Mixed signals

All right, I know probably a lot of you have seen a lot of stuff like this before, but this has been really, really bugging me, to the point where I just randomly break down in tears thinking about it sometimes, and I need to get it off my chest. Also, before you tell me to dump her because she's a shitty friend, I already know that. She's also an amazing person. In the end, it's going to be my decision to work through the pain or not.

So there's this girl in Europe (speaks French, fluent in English) who I've known for more than a year now, long distance. She's two years older than me. We met online, started talking more and more, light flirting (I said I was bi at the time, eventually she admitted she was bicurious, and playfully asked if I had what it took to get her out of the closet). Apparently I did, because two months in we started a long distance dating thing. It worked out okay - we learned a lot about each other, birthdays, family, even blood type, got to videochat and stuff - but a week after the one month point, I had an unsettling discussion during a fight with my homophobic parents (who didn't yet know), and told her that night that they'd never accept me being with a girl. She said for my sake we should break up and was uncertain if we could be friends after that. Next day, my parents were still angry at me and dad said no one loved me, so in a fit of passion I told them about her. Long story short, dad threatened to call the cops on her and screw up her life royally unless I stopped talking to her. I told her everything in a very long and emotional rant, and though she was angry and hurt at first, she accepted it.

Two months passed of not talking to her at all, though sometimes I'd pull up her chat profile and stare at it longingly. Then one night a particularly bad fight with parents leaves me feeling suicidal, so I snap and text her, knowing she's the only one who can help me, because she's the only one I've been close with who either doesn't seem to hate me or isn't cowed into acting like it by my dad. She not only answers, but gives me unerring support where no one else will. So pretty much she ends up saving my life that night, and I realize I'm really and truly head over heels for her because of her kindness and selflessness, after two months of betrayal and silence.

I try not to talk to her after that, knowing the dangers of it, but we kind of accidentally end up talking anyway a couple weeks later. She says she doesn't have feelings for me any more, which kind of hurts, but she's still kind and funny and cute like always, and she wants to talk again, so I go along with it. We talk every day after that, like we used to.

Here's where it gets weird. When I started talking with her again, she mentioned that she told her sister she was gay. Later, she starts talking about going on dates with guys again, though just in a casual way. She got a serious boyfriend at some point, but ended up breaking up two months in because she wasn't feeling it, even though he was rich, gentlemanly, well liked by her family, and very smart.

During this time, even though she knows - and I sometimes confirm - that I do still have a very big crush on her, she plays this weird game. Right after we started talking again, I apparently flirted with her for a couple weeks, and so she asked me about that (as in, "You're flirting with me, aren't you?") and then tried dragging out of me exactly how I felt about her. When I admitted I did still have a crush on her, she didn't say the same, but seemed kind of satisfied, and then started flirting with me for the next few weeks, but denied it when I asked her outright.

This continued for a while. On at least two separate occasions, when I mentioned some guy I liked, just to see her reaction, she suddenly got very cold in the middle of what had been a lively conversation, giving short, noncommittal answers ("hmm" was a favorite), and saying stuff trying to figure out how important this guy was to me ("So he's your soulmate, huh?"). The first time, I told her she didn't have to be jealous, but she denied that she was.

