Dear Mobby :: Crowd Sourced Advice

All my advice is starting to sound the same. I advise you to wait. It doesn't sound like you have strong enough feelings to be worth screwing up the friendship. If you are really close and not feeling madly in love, then you can afford to just let things play out on their own.

The three best things in my life are my wife, my family, and my friends. Life is good!

If you're not confident that you want to pursue your friend romantically, I wouldn't do it. Relationships are too hard and friends are to valuable to risk on something "good". As my father liked to say, "Forget about doing good things, there are far too many of those. Try to do the best things."

Also, you mentioned that she's feeling messed up by relationships right now. Because of that, it's natural to feel protective of her but don't let your protective feelings fool you into thinking you're in love with her. That's very easy to do (especially for us guys).

It always feels so trite to say: follow her! or don't follow her!

Both your feelings of fear of losing an opportunity and of worrying about wasting your time are both real risks. Which would you regret most?

When she says that she does not have feelings for you, I would believe her. Take her at her word. If you can handle the possibility that she will never develop feelings for you, you will make better decisions for yourself.

There will always be the occasional romantic story of someone pursuing someone else and the other person suddenly having a revelation, "He was under my nose all along." But I think (I could be wrong) for each of these stories, there are more stories where the pursuit was unfruitful.

It is lovely, wonderful and affirming to be liked and loved. Just protect yourself, because she will carry these feelings you have for her like a blanket because it comforting and wonderful. And be prepared that what you are offering may be enough for her or that she may never be ready for anything more with you.

I wish you lots of wisdom.

Give her the respect of *listening* to her!!! She has said that she's *not* interested in you in a romantic way. You are not going to change her mind by moving in with her as a "friend". She'll get uncomfortable when she can tell you still want to be more than friends, and you'll torture yourself every time she shows interest in another guy. Put some distance in the friendship until you can be 100% happy with the idea of her dating someone who's not you. Until then, you're not friends, you're just someone trying to hide his feelings.

Everything exactly as MsMolly said it, plus this: You quite possibly CAN'T be 100% happy with the idea of this being just a friendship. You have clearly more feelings invested in your "friendship" than she does. More importantly, it may hinder you from finding a more whole relationship with someone else. Speaking from experience, you may convince yourself that the friendship is better than nothing, and end up wasting stretches time and your other romantic possibilities.

I just saw this image and thought of your post Gus:

previous post misaddressed (sorry to Indecisive in Itasca)and linkless:

http://sideways8.files.wordpress.com/2006/11/attractivenesscale.jpg

a helpful graph for times like this.

That graph is amazing!

Thanks everyone. I'm surprised at how helpful this actually is in thinking/feeling this through.

Here's what I've learned:

Moving in with your best friend, whether or not you'd like to make them your lover (or whatever) is one of the best ways to end the friendship. Living with other people is very challenging. You'd better both be in love with each other first, because sometimes it gets hairy.

If someone says they aren't interested in you in "that way", they really, really mean it. It's always important to take people at their word in this case. (I have personally wasted far too much time on this sort of thing before I met my partner.)

It's more important to focus on *being* the right person than finding the right person, or making a person you want to be the right person, be the right person. If you concentrate on being the kind of person who is deserving of the kind of relationship you want, you'll be ready when the right person comes into your life. I started saying this to myself in 1997. I had my doubts many times, but it seemed right - and now I have someone in my life - we met 3 years ago and have been together ever since - who makes me believe in it completely. He's not exactly the guy I was dreaming of, but in so many ways he's exactly right for me, and I love him more than I could have imagined. It's one of the most wonderful feelings in the world to know that he feels the same - and didn't take any convincing :D
I *know* you will find someone for you. Trust me, if I can, *you* can.

Actually, experience i have in this area--the first time that i asked my current girlfriend out, she said no. i waited a few months, and then we were alone and the moment seemed to present itself, so i mentioned my interest again and it turns out that she had the same interest; it was just a really bad time when i asked her the first time.

My point is this; just wait a little while and remain friends. Then, when the opportunity presents itself, mention your interest in her again; don't be pushy and ask her out or anything; just mention that you're interested and see where it goes. However, if she flat-out refuses you again, i wouldn't mention it ever again if you can avoid it. If she hasn't accepted by the second time, mentioning it again is just gonna piss her off. Let her bring it up if anything.

What a difficult situation. I've had an experience which might be relevant. My best friend from school surprised me by declaring his love for me, and to my surprise the idea of a relationship with him seemed like a good idea; I just hadn't thought about it before. Sounds great, right? Like the ideal situation for you. But within 2 years, he'd cheated on me twice or more, I'd become a surrogate parent to him, we were arguing all the time. I loved him very deeply but the reality of the relationship and the difficulties we had made staying friends impossible.

The pain of losing a lover AND a best friend is a lot worse than it looks on paper. In hindsight I would have rather stayed friends and been able to be there to support him (at more of a distance) when all these issues in his life cropped up. My point is - you could well lose a lot more than you bargained for if you pursue a relationship with your friend - and thats even if she does change her mind about having a further relationship with you. Think past what would happen if she said "yes". Are you two really compatible?

You sound like you want to trade up years of friendship for an idea that struck you only a couple of weeks ago - what REALLY made you think about more than friendship? If this has happened to you before, as you say, why don't you learn from your past mistakes? Don't do it! Don't lose yet another close friend! Make sure you aren't falling in love with the idea of the relationship rather than the actual real person you are friends with.