I (18m) met this person (18f/nb) in march of last year and we’ve gotten really close.
They’re amazingly funny and smart and kind and we like all the same things and she’s so fucking pretty.
But earlier last year we both confessed that we liked each other and at the time I knew I wasn’t ready for anything, partly because I was both mentally and physically going through a lot but also because I have a bad track record of getting close to people, having a really good 3 months with them and then never talking to them again and I really didn’t want the same thing to happen with her. There was a 2 week period last year June/July-ish where we spent everyday together watching films eating dinner or just talking and holy shit it was amazing but then one day as we’re watching all the hunger games film we lose track of time and we realise it’s nearly 3am and I don’t live nearby at all with no real reliable way to get home so they invited me to stay for the night and just leave later, I obviously took the opportunity to be around them for even longer and we set up a mattress next to her bed, but pretty much immediately she invited me into her bed and while we didn’t do anything it was probably one of the best nights in my life, just being there with her and being able to watch them sleep.
Later after we both showered and ate, we went on a walk just to talk and we both came to the decision that we need to define our relationship, and on the walk is where ‘The Plan’ was born: only 1 1on1 hangout a week (parties and group hangouts are fair game), no beds (good lord are beds an issue for us) and try to limit texting but don’t avoid talking to each other.
At the time The Plan seemed like a good idea, we were still hanging out a fair amount and it gave me something to look forward to each week, but after a while The Plan started to work, we were hanging out less and less, we were talking less and less and i know I’m gonna sound like a fucking idiot but I didn’t expect it to work that well. In the span of about 4 months we went from being on the brink of kissing every time we were alone in a room together to barely seeing each other.
While my feeling definitely have gotten softer and I’m in a much better place physically and mentally and I feel like I could be in a relationship now I feel like in our history of being friends we’ve never more further apart, which fucking sucks. I want to go back to how we were before The Plan but I’m not an idiot, I know we can’t just undo months of progress and I don’t know how to express my feelings without sounding like a dick after rejecting them 3 different times.
The cherry on top is that we kissed on new years (which was actually just a platonic kiss) and yesterday she said that “we really shouldn’t do that again” and said we shouldn’t be hugging as much or as deeply as we do (tbf we do hug a lot and Jesus Christ do I love hugging her the way we do) so I’ve been spiralling all day trying to think about what to say to her.
I’ve lost so many friends in the past couple years and she is one of my favourite people in my life. I would do anything for her or to keep her in my life. So when it seems like they don’t want me to be in their life as much anymore it really hurts. Some of our other friends have said that I should just confess my feelings again or get on a dating app and get over her but I couldn’t think about anything worse then putting myself out there and I think I would actually combust if I got rejected now after everything we’ve been through.
I don’t know what to do, and frankly I’m scared I’m going to lose one of my best friends.