There was a general slight ebb and flow in how much we talked each day, but one week in particular we were talking a lot for some reason, and I felt closer to her than ever, emotionally speaking. So I closed one of our good nights with a casual 'love ya,' because I was happy and feeling the warm fuzzies. That started a trend where all week we bandied back and forth with 'love yous,' but not only that, she started flirting again, and with a vengeance. When we discussed kissing, and I lamented the fact that I'd never been kissed, she said to come over to her place and she'd give me a kiss (in the context of romantic kisses, mind you, not girly BFF on-the-cheek kisses). Her emoji game was on fleek (hearts, blowing kisses, the whole nine yards - she added a kiss emoji to that text, too. Keep in mind that this is a girl who a) never shows her emotions, especially if they're soppily romantic or deep, and b) hardly ever uses emojis, and never, at least not in texting me, stuff like hearts or kisses). I joked that all I wanted for Christmas was her, so she happily said I could have her. She came up with a cheesy pickup line with me in mind. She said she'd dreamed about me, and though she couldn't remember the dream, she'd woken up with me on her mind, which made her happy. She started calling me (four days in a row - one of which she ditched her then boyfriend for so she could talk to me), despite the fact that I suck at phone conversations. We'd talk for forty minutes or an hour, and she'd tell me how much she loved my voice. The first day, she got upset because she'd signed off with "I love you," and I hadn't heard and hadn't responded, and this was her first I love you (out loud, anyway) and it meant a lot to her. (We rectified this the next day.) The last time she called, she said point blank that "she liked me better than her boyfriend," in those terms.

I was in seventh heaven, but the phone calls terrified me (not that I wasn't absolutely thrilled to hear her voice again, but you know how it is with socially awkward nerds and their crushes). I told her if we could call a little less frequently, of if she could help me learn to not be so scared. I don't know if that's the reason or if it was something else, but she got more distant after that. She stopped with the I love yous and asked me not to call her nicknames any more and honestly, it was like someone had flipped a switch.

I let it be for a bit, then decided to ask her about it, after New Year's. She had just been telling me about how she'd never been in love before (simultaneously noting, yet again, that I was shill in love with her). I asked her about how she'd said she loved me. After a bit of vacillating, she replied that when she'd said she loved me, she meant she appreciated me, no more.

A week past and it didn't hurt any less. I confronted her about it, and this time I was angry. I told her she knew how important she was to me, how in love I was with her, even though I knew a relationship was unrealistic, at least right now - so if she truly just cared about me as a friend, why wouldn't she explain what she'd done, or at least apologize? She didn't. She just reiterated that she was just saying what she felt - that she appreciated me - and straight out denied that she'd been flirting with me. She even said one of the things I'd mentioned had never happened. Eventually, I gave up and just said we should be friends and forget everything that happened, so that's where we are now. Still talking every day. Still kind of deeply in love with the big stupid lunkhead.

I considered the possibility that she knows exactly what she's doing to me and enjoys it, but I've known this girl for more than a year now, a good portion of which we've talked every single day. We do trust each other, if nothing else, and I know her as someone who, on the inside, is very emotional and thoughtful and profound, very loving and dedicated to those who are important to her, more fragile than she lets on. She doesn't show her emotions 24/7, but when she does, she's extremely honest about them. I can't really imagine her sadistically manipulating somebody else's emotions for the fun of it.

But that leaves me with no idea why she did it, and no idea of what she was thinking when she did it, or what she's thinking now, and I still can't help dragging myself through the coals with it. So, what gives? Is she closeted and confused or in denial about her feelings, or is she (gasp) a player, or is she really so oblivious to flirting that she wouldn't know an obscene pickup line if it hit her in the face? Because honestly, she's eighteen. She should know better by now.

TL;DR This girl who's in all honesty, really gay, but seems not to be fully out of the closet yet knows I have a crush on her, always implies that she doesn't have a crush on me, yet continually flirts with me, big time, and then denies it all when I ask her about it. She says she cares about me, and knows just how smitten I am with her. Why would she do this?

 

Anyone? Please, I know this isn't the most convenient thing to talk to this rambling girl who just can't seem to let go, but I need answers, please... I'm almost ready to snap, it hurts so much...

 

Thank you all for your very thoughtfully constructive replies. This helps a lot.

