How to deal with male friend who wants more?

Hi everyone,

As you may be able to tell from my username, I am a lesbian and I present myself in a very feminine way. I am a 25 year old AFAB woman who uses she/her pronouns.

I am in a very tricky situation with one male friend. I identified as bisexual for years due to struggling with compulsory heterosexuality and I realised I wasn’t bisexual and I was actually a lesbian back in 2019. This is blatantly obvious to me now looking back. I am now fully out to everyone in my life as a lesbian apart from this one male friend. He knew I identified as bisexual for years as we had spoken about it often and I think he knows i’m a lesbian and has known for some time as I never show interest in men (real life or celebrities) and all of my ‘celebrity crushes’ I speak with him about are exclusively all women, I repeatedly tell him I would not be interested in anything sexual with a man at all and have told him none of my previous relationships with men satisfied me emotionally, I was a teenager at the time so there was no sexual relationship other than affectionate behaviour which made me feel repulsed and extremely uncomfortable, I tell him that any attention in a more than platonic way from men makes me extremely uncomfortable and I tell him about a female I am very close with who is also a lesbian and is my girlfriend. I haven’t explicitly stated I am in a relationship with her (although I am 100% sure he knows but is in denial) as I am certain if I was open with him about being a lesbian and not bisexual with an obvious massive preference for women he would not want to be my friend anymore because he acts extremely jealous and I know for a fact he likes me because he calls me beautiful constantly and refers to me as ‘his’ sometimes and it makes me extremely uncomfortable; I have cried to my girlfriend about this multiple times and she is extremely understanding and supportive about it and talks me through it and strokes my hair until I fall asleep as we cuddle in bed. I love her so much and I am certain he knows this so I don’t get why he won’t stop. There have been times where I have mentioned things I have planned with my girlfriend and he has made possessive comments about me but this seems to have stopped after I told him that he doesn’t get to tell me what to do. I apologise profusely to her for his behaviour which she says I am not to blame for and the way he acts towards me could probably be seen as harassment (he has made a lot of comments about my appearance that made me very uncomfortable but hasn’t for a while). He has even commented on how much happier I seem around her which I am. He is one of my best friends and I don’t want to lose his friendship but he just won’t accept that we will never be together. We usually get on well as friends and have a laugh. I have borderline personality disorder so I am massively affected by relationship triggers, be it family/friendship/romantic. I have no romantic or sexual interest in him at all and I know that he knows this but if I tell him I am a lesbian and in a relationship with a girl who has been one of my best friends for almost ten years I am certain he will end our friendship and I really don’t want that. I worry I am leading him on in a way but I honestly do not mean to and everyone in my life other than him has told me that they know I would never intentionally do that including my girlfriend. She doesn’t want me to end my friendship with him unless I want to because she would like to at least be on speaking terms with him. I don’t even know if anything can be done to help this situation but I just needed to see it written in front of me.

Sorry for the long post. Hope everyone is having a good day/night!

 

hey!

Thank you so much for your reply and your warm welcome, I appreciate it!

I was actually considering writing a letter to him but I am just terrified of his response because we have been friends for almost 15 years and I would be gutted to lose him as a friend so I am just trying to think of how to word it.

Again, thank you

 

hey!

thanks for your reply and your welcome. You are completely right that he is being disrespectful and everything you say makes complete sense. I think that he might just be ignoring the situation because if I show concern about any issue in personal advice he seems to take it as me indirectly showing romantic interest in him which just sucks because I want to be able to show concern and help him and be able to tell him that I am here for him without having to watch my words carefully because this happens every time I show more than a small amount of concern despite him knowing I am like this with absolutely anyone I care about. That is one of the reasons I felt like I was leading him on. A lot of people have said the exact same thing as you.

Everything you have mentioned is exactly what I have wanted to say to him so I just need to think about how to word it. I was thinking of -also writing him a letter explaining my journey of discovering I am a lesbian who used to experience compulsory heterosexuality rather than bisexual and how much I value his friendship.

Thanks again for your reply and your kind words.

 

Sorry for the double reply! I just wanted to make a correction to my reply, I meant to say his personal life, not personal advice. That was an autocorrect mistake haha!

 

I think you are definitely right. I think I will also include how I came to the realisation I am a lesbian and explain how difficult it was for me to realise that I had been struggling with compulsory heterosexuality my whole life. I am also going to include an apology for any ideas I may have unintentionally given him that I was interested in him for the time we have known each other and that I value our friendship a massive amount. You have been very helpful and are very kind.