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

[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.