Yeah?"
Him: "They aren't you."I sat up and started to pace around the kitchen, talking about a mile a minute in shrill tones about him pulling my leg with this nasty joke. He also got up and he reached out for me as I walked past him. I grabbed my can of Coke and guzzled it until I swallowed wrong. I coughed, hacked and swallowed as he stood there, with his arms crossed in front of him and waited me to calm down.
Him: "Can you hear me out?"
Me: "Why are you doing this to me?"
Him: "Look, after you broke up with your ex, you've changed."
Me: "Are you saying this is my fault?!"
Him: "Well, I'm trying to explain something! To me, after you broke up with your ex, you've changed. You were kind of vulnerable and strong at the same time, you've always been this way I guess, but I didn't really notice until recently of how the person you are resembled the woman I want to be with."
Me: "But I'm the same! I'm the same obnoxious, demanding, clumsy, loud girl that you've made fun of for the last three years! This crush of yours is just... your frustration of being single!"I slumped on the couch and sulked. I know I was being annoying and immature but I struggled to keep my face blank. This is the second time this year that one of my buddies has professes his infatuation for me. In fact, such an event happen to me more often than I care to admit. Afterward, either they can't handle the "rejection" so they stop being friends with me or it just gets too weird for everyone so I just distance myself until my admirer gets a new girlfriend. The latter worked best thus far but overall, the whole ordeal make me question my friends' motives in being friends with me in the first place and I have difficulty in maintaining a close friendship with guys although I get along with them very well. So when my older-brother type of friend just blurts out that he's infatuated with me and has been dating women that are similar to me in order to "replace" me somehow, I'm feeling... betrayal. I know it's not fair for him either, why the hell did this happen to us? I know he's not trying to sabotage our friendship this way on purpose, and yet I cannot help but feel betrayed and a bit sad.
That was last month, since then Dave has changed drastically. From a suave, easy-going, independent guy, he's turned into an insecure, needy guy who bothers me with endless emails and text messages in the middle of the night. Of course, me not responding to him is probably the reason why he's bugging me so much but I don't know how to handle this situation. The other "crushers" have been friends with me for a few months at best, but Dave has been in my life for a very long time. So I realize I cannot employ the same methods of "helping" him out. What can I do?
Am I overreacting? I feel like I don't even know Dave anymore. He's displaying all these symptoms that we used to talk about: "What turns you off from a guy?" and our other friends call me in regards to it. Some of them say, "I can't believe Dave of all people concluded to tell you about this thing!" Others scold me and say, "Why are you surprised? Guys and girls can't be friends" WTF?
If I had it my way, I'd gradually distance myself from Dave until he a) gets over me or b) gets a new girlfriend. But I have a feeling, he's not going to make it easy for me. We've been friends for so long, I cannot imagine my life without him, but at the same time I'm not going to date him either. I don't date my friends, I'm one of those girls that sees friends as an extension of family. Dave is family! How can you date your family? *sigh* What would you do?
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About the Author
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- From: kor_girl@xanga
- About Me: Tall, loud, obnoxious, contradictory, observant, opinionated, social, a little shy and quite the Korean-Canadian hybrid...whatever that means?
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Comments (50)
I say... try dating him. Go on a few dates (make sure it's more than one so you get a "feel" for it) and if it truly doesn't work - then pray it's a mutual thing and you can both "let it go." Hopefully then he can get it out of his system... orrrr, who knows, maybe you'll discover an attraction (stranger things have happened.) If your relationship is already fading, what do you have to lose by experimenting?
Friendship is always a precursor to attraction and romance in a situation like this. This is perfectly natural. Yes, I think you are overreacting and in denial.
^ I'm with that guy.
terribly.
he likes you. okay but you're so busy getting mad at him for liking you and for having one of your guy friends liking you. have you ever thought that you might have feelings for him too? And It's normal for friends to fall for their own friends. i mean some of my guy friends have told me they like mebefore, and we eventually move on from it. don't worry so much. talk to him. see how it goes.
So in other words you are saying you would rather date a guy who knows nothing about you and has just met you as opposed to one who you have known for awahile and have already developed some sort of relationship with.
Quit making mountians out of mole hills and give the guy a chance. I am sure it wasn't easy for him to admitt his feelings to you and for you to just explode on him was BS. I think that deep down you like him too but have some reservations about dating him because you think it will ruin the relationship that you had prioir to this. Well, that may be, but consider this, it will only be ruined if you two allow it to be ruined.
thus are the woes of being hot. i'm assuming you're hot so that's why all these guys want to bone you. because come on, that's the only difference between being a good friend and a boyfriend --- the boyfriend gets to stick his penis in your va-jay-jay.
also, why is everyone telling her to give the guy a chance? should she just give any guy who asks her out a chance? she's not attracted to him, so leave it be. she doesn't want to pursue a romantic relationship with him, so what. i support you and your actions.
how can you not date friends? i can't imagine not being friends with your SO. besides, if they're good enough, an SO eventually becomes family too, written down on a marriage license. =P
anyway.... this used to happen to me all the time as well. i only have male friends, and a lot of them liked me at one point or another. i thought i had hit the bonanza when i became close friends with a guy who already had a gf and thus was unlikely to be attracted to me. we really hit it off, but after we had been close friends for a year and a half, he told me he was really attracted to me, which of course made me uncomfortable as our relationship had been entirely platonic ever since we had known each other. lucky for me, he understood that i didn't really want that from him and we both moved on. and we're still great friends today. but it can turn out the other way too. i'm actually dating one of my close friends who i never thought i would be attracted to, after two years of friendship. once i admitted to myself that i liked him, it was easy to see where we should progress. i say give it a try...
