Thought she had feelings for me for 3 years now but....no?

[FTM042014]

Hi everyone. Long but please please help me out!

 

I have been very close friends with a woman (coworker) for around 4 years now. I am head over heels for her. She is married and has been uunhappy ever since I've known her. We got close but for no other reason than to be platonic friends. However, we have always from day 1 had a chemistry that is undeniable. She has always been flirtatious and as we grew closer it turned into the way she looks at me, the way she laughs if I say something funny, her body language, and especially the way she smiles at me. Going 3 years now there have been so many things she has said that were borderline to outright suspiciously over the top. I was always under the impression that we had a thing for each other but did not dare say it because she is married and we will only ever be friends. I am there for her and she is there for me.

 

I must say that I have always been respectful and would never "bite back" when she was super flirty. We have never ever crossed a line though I would not want my wife or gf to have a similar relationship with another man at all.

 

This past summer I had a serious health scare that brought us even closer. She was there for me every step of the way. So I decided to tell her how I feel in as respectful a manner as possible. I bought her a card in thanks for being there and handwrote a letter saying I know she is unhappy and I hope it gets better for her and that she is beautiful and should not be so hard on herself. I ended it by simply saying I wish we had met one another in a different time in her life. She responded via text saying it made her emotional and it was beautiful. She also said, "we are on the same page. Enough said."

 

To me that sounded like we were finally both admitting our feelings, again knowing nothing will ever come of it. So this is the space I had been operating in since August.

 

Well, about 3 weeks ago ish hit the fan. She called me drunk late one night after drinks with her doc program classmates. This is when I found out she likes one of them. She said it scared her because of what that means for her marriage. I was devastated. This means that 1. She must not like me if she likes him and 2. She's never felt that way of our friendship (even though she told me her husband is uncomfortable with pur friendship but doesn't say why)

 

This leads to multiple emotional conversations where I discover she does not have feelings for me. She thinks I am attractive, I make her "feel good", and she feels close to me. In her words "20 years ago, maybe." Though she admits we have a remarkable chemistry and there is something there beyond just platonic friends.

 

So have I been:

Duped and led on

Lied to and she is denying her feelings

Reading too much into it for 4 friggin years now

[d0nnivain]

She's married. That alone should have been full stop for you.

 

I'm sorry you are hurting. I'm glad your health scare was just that, a scare.

 

Now put this woman behind you. She's married & now she has told you she fancies another man. Go find somebody who wants to love you back.

[FTM042014]

It's not quite that neat and clean. She is and has always been a friend to me. So there is the trouble of trying to repair a friendship. It may not be possible.

 

The crux of the matter is that her behavior towards me for 3-4 years now has signaled one thing and I am being told that is not the case. I could see if it was a few weeks of flirtatious behavior or a even a couple of months of back and forth. But it has been years.

 

Does anyone have experience with this?

[elaine567]

Reading too much into it for 4 friggin years now

 

I guess that is it.

 

She saw you as a great guy friend, confidante and coworker, you saw her as a woman who was secretly madly in love with you but could do nothing about it as she was married. You projected your feelings onto her.

 

Women can easily have guy friends and have no romantic interest in them whatsoever. They become gender neutral to her, and she can often indulge in "safe" flirting as she assumes that the guy is as uninterested as she is, in taking it any further. It is just about fun and a joke.

 

Men it seems to me, usually have an agenda for getting closer to a woman.

[FTM042014]

Men it seems to me, usually have an agenda for getting closer to a woman.

 

Agenda sounds calculated. I hear women use this term a lot. Can you blame a man for thinking a woman likes him because she acts as though she does???

 

Where and what is the line then? How is one supposed to know when that behavior does indeed mean something else?

 

Women brand themselves as better communicators as men but they live in assumptions without ever actually holding themselves accountable for how their actions may be interpreted. Check in. Find out if he is on the same page.

 

And when I did disclose my feelings her response was to seemingly agree. So it does not add up at all.

[rickwman]

Sorry about all of this you are experiencing. I encourage you to move on to an unmarried, single woman and not to involve yourself with a married woman. Fix your mind on finding someone else and break away from this situation for it will take you further down a road that you want to go down. I'll pray that you will find another so you can start developing an honest and open, fulfilling relationship.