Having a crush but maintaining a friendship

I'm just going to jump right in with my dilemma because it's the main reason I joined this site...I don't really know if I'm looking for advice or just need to get it off my chest with people who will understand so here goes.

I belong to a group of people who share an online activity. We live in different countries that are in a similar time zone so we have live chats and DM each other as well but we have never met in person. I have to add here that I've been in remote office for over a year due to covid so I haven't been getting a lot of personal interaction outside my immediate family, which probably made this group more important to me than otherwise.

I enjoy the group but there's one woman in particular with whom I hit it off really well and we got into a fairly intense exchange over DMs for a while; we consider ourselves friends even though we've never met in real life. The relationship was not one-sided, we were both into it, but there wasn't really anything romantic involved. At a certain point things went off a little between us over a misunderstanding, I talked to someone else in the group about it as well as with my friend and we've more or less resolved it but the whole thing really affected me a lot, to the point of sleepless nights, and I was a bit more intense about the whole thing than I should have been and didn't always respect her boundaries.

Now for the "I'm such an idiot" moment. I've been denying romantic attachment and making excuses, even joking around "haha people will think I'm in love" but...I guess I am. I was too stupid to recognize it but I'm in love with her and that's why it upset me so much, it's why I get jealous when she has other friends or (horrors) does something with them that I'm not part of. I've never really allowed myself to have a crush on a woman before so in a way I enjoy it but at the same time I'm not too sure where I should go from here.

This is not a relationship where anything could really happen romantically, I'm married to a man and although we haven't been lovers for a long time he's not open to having an open relationship yet. My friend is also 20 years younger than I am (I'm in my 50s), more or less straight, and doesn't live nearby. I don't know if she would reciprocate my affections but it's doubtful and I don't really think it's worth trying to find out because the chances of something happening between us is close to zero.

My big dilemma is...how do I keep up this friendship without overstepping any boundaries or being creepy about it? It would of course be easiest just to drop the friendship but I've always had a problem that my fear of falling in love with my female friends has prevented me from being close to them and I don't want to be doomed to never having close friends. I really do enjoy her friendship and I don't just want to give up but I can't really stop the feelings. I guess I'd just like to know what other people do in these situations.

 

Thank you for the reply!

Hmmm I think you might be right and it is more of a crush. I do like her very much as a person and as a friend, I admire her and think she's great but that's not necessarily romantic. The other feelings like the jealousy are just a little confusing; I don't want them to interfere with the rest, but I'm not sure how to detach them. I have taken a step back and made sure I interact with more people in the group so maybe it will help.

 

Sometimes it feels a little bit like being in high school again with all of the feels....I always assumed I'd have a handle on things by this age but ugh it's really hard. I'm trying to detach from it a little but it's really hard to do.

 

I think I figured it out...it's not really a crush. Our friendship started to become one-sided at some point, she started to reduce time spent with me and then starting doing stuff with other people from our groups without inviting me and telling inside jokes about things I missed out on. It triggered old fears of girls not wanting to be friends with me because they somehow "knew" I was lesbian and playing similar games of exclusion. So in the end I guess she just isn't really the friend I thought she was and my crush feelings came from the feeling that I was losing what to me was a real and valued friendship.

 

This really does feel like high school again
I don't even know what I feel anymore and it changes day to day, all I know is that I care about this lady in some way but I'm really insecure about myself so I have no idea how to interpret things correctly and since a lot of it is over text it's even harder to interpret. I wish there was some way to switch off all these feels so I could think rationally about it.

I don't know, maybe I need to have a serious talk with my husband. I think maybe I have a need for intimacy that I'm not really getting in our marriage and it's starting to become acute.

 

I took a step back and did some self-reflection about negative feelings and memories I've been projecting into this relationship from past baggage and came to the conclusion that the best route was to reach out openly as a friend with all the (for me) vulnerability that entails. I did so and got a positive response in return so I think this is going to be ok. I'm not 100% sure about my feelings but I think I'll be able to figure out where to draw the boundaries there. I realize this seems like a quick conclusion but I've been struggling with it for a few months now, writing it out here has helped me get some perspective on it so thanks for your responses and advice!

 

Yeah, I'm hoping that if I can keep some perspective and not overthink things that it will work out (might be a bit of a challenge because my mind sometimes gets ahead of me ).

I didn't tell her I had a crush on her but I did let her know how much I valued her and her friendship and that's what she responded positively to. I'm still unsure about my feelings but I think that's going to take a while to unpack because it's still pretty new to me. I haven't allowed myself to care this much about a female friend for a long time -- if ever -- so the boundaries are fuzzy.

 

Every time I think things are going well something happens and I'm back to struggling.
Things have been going well, we had a couple of good chats and I was able to ignore the crush side of it but then I said something wrong and now she's pulling back again. It's just so confusing because it's so hard to tell what I can say and not say, sometimes she'll be ok talking about something and then she won't and I'm just not noticing the clues. It just hurts so much sometimes, maybe it's just that I'm much more invested in our relationship than she is so things that I would ignore if she said them make her pull away from me. But it's really painful and I just don't know what to do. I ended up telling her how I felt in our chat (not the crush but that I liked her too much and it hurts a lot when she pulls away) because honestly I don't know if I can take this.