In love with a best friend long distance

[xRJ85x]

Bare with me, I know this is long but I have a major problematic twist on the typical falling for best friend scenario, so any advice would be really appreciated as it helped the first time I posted on here. Obviously I'll try to keep this as short as possible without skipping over any critical details.

 

 

 

So I have been good friends with Michelle for 3 1/2 years now. I'm not her best friend, but definitely one of her closer friends. We met in college and while it appeared that we sort of went back and forth with wanting more in each other, it was small and nothing manifested from it. We just hung out, partied, and talked to becoming close friends.

 

Fast forward two years later when I graduated and she finished her sophomore year. She called me a few times a month to keep in touch, and told me she cried when I left (whether or not that's true, I dunno) and we kept discussing our lives, past and present, and getting closer. She was the one who made the majority of the calls, and because I was very busy trying to get my new life in order, I forgot to return some of them. I even missed her birthday last year. However, I tried as much as I could and she seemed like she just brushed off everything I screwed up with.

 

Fast forward now to November 2009. I have been established with a job for some time and have the time and focus to get back with her. However, the tables turned. She's in her final year of college, student teaching, and apparently its hell. Basically, she does student teaching work all week and works one day as a waitress on the weekend. I went to visit her a couple weekends close together for the first time in a long time. After spending some time with her, then going back home, I realized just how much I've missed her. I've always cared about her, but I started to feel more and more.

 

The problem is that because of how busy she is, not only did she tell me she's not looking for a relationship right now (when she brought up some guy who asked her out), but she rarely calls simply as a friend anymore. Not just with me either, as the times I do talk to her, she brings up how she hasn't talked to or seen other good friends in a long time. Being that I have much more time now, I tried calling her increasingly to the point where I've been calling once a week now for the last month. I try to comfort her and got her a couple small gifts on occasion to try and make her happy, but she seems like she doesn't acknowledge any of it. And when I come out to visit college with friends, unless I have direct plans to stay with her, she doesn't even contact me.

 

Now, I know I have to eventually open up to her about how I feel. I've been prepared to do that. My original plan was to support her over the phone and through visiting until she graduated, then open up to her while she's happy after. My dilemma is that I feel like I'm losing her even as a friend right now, so that plan would fail.

 

Last contact I had with her was this past weekend, when I wanted to surprise her with a little clever gift I got her. I stopped off on Sunday by her apartment, but it turned out she was a half an hour away at school with her co-op packing and renovating her school. I told her I had something for her, so she said she'd let me know if she got back before I left. I ended up going home with the gift, and though she's had some free time today (on Facebook for a while) she never called me.

 

I don't know if I should keep calling her often, or just stop and wait for her to call me. I want to keep supporting her, but every time I call she talks to me for five minutes then tells me she's busy. So I feel like a loser. I have no idea what to do now, because our close friendship was going to be the basis of me opening up to her, and I don't want to lose that.

 

The additional kicker is an unknown problem. She went out with a guy just before Valentine's Day that she had just met. He lives 1 1/2 hrs away, so my friends don't think I should worry about it, and it makes sense because I dunno why a guy that lives so far even asked her out in the first place plus she told me she isn't looking for anything right now. But she talks to him more than anyone, so I'm a little pissed.

[smg09e]

I had this problem last year with a long distance friend. Regardless of my flirtations and the overall immense effort that I made to show her that she was very special to me, I could feel her slipping away. We would talk on AIM, but she never answered/returned my phone calls. She was depressed and still living at home and she had plans to move cross-country to start her life over; I guess I figured that I had to act quickly or I would lose her to whatever great guy she met in her new life. My mistake was that I caught her at a time when she was unhappy, and she therefore sent me this big e-mail about how she wasn't looking for a relationship and that she was too busy and needed space to start her new life. I think that the outcome may have been different had I waited until she got settled in her new life and found a greater sense of satisfaction.

 

Anyway, I would advise against spilling your guts to her right now; you need to be sure that she would be receptive before pursuing anything. I can easily see her giving you the "My life is so busy right now, we live so far away, we are both at different points of our lives" speech. My advice would be to back off a little... From everything you've said, she seems uninterested and if you're not careful you might begin to come off as overbearing with all of the gifts and phone calls.

 

I'd be interested to hear others' opinions.

[xRJ85x]

I had this problem last year with a long distance friend. Regardless of my flirtations and the overall immense effort that I made to show her that she was very special to me, I could feel her slipping away. We would talk on AIM, but she never answered/returned my phone calls. She was depressed and still living at home and she had plans to move cross-country to start her life over; I guess I figured that I had to act quickly or I would lose her to whatever great guy she met in her new life. My mistake was that I caught her at a time when she was unhappy, and she therefore sent me this big e-mail about how she wasn't looking for a relationship and that she was too busy and needed space to start her new life. I think that the outcome may have been different had I waited until she got settled in her new life and found a greater sense of satisfaction.

 

Anyway, I would advise against spilling your guts to her right now; you need to be sure that she would be receptive before pursuing anything. I can easily see her giving you the "My life is so busy right now, we live so far away, we are both at different points of our lives" speech. My advice would be to back off a little... From everything you've said, she seems uninterested and if you're not careful you might begin to come off as overbearing with all of the gifts and phone calls.

 

I'd be interested to hear others' opinions.

 

How often did you talk to her? And how far did you live away from her?

 

My problem is that she told me a few months ago that she didn't want a relationship (after bringing up some guy that asked her out). However, as I said above, she went out with some guy just before Valentine's Day. It doesn't make sense to me because she told me both these things as a friend.

 

Now I've heard her refer to this guy she went out with as "friend" a few times, and I don't worry about the friends-with-benefits thing because she doesn't do that. So I try to tell myself I had that time before, where I can be patient for the right time. But I just get this sickening feeling he's closing in on her because he's closer in distance and she talks to him on facebook more than anyone.

[smg09e]

We would talk on AIM on almost a daily basis. She lived in the Midwestern US and I lived in the Southeastern US.

 

People change their minds. She may have told you that she didn't want a relationship, but once this guy came along she may have reconsidered.