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Friend making things tricky

Discussion in 'Family, Friends, and Relationships' started by WinnieLucy, Jul 15, 2021.

  1. WinnieLucy

    Regular Member

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    Hi all,

    Forgive me if what i'm attempting to say is a bit jumbled, it's a lot to lay out to people who don't know the situation, and kinda long but I really would like advice/opinions on the situation as I feel really trapped.

    2019. Moved out of home to university campus at the beginning of the year. Met group of amazing friends. One of which after a little while I realised I had feelings for. Stewed on that for a while, unsure of what exactly I was feeling and what to do about it. about Oct 2019, I decided to come out (not really 'out' to any of my friends back home or otherwise) to her specifically, idk I guess I felt comfortably with her and tbh that if there was any possibility she mightn't have been straight, by me doing so, it might have opened a path for her to come out as well (again if that was the case.) she felt uncomfortable being the only one who knew, so I told the rest of the group. Between then and Nov 2020, after a lot of mental legwork to get over and move on and as a final step of this process, I decided that if it were me id like someone to tell me and be honest, so I pretty much told her in Nov "hey. this happened, I did have feelings for you, but not anymore, been over for a while, just thought I needed to tell you and be honest." I made space, gave it some time.

    Now...from mid 2020 to April 2021 I had a few other negative things happen to me at home and outside our life together as friends. I got feeling a bit down between this and the process leading up to actually telling her, I became withdrawn and awkward on occasion, This caused her and my friends to become cold and as they have admitted now, they didn't reach out to me to ask me how I was. (there was also a lack of communication and incorrect assumptions made on their behalf about things I do in the house that they stockpiled in a negative way against me, eg. me sitting at our kitchen table to study instead of my room because I focus better out of my room, and they thought it was because I was depressed and desperate to talk to them, said it made them uncomfortable/I was poaching them, and that it and contributed to their coldness.) so then...my main cause of feeling bad quickly became the coldness of my friends and the fact that I felt isolated and like they didn't care.

    Now recently we all sat and talked about these things, but the one I used to like said some really hurtful things in the process, and in a group setting I felt overwhelmed and like I couldn't stand up for myself when i should have as her reaction to me telling her has been quite unfair. she openly said to the group that her and my friendship will never be the same, I was never willing to let this happen, hence killