In love with roommate/best friend

[FloridaBaby88]

I have always been one of the guys... I love sports, sex, beer, and I'm super sarcastic and competitive... I have more male than female friends, and lived with guys in college, so I know for certain that females and males can live together without any feelings arising, I've done it before. So, to make a very long story short:

 

I live with a guy I met on roommates.com almost two years ago now... we've seen it all together, from me getting in a horrible car accident and being severly injured to him having a devastating personal situation and so on. Almost immediately after I moved in with him, we were best friends.... it's like we've known each other forever. We live like we're married, without the sex. We sleep in each others beds, give each other massages, make dinner together every night, call each others families, etc... We have a very intimate living situation and he is truly my best friend in the world. I am in love with him, and he has to know it a little bit... Half the time he makes it quite clear that friends is all we'll ever be, but then why in the world would he do things like snuggle on the couch with me, and spoon when we sleep together.... There is no way any other guy stands a chance as long as i'm living with him, because I spend all my free time with him and hold him on such a pedestal. He's better looking than me... I know it and I accept it. He could really date anyone he wanted because he's successful and smart and good looking. Neither one of us has had a real relationship since we lived together, but he will randomly date a girl for a week or two, sleep with her and move on... he's very very very picky and also a very sexual person, as am I. I am full of issues... commitment, self esteem, etc... and he loves me anyway... but I want more. It kills me when I know he's sleeping with someone else, and I know a day will come when he finds the girl that IS right for him and everything will change and I know I'm going to fall apart when that happens. I cant live here without him-- financially and for my own good... I am tossing around the idea of moving back to my hometown and breaking off the friendship, but that means losing one of the best people I've ever known. He's one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I've ever met, but I can't imagine living like we do much longer. He's not like a typical guy that doesnt show emotion. He's very open with his feelings and in touch with that side. He's a few years older than me and should be "setting down" soon...

 

I just feel completely lost and lonely. Yesterday we decided to just drink all day and play bar games, etc....We were VERY drunk and had a heart to heart in the middle of a bar and he told me among other things, that his brother (who's my age) has feelings for me, that hes so glad we're roommates and friends, and he wants to see me fall in love and be happy because I am one of the best people hes ever known, etc.... Later on, after a solid 12 hours of drinking, in the midst of a playful wrestling match he pinned me on his bed and was sucking on my neck/kissing me all over/fondling me. I know he was completely hammered, but I feel like he should know better... because he has an idea of how I feel.... We were both so drunk that we just passed out in his bed, but I woke up to him spooning me, and I loved it. What would have happened had I initated something? He's so sensible that I think he would have stopped things... but he also loves sex, so maybe he wouldnt have... then would I have ruined things? I WISH I didnt feel the way I do... I'd love to just be his friend and be fine with that... but I'm not... so what now? Do I walk away and lose my best friend and roommate? And I can't help but feel inadequate.... not pretty enough for him, or good enough for him. I have weight issues and have suffered from bulimia since I was in college... I had been doing so well but this set it off again, so I'm slowly destroying myself in an effort to be the perfect girl so maybe he'll love me. So as much as he makes me feel good about myself, he also makes me feel like complete crap and I have NO idea what to do to feel okay about things. I just turned 25 years old and I think I'm having a nervous breakdown. I just want to run away.....

[Amiss]

If he was a nice man he wouldn't do couple type things with you seeing as he knows you have feelings for him. If you know he doesn't want to date you , you only have one option-move out.The situation is already making you ill and seeing him everyday will make it worse. Does he know how unhappy you feel? That your eating disorder is returning?

[smileyplayedme]

Hi FloridaBaby,

 

If you could look a good 6 years into the future, I think you would be me. I am not happily married and planning to have kids & the male roommate that I had a simliar relationship to the one you described is now married with two kids. I never sat him down and told him exactly how I felt about him, or made an effort to see if it would work and to this day I ALWAYS wonder... Nobody knows that, but I find myself dreaming and wondering.... but like you I felt that he and everyone else must know how I felt based on the flirting I did with him, but I just was afraid of loosing our friendship or if he didn't feel the same way as me, so I never said what I wish I had always said - just ONE time when we were horsing around or spooning or cuddling - I should have just said casually "Hey, I think you should take me out on a date" - have you ever tried that? I wish I had, just a try - probably we would have not worked out as a couple and continued to be friends. Maybe we would have been married today. What happened to me is a few years went by and before I had the chance I thought would always be there to tell him how I felt and see if it works - I got that call from him saying "I'm getting married".... He got to that age and settled down with someone right after his dad died and started pushing out kids immediately. I stay in touch with him as friends via e-mail and I can read between the lines that he regrets not making a try although to this day we never speak of how much we really loved each other when we were roomates. Don't make the same mistake I made - just give it a try, put yourself out there and ask him to take you out on a date. Don't let the brother thing distract you - My roomate's best friend and I had a relationship while we lived together & I think I convinced myself that it would be sort of like dating my roommate? - I mean they were best friends. On new years eve his best friend kissed me and it was a great kiss! his best friend was HOT! But the first thing I did after kissing his best friend was look over at him and saw it in his face and felt it in my heart that I had kissed the wrong guy. Go back in time for me will you?

[paddington bear]

Floridababy - you make me want to cry. I have been there too, not with roommate, but with best male buddy, the fooling around, the spooning in bed, him telling me that he would 'never go there with me' and the feeling like I was cracking up and the ugliest most unattractive girl on the planet - by the way, I became the ugliest girl on the planet, firstly because I felt unattractive because he didn't want me and then I ended up putting on weight because I think if you feel unattractive, truly so, then your body follows and makes it so, not only that but your expressions, how you hold yourself, how you converse with others all changes and you become someone who people don't want to be around.

 

The tension of it all nearly killed me and destroyed all my self-confidence - to be led on, dropped, to have him sleep with someone else and expect me to be fine with it, repeat the above over and over.

 

One year later and after I finally lost it one night and sent an email to him telling him exactly how his actions made me feel - this led to a really nasty email argument. Amazingly we got over that and are still friends - though I moved far away from him, to another country in fact lol, which I think was the best thing I ever did. He now is just a friend and one I wouldn't touch with a barge pole, all interest in him in any other way has died a very agonising death.

 

When I was no longer so involved emotionally with the situation and had some distance I could finally think more clearly about it.

 

My guyfriend said he was not interested in my in that way - when guys say things like that, they mean it, there is no hidden agenda. I didn't believe it, thinking if given enough time he would maybe change his mind and see the wonderful girl there right in front of him. He never did. Your guyfriend suggested his brother for you...what does this tell you? He does want you to be happy with someone, I'm sure that he does want you to meet the right man, but he knows that it's not him. I say, go on a date with the brother, or anyone else, he is so used to you just being there, single, available to him and only him that it might shock him into the realisation that you might not be there always or he might say 'I'm so happy for you, I was hoping you'd meet someone nice' and you have your answer.

 

My guyfriend got an incredibly supportive and close friendship from me, including cuddles and flirting, thus leaving him open to sleep with whoever he liked without getting emotionally involved with them - my being there for him, as a wife without the sex ruined any other girls chances with him, they could never get close to him because he had me there and they too deserved a rounded relationship from him. You are filling a gap there for him. He is getting what he wants from the relationship with you. However, you are not getting what you want - you are so caught up with him that you will never meet someone who wants you as you are because he's taking up all that space in your mind and heart.

 

I think he knows damn well you like him. He is like a cat toying with a mouse. I'm sure he is a nice guy on a lot of levels, but not that nice. He's messing you around and he knows it - those are not the actions of an honourable man. To tell someone that their brother likes them and then to start kissing them is bordering on crazy - it's mixed signals whirling around in a blender inside a washing machine ie all over the place!

 

It gives him an ego-boost to know that you're there hanging on his every word, just waiting for him to make the move, to confuse you, to keep you guessing and hoping. There is a sense of power in having that kind of control over someone. Maybe he's not so confident as he seems, otherwise he wouldn't be using you to make himself feel more attractive and desirable. You might feel that you are being cool with him and he doesn't know the extent of your feelings, believe me, he knows, otherwise you wouldn't have welcomed all of his advances, allow him to sleep in your bed and so on. A girl with self-respect would tell him to get the hell away - I don't mean to make you feel even worse about yourself, but some self-respect is needed here, don't allow yourself to be played with.

 

You say you will be devastated when he finally meets the right girl and you will lose him, lose the friendship and be utterly heartbroken to boot. This is exactly what happened to me and because we were 'friends' I felt like I had to act all cool and supportive about it, when in reality my heart was breaking into several pieces. If you were in a love relationship with him at least you would get the chance to scream, cry, to get those emotions out at him, but when you're 'just the friend' feeling heartbroken is like a horrible dirty secret and you cry alone, embarrassed and feeling foolish and never feel you've had proper closure. You start to feel like falling in love with someone is a shameful thing and that leads to problems with future relationships.

 

If you are brave enough...ask him once and for all if he would ever consider you as a girlfriend. If he says no then it is up to you to say 'in that case I would prefer no more flirting, chasing, teasing and sharing beds together, your behaviour has really confused me and has sent me mixed messages and I'm simply not putting up with it any more. Either you want me as a girlfriend or as a friend, there is no middle ground' - allowing this 'nearly intimate, but not quite' behaviour to continue will continue to mess with your head big time. You alone have the power to stop it, stop waiting for him to take some action either by finding a girlfriend or by finally telling you he has feelings for you. Grasp back some control of the situation, it will make you feel so much better.

 

Not only that but you are succumbing to bulimia again - the guy is literally making you ill and you sound like great fun, what guy wouldn't want a sport watching beer drinking cool girl to hang out with??? And he's turning you into a miserable girl who is losing her self-confidence, sense of her own attractiveness - I am still not over what my guyfriend did to me over an extended period of years, but realise that while he acted in a manipulative way towards me, that in reality I was the fool who should have done something about the situation sooner.

 

I still have doubts about myself and whether I'm good enough for someone, pretty enough, slim enough, and am so afraid of being rejected because by spending time - and in your case, every day of your life - being with someone who doesn't want you but acts like they do. It just kills your soul, it really does. Don't turn out like me!!! The sooner you change this situation the sooner you can start to reverse all the negative things that this has done to you.

 

Move out, now! Please please please. Don't hang in there hoping against hope until the day he walks off into the sunset with another girl. Maybe just maybe when his bed buddy, emotional support girl is no longer there he might actually feel a loss and finally come to his senses, but I have to say, I doubt it very much - I know that's not what you want to hear. The sooner you physically remove yourself from this situation the better. You deserve someone who loves all of you and desires all of you, not just parts of the whole.

 

I would suggest you read Mama Gena's Guide to Womanly Arts - the basic message is to always think 'what do I want?' if you're not getting what you want then something is wrong - and any guys reading this, I don't mean that in the way you might think - being an overbearing bitch who just uses men, I mean putting yourself and your own life and feelings first.

 

If it is causing you this much pain it is not right - all my happily coupled-up friends said the same thing when they met their current partner 'it was just easy' no drama, no crying in bed at night, no nervous breakdown.

 

Sorry for the very long post, but your message struck a chord with me and I would hate to see anyone get as badly hurt as I did from a very similar situation.

[J2FT1]

He sees you has his baby sister. You too have gone through a lot together and he wants you to be happy it seems. I'm sure there are many guys out there who appreciates a woman that likes guy things.

[myeverything]

Posting as a guy who's been in this situation, I am only going to guess that your love for him is futile. When there's no feeling there but of friendship, that's not going to change. If someone has decided you are a friend and won't consider it to be more when you ask, there's not any point wasting any more time on it. If you can't deal with seeing him and thinking of him as your dream mate, maybe you should take some time away from him because it's like a break up that never happened.

[FloridaBaby88]

For those who replied to my post, thank you.

 

As it turns out I ended up having to move out...not only that but I moved 1000 miles away from my best friend/roommate. I didnt fully explain to him why, but he has to get the point by now.

 

It's been one of the most devastating and painful experiences of my life, but I did it to spare myself future heartache and upset. I know that my best friend loved me, but he wasn't in love with me. I know he's sad and hurt that I left, but for once in our friendship I'm doing what's best for me in the long run, not whats most convenient, or better for him, or what I wanted at the particular moment.

 

I miss him horribly and cant even think of dating right now, although I attempted to. All I did was compare the poor new guy to my friend.... he didnt stand a chance.

 

My roommate hasnt stopped calling me since I left Florida and moved but it honestly hurts too much to talk to him so I've been ignoring his calls. I finally wrote him an email today telling him I cant talk to him for awhile, it hurts too much and to please respect my decision and give me time.

 

We'll see what his response is... I'm hoping he leaves it alone and let's me go. The last month that I was in Florida was very hard... I knew I was leaving and cried all the time thinking about leaving the man in my life who means the most to me, and thinking of finding that kind of soulmate again. I keep trying to remember something I read that said that a true friend doesn't make you cry yourself to sleep at night. I've spent countless nights crying over my friend, and even though I know there are more to come, I hope that as time goes by they will be few and far between.

 

For anyone else who's gone through the "in love with your best friend in the world" situation... I feel your pain and maybe you can learn from my experience... we'll see how it ends up!

[redfathom]

Be brave! And I hope things do work out for the best...spend some time on you, get some hobbies, go to they gym, make new friends.