MaximusMike, yes, we do talk about sexuality in a reasonable amount of depth - it's not our main topic of discussion, but I went to ask help from her when I was questioning once, for example, and we do discuss cute girls and the like from time to time. I do know that she has been a little touchy on the topic of her own sexuality from time to time, though, especially when she had just started dating her boyfriend. That could certainly make sense. I do hope I'm the sort of person she can talk to, though we have fights sometimes... ^^;;

SapphireShores, you're right about her helping me at a key time - it's part of why I'm willing to keep fighting for this friendship, despite whatever wrinkles and obstacles there might be, or whatever mistakes I make. I do see what you're saying. I've thought about it a little myself, and I've come to see that often, people unconsciously adopt behavior patterns modeled off or reacting to their parents' behavior - which in both our cases, our parents had troubles (hers have fights, not the healthy kind, and my dad also has a tendency towards psychological abuse in my family). In my personal experience, I've picked up unhealthy behavior patterns because of that - I'm insecure and I have mood swings and a tendency to lash out when I think someone is angry at me or might not like me any more or wants to leave me, probably because my dad often said he did. Not that that justifies my behavior or anything, of course. Anyway, it's possible she's in the same situation.

idsm, she's eighteen, has obtained her bac (a bit like an American high school diploma, but fancier, a little harder to earn) and is in professional school, while I'm sixteen and technically a junior, but homeschooled, though I'll still enter college at the usual age of eighteen. As you can imagine, the age and culture difference does make for a bit of a gap, but it's mostly just a source of fascination for me - I love exploring the cultural differences between us. She helps me learn the language too.

Tell me about it. I'm absolutely horrible with this whole attraction thing, ahaha. ^^;; This is the first time I've fallen so hard for someone, and the first time they've known about it, too. It's also the only gay crush I haven't actively tried to deny since I was maybe eleven.

Yes, the distance thing is absolutely an issue and that's why I'm not looking for a serious relationship at all until I can actually live within, say, an hour away from her. The distance also adds some undeniable stress too, given that it's frustrating having a crush on someone living so far away, and having to worry about the fact that it's only staying together as long as we both make a conscious effort to text/call each other, since we have no physical activities together. So I'm not really frustrated by not knowing her feelings because it's obstructing a relationship - that's beside the point anyway - but rather because I want to know if there's potential for that, because it might affect what I end up doing in life - if I want to get a career, say engineering, which would allow me to work in any country, as opposed to getting a medical license, or even a law degree, which is good only for the specific country which grants that license. I know that planning my career like that sounds crazy, but she's really important to me, on multiple levels, and I want to have that freedom to live closer to her when I'm older, if I wanted to. If I had the means, if I could pay for a ticket, obtain a residency card, and get a job of any sort, I'd do it. There's nothing here for me in America.

More simply, I just want to know why she did that. If I knew from her that she's still working some stuff out, as opposed to that she just has fun playing with my head, would make me feel better. ^^;;

Really? That's good to know. Although we do have our fights...does that make it a bad relationship, or is it because we're young and impulsive, or both??

 

We do try to listen to each other, we don't call names, and when we reply, it's always something of substance about what the other person's points are. I'm actually the one who tends more toward emotional reaction/responses, which means I say stuff I tend to very much regret later - the worst thing I can remember telling her is that she doesn't care about me, that she's thoughtless or heartless (both of which I said on two separate occasions). The fights never last more than a couple hours of arguing to a day of unsettled feelings, and after the end of that day they're always resolved, no long-simmering feuds or anything. The only time that's happened was most recently, with this whole thing about her leading me along...a couple days ago I sort of snapped and confronted her again, and...I may have told her that I hoped she fell in love and got her heart broken, so she'd know how I felt...and I said I couldn't talk to her any more, that it'd hurt too much. Then the next day I was missing her pretty bad, which I thought I could take, but then dad got in an especially murderous mood and said if we scored anything less than perfect on the next day's SAT, he would leave us. And I realized that she had always been the one there to support me when he did stuff like that, that she was important as a friend too, regardless of how she'd hurt me with respect to my feelings for her... So I apologized and told her how she was an important friend to me, I'd understand if she didn't want to be friends after what I'd said to her. A day later, we're friends again now, but I think that's been pretty much the worst fight to date. ^^;;