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

[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.