Ask Natalie: Told your friend you love her and now she’s blowing you off?

[conuly]

DEAR NATALIE: I am a 36-year-old man in love with an amazing woman. We’ve known each other since high school and have held each other up through the roughest times in our lives — my divorce and depression, her ill father and abusive ex-boyfriend. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, and she’s great with my kids to the point that I could imagine her as the perfect stepmom to them. A few weeks ago, I took a chance and expressed my feelings for her. She rejected me, then acted as if nothing had happened. She continued texting me regularly and tagging me on social media as though she expected nothing to change. I asked her to stop contacting me, but that made her irrationally angry. She says I’m throwing away a 20-year friendship, but she is the one throwing it away. She says she “misses” her “best friend,” but I have plenty of friends. What I need is a romantic partner. I feel as though she is trying to have things both ways, keeping me around as long as it suits her but never too close. How do I get her to get off the fence and make up her mind? To either decide that she wants to be with me properly or to decide that she doesn’t and let me go on my way without her complicating things? -- LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME

DEAR LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME: You know what you need to do. In a way, you already did it and found her answer. When you told her your feelings and she rebuffed you, ignored you and then proceeded to act as though nothing had happened, that really said it all. Move on from her. Cut off communication with her and recognize that perhaps she was a crutch to you when you needed one, but now what you need is someone who wants to be with you as much as you want to be with them.

https://www.uexpress.com/ask-natalie/2019/11/13/ask-natalie-told-your-friend-you

Comments

[conuly]

So, you have no obligation to stay friends with anybody if you don't want to be friends with them, but buddy, you sound like an utter asshole.

[rmc28]

"I feel as though she is trying to have things both ways, keeping me around as long as it suits her but never too close."

She's trying to BE A FRIEND doofus. And yeah, I'd be angry ("irrationally" or not) if one of my male friends of 20+ years told me I couldn't talk to him any more because I didn't want to bone him.

[conuly]

Can't talk to him and also, I'm guessing, can't have too much contact with these kids of his that she's probably pretty damn close to.

[rmc28]

Oh yeah, perfect stepmom material but how dare you want to just keep on being an auntie.

[conuly]

Also, you can never have too many friends.

Ugh, LW is such an asshole.

[cimorene]

I mean the advice is good for her, because this entitled ass isn't a good friend, but the amazing thing here is that he evidently wasn't just a stalker who believed in the friendzone all along if he was married and she was in a relationship, since it says she helped him through his divorce? Or is this guy just so gross that he doesn't have women friends at all, only women he regards as potential romantic partners and is covertly sexually assessing at all times regardless of his own or their relationship status?

[resonant]

I'm guessing the latter. He had a wife and a spare; if she wasn't available for the position, she should have gotten off the waiting list so he could slot in some other woman as backup wife.

[cereta]

How do I get her to get off the fence and make up her mind?

She's not on the fence, Mr. Nice Guy^TM. She didn't pretend to be your friend while secretly wanting something else. She didn't lie about her feelings, insinuate herself into your life while secretly auditioning you to be the perfect
husband and father. You, OTOH, have violated her trust, held what she thought was a wonderful friendship hostage to make her conform to your (for her) unwanted expectations. By all means, cut her off. She'll be better off for it.

[rosefox]

decide that she wants to be with me properly

be with me properly

PROPERLY

Dear sir, please do fuck all the way off. I feel bad for your kids and hope they can find a way to stay in touch with Aunt Amazing.

[cereta]

Yeah, that was a really gross line.

[ashbet]

SERIOUSLY. What an ass!!

Dear LW: What she *wants* is to continue the supposedly awesome 20-year friendship that you claimed to have with her.

It's not her fault that you are angry and entitled and feel like she's somehow betraying you by STAYING your friend after turning down your romantic advances >:(

[cynthia1960]

LW: Seriously, get fucked sideways with an unlubricated telephone pole.

[neotoma]

Dude, you're the one who isn't handling this well. You apparently can't be friends with a woman if you're attracted to her.

As to her making up her mind, she did. She decided she wanted a friend, not a lover. You are the one who can't take no for an answer.

[redbird]

Not advice, but I suspect that LW may be about to discover that he doesn't have plenty of friends, so much as plenty of friendly acquaintances who will get together to see a movie or play games while never talking about anything more personal than the movie or game strategy.

I do wonder, was it Natalie or the editor who wrote that profoundly misleading headline for "told your friend you love her and resent that she still likes you"? The headline is a shape of thing I have worried about; the letter is not.

There have been times that I started to fall in love with a friend, and decided not to say anything, because I didn't think they were likely to reciprocate, and didn't want to damage the friendship. I valued what we already had enough to want to keep it. But my worry was that if I told a friend I was in love with her, and she didn't reciprocate, *she* might pull away or be uncomfortable around me. Not that she would have somehow "wronged me" by not reciprocating my feelings, or that I would suddenly become unable to be a friend if she knew I would like a different shape of friendship.

[feldman]

Yeah, his 'problem' seems to be that she's *not* blowing him off in either sense.

[movingfinger]

My jaw actually dropped. I'm sorry for the kids. I hate to think what he's going to tell them.

Christ, what an asshole.

[greenygal]

There's a version of this letter where the LW is having trouble getting over his feelings and his sadness that they're not returned while still maintaining a relationship with his friend, and he needs advice on how to get some distance from her while trying not to hurt her or disappoint his kids. I would nod sympathetically at that letter. Feelings are hard sometimes!

And then there's the actual letter, where the LW not only doesn't seem to find any value in a twenty-year friendship if his friend's not in love with him, but apparently can't imagine that she might value it either! Saying she "misses" him in quotation marks, Jesus on a unicycle. I feel so sorry for this woman.

[jadelennox]

I was this woman in college, and the guy eventually ... well. content warning #metoo etc. So, amazing woman? Be really fucking careful. Please. Stay safe.

[conuly]

I'm so sorry to read that.

[eleanorjane]

Oh my god that "advice" makes me so angry. Way to validate the LW's shitty, shitty Nice Guy (tm) Friendzone bullshit.

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

[tieleen]

Yes! The fact that an actual human wrote that letter already maee me so sad, and then seeing that response was just... wtf, humanity.

[metawidget]

It's ugly advice and probably won't lead to LW becoming a better human, but it might be harm reduction in that it might make him less likely to pursue her in bad ways… but yeah, the poor kids. Breakups and relationship transitions happen, and some of them result in good adults leaving kids' lives (especially in less-formally defined romantic relationships where a partner soreness some nurturing time with someone's kids, but the move of the kid's family or their teacher could be similar). It's kind of sad that cutting off contract will probably cut Ms. Amazing out of the kids' lives unless kids are at an age where they can just catch up with her independently.

But LW will need to do lots of personal growth for things to work out both for the kids and for Ms. Amazing if that's not in the cards.

[eleanorjane]

I don’t think the kids are the sad thing here.

For starters, I don’t think it’s a safe assumption that she’s in the kids’ lives at all. I mean, my BFF and I have been best friends for 25 years - more than half our lives - and if we stopped being friends tomorrow his kids would barely notice. Heck, I don’t think I’ve even seen them in about two years. LW says she’s “great with” them, but I don’t think that says much about her actual level of involvement or investment.

My sympathies are entirely with the friend for the fact that the person she thought was her best friend has in fact just been seeing her as Potential Wife and Stepmom for who knows how long.