You probably need to talk to Dave about it. Like what you are going to do if he is going to keep nagging you about him loving you and what not... because it's not fair to you, and obviously it's not going to happen since you're not interested. I don't think you should be mad at guys for liking you- unless you know for SURE that the guy was just after your body or something. But I mean, you guys were friends! At least you knew that you were being immature.
Give it time. Maybe you might change your mind? Maybe.
yep u might change ur mind hang in there and go with the flow its nice to be pampered:P
I believe that men and women cannot be purely platonic friends with some kind of feelings from one party. However, there are exceptions to this rule and they are...
-he is gay
-family
-you don't want the guy and have thus set the "friends only" boundary
-you grew up with them so they feel like family
-he is affeminate
-he grew up around women so he knows how to build relationships with women on a purely friendly basis
And there is one other that I'm forgetting...
Anywho, its natural for a guy friend to like you and if you don't want him like that then set the boundaries and tell him you can imagine being more than friends, you love the relationship you have and you don't want anything to change it. If he doesn't listen then you may have to let him go until he agrees with your boundary.
Good luck!
Apparently you don't want to be with him if your not even thinking about dating him. He's just a friend, and I totally understand.
I've gone through the same thing, wondering how in the world guys can just think they can be my friend when I'm single because they are interested, and as soon as I'm taken I don't exist any longer. Apparently Dan has been your friend for a while, and him being your friend just because he likes you is not the case for him. If you haven't had an actual calm talk with him, do. You can't keep ignoring him, but you might need to tell him you'll be speaking to him less till he has gotten over this crush. I had to do that with a best guy friend of mine, it sucks, but it helps. Give him time to get past you, but you need to make that clear to him that's what you're letting him do.
Don't make it a huge thing. Someone else already said, friendship is a precursor to romance. It was inevitable after so long. Good luck!
I'm still trying to figure out how some guys are able to move past the friendship zone with a girl they've been friends with for years-and those that do usually marry the girl or date her for a long time. This is personally why I have issues with trying to move past the friendship zone with a girl-it pretty much NEVER works out that way, especially if you're friends with the girl for years and you know her like the back of your hand. I mean the ball is basically in her court-if she likes you more than a friend after you guys have been friends for years then it's cool-if not then that's it-there isn't much you can do as a guy other than putting your feelings out there.
I'm not sure what to do or anything this happens to me alot over half of my friends are guys and i know they would do anything for me. All I can say is whatever your decision if you two just stay friends, don'ttake advantage of the way he feels about you okay? You may not think you would but my bet is if he feels that strongly about you he would do anything for you, and if you get caught up in it all then you could lose him as a friend.
It's bull that guys and girls can't be friends. A lot of guys are just morons with no self-control. He'll keep bugging you, that's just the way it's going to be I'm afraid. You might be able to get him to calm down if you put it to him straight and simple that you will never ever date him and he needs to grow up if he doesn't want to completely lose you as even a friend, though I think it sounds like he's already done that. It sounds harsh but that's just the way it is when something like this happens and you don't want it.
Okay, I just read all the other comments and there's a lot of movie-script crap flying around here. TV is not real, people! In real life people can be friends and not want each other romantically. This is exactly why so many friendships screw up, because people have ridiculous misconceptions about friendship and love and all that balls. Every guy does not to get with every girl he knows or is friendly with and vice versa. Just because some people have no control over their emotions they think everyone else is the same. Tsk tsk, get over yourselves.
OVER-REACTING!!
Jeez, i had my best friend tell me was thinking naughty thoughts about us for days, that didn't weird me out at all. He is your friend, your supposed to be there for him to talk to.. your pushing him away, stop and think about it. Give it a try maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised =)
@MelancholyRambler@xanga - Agreed!
All my friends are male. There was one drunken halloween, a really close friend and I slept together, but it actually brought us closer as friends and we got over that tension that seems to linger sometimes. After it happened, we talked about it and we both agreed that we should stay friends. Sometimes you need to venture there to make sure your feelings are correct.
I feel kinda bad for the guy. You two have been friends for three years and probably know most everything about each other. I think you should be flattered that he cares about you and respect the fact that he told you (even though its backfired on him drastically). Try being a mature and honest friend and talk to him. He at least deserves that. It's probably not going to be a comfortable conversation but people do it all the time and move on. This is not worth losing a best friend over...
get over yourself...sorry haha
i feel sorry for the guy. why dont you just give him a chance and see how things go from there?
DENIAL
How about you take a deep breath and chill? Then you could probably talk to him about it or something.