So I got attracted to the dreaded straight guy but for the past couple of months, we really got close to each other and it seemed like we were set to be great friends. Then out of nowhere, everything changed. We bonded over a game and used to play together all the time, then suddenly he started to play with a best friend of his and blocked me out completely until I tried to address why I was hurt by his actions. This led to a conversation where he brought up how I was making it difficult to be friends as it was a non-issue to him while it was a big issue to me. So since then, it truly felt like the damage was done and things would never go back to the way it was. Whenever I tried to talk to him, he'd give one word replies which is pretty much his way of telling the person that he doesn't want to talk to them. And whenever I bring up about whether we were okay, he'd tell me that if I kept bringing it up then he really doesn't want to be friends anymore. I feel that I'm quite self-aware, and I notice that I tend to get a little clingy and overly-attached to new close friends because I fear that I might lose them (until we reach a point where I feel stable enough and then I don't really care if we don't talk for like months). This has happened before with a close friend when I was 16-17 and we managed to overcome all that drama and are currently friends now but I ended up having to not speak to him for 2 years! So I decided that the best thing to do was to give him space and create a safe zone for myself where I simply have no contact with him in order to go through the process of detachment. I'd do things like put "DO NOT MESSAGE" next to his name in my contact list, which might seem extreme but I really don't want to destroy the entire friendship by acting on my insecurities. The problem I'm having is that I keep going back and forth between whether I'm doing the right thing, or whether I'm making a big mistake. On one hand, I feel like this allows me to spend time on myself and I can make myself happy and focus on things I want to do, but on the other I feel like we'd reach a point where we wouldn't want to be friends anymore and I just know that reaching that outcome when I'm ready to contact him again is going to destroy me. I really do like this guy, platonically. And with past experience, I know that detachment allows me to lose sexual feelings that I have from falling for the "unreachable straight guy," so I just know deep down that I have to do this. It's just so difficult right now.
Wow, did I just read what happened with me exactly one year ago? :O When I was detaching myself from a situation quite similar to yours, it gave me the same benefits as withdrawal symptoms from cigarettes would. First week it feels like you did what was necessary (let HIM come to ME if he wants ME, I don't want anything to do with him). Then the next week you start to question your motives (did I do the right thing? Maybe one reconciliatory text wouldn't harm. I just want him to believe what I feel for him!). Then you start bargaining with your feelings vs. the reality of the situation (I can't believe he still didn't get in touch with me. Who does he think he is? Was I worthless all this time?). That would be the LONGEST phase. I FORCED myself NOT to get in touch with him during this emotionally vulnerable phase. AFTER THIS you just go "screw it" (His loss, I'm actually not that bad of a guy). This was the way I personally had to deal with a very close gay-straight friendship. I don't know how your friendship dynamics played along all this time. One year later, I barely think of him. I do, however, believe that the day will come where he will get back in touch with me, but I don't constantly "look forward for it". If you manage to go through the detachment, you'll realise how much it would help your emotional intelligence and how you would approach future friendships. Good luck to you.
Thanks Schloss. To be honest, what I felt like doing was just take a 2 week break and then ask him out for drinks or something. I've already gone through enough of the entire "i'll just wait for him to show he's interested in me more" only to wait 2 years later and not even think about the guy ever again. I just thought that it would be good for me to spend time away from him because for the past few months, my entire definition of happiness revolved around him. The way I felt whenever he was with me was amazing and then to have that suddenly be cut off and putting so much pressure and stress on the friendship to feel the happiness again to the point where it almost seemed like it would break... I just thought the best thing to do was to back off.
Yeah that's the thing we all do at times: attaching our happiness to other people instead of ourselves. It creates a destructive emotional-dependency loop and it's consequences appear when the person is not there anymore. In my opinion it would be wise to continue what you're doing, even though it might take a toll on you- but that's just temporary.
Hey, so I caved in and decided to text him yesterday to see if he wanted to hang out. It just felt like the right time, and I kept thinking about it idk. He ended up replying that he was too busy and kept giving one word replies which is signal enough to know that I'm wasting my time, but omg I felt like my heart was shattered. It felt like everything was crashing down around me and I had already spent a whole week writing down my thoughts and reading so many articles in order to get a sense of how to stop myself from feeling this way and to make things better. So the next day, I tried again and was met with the same rejection. But after wallowing in self-pity for a while, something just hit me. It's almost as though someone pointed a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. Something just clicked and I started to ask myself this question: What's the point of giving him so much of my energy? He's not my boyfriend or anything that I have to fight so hard to keep or invest emotionally in. He's just a friend, or rather someone that I just so happen to know. Why did I put myself in a situation where I saw him as a figure of emotional salvation or like a therapist and emotional dumping ground? This has happened like 4 times throughout my life, and I think I finally understand why this has kept happening to me. The first time it happened, it took me like 2 years to get over it, and now it took me 2 weeks . I'm really happy now and think that I can start taking the steps to being stable again and I hope that this will help anyone that is going through something similar.
