Hey there, so I’m looking for advice on how to deal with feelings I have for a friend. I’ll try to give as much detail as I can.
So I originally met her over a year ago, we both bowl in leagues on the same team. This is how we’ve progressed since the start of our league season last year –
Sept-Dec : we were cordial at the bowling alley, just teammates.
Jan-Apr : we started to text a bit more, more so just about league and some other stuff.
May : This is where we started to practice together a lot more, during these months there was another guy and her that were getting close as well. Everyone in our friend group thought they would end up together.
June : is where everything kind of kicked off, we somehow began just texting daily, our hangouts/practices started happening weekly. Some times just practice, or we would go out to eat, etc. and by the end of this month, her and the other guy fizzled out and no longer talk.
July/Aug : it ramped up even more. Seeing each other a lot more frequently, still texting daily. Going out to lunch/dinners, we went to a concert, hanging at the park, etc. I think between June, July, and August we missed maybe 3-4 days of texting/talking.
However this where everything gets complicated. Towards the end of August I invited her to a restaurant, a little more fancy and special than what we normally do. The place screamed “this is a date type of feel”. When I asked she said sure and we picked a day however then she asked if it would be us and our other mutual friend we hang with a lot and I said no, just us if that’s ok?
She said she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. There was some back and forth. I explained how it stung a little bit since we’ve hung out so much and I just wanted to know if it was something particular about the plan.
These two messages were what she responded to me with.
“I’m sorry, please don’t take it personally. I thought it was a nice idea. I just don’t want to do anything one and one like that with anyone. I don’t have anything against you.”
“I just get anxiety or uncomfortable doing certain things. That’s also why I haven’t bought the concert ticket yet. I wasn’t 100% sold on driving there. I hope you won’t take this personally because it really is nothing against you or anything you’ve done.”
I regret how I handled it because it wasn’t a rejection, she just hesitated and I handled it like she straight up said no. It’s still something I think about.
Afterwards I thought we were going to take a break, however we continued texting and then the following week, we practiced on Tuesday which she initiated and reached out for, she also told me afterwards that the concert we were planning was off the table due to work. I felt like everything was getting ready to start falling off.
Wednesday we bowled our league together. Fun but cordial.
But then Thursday I reached out about going to the park, and she said she was just about to text me and said she was really busy and didn’t have time but she would make time. We ended up going to the park and having a picnic for 5 hours. She also told me that she was still contemplating wanting to go to the concert, we looked at houses on Zillow together using a lot of “we/us” language. It was a beautiful day.
Friday I hung out at her apartment, unplanned, for over 5 hours. Helping her with her work from home stuff, looking at concert tickets, having a lot of fun.
And I’ll say that during the picnic day and this hangout, things were different? She’s a very shy, awkward, anxious person and isn’t very outspoken but she was singing in front of me and overall just acting so much more open and goofy than I’ve ever seen her. I’ve known her for a year and she was different person for this week which was weird coming off the restaurant invite and concert shut down.
Saturday we went to the beach with our mutual friend I mentioned before, we bought our concert tickets and had a fun beach day.
5 days in a row of seeing each other after I thought it was all over along with buying our concert tickets.
The following Sunday that just passed it was the concert. Also it was a 2.5 hour drive away which I drove us and the trip itself was fun, we had an amazing time at the show, and the drive back was a vibe too.
Since that happened, it’s been very quiet this week. We only texted Monday after the concert and then it was silence til Friday and we texted very briefly over the weekend. But she’s also been extremely slammed with work.
I’m kind of at the point where I’m not sure what to do with her? I’m scared to ruin our friendship if I’m completely misreading everything but I also feel like what we have been doing isn’t something that almost 30 year old men and woman do with each other without something being there? It’s been difficult to understand and it’s causing me some mental stress to be so close but so unsure to someone.
I’d appreciate any insight 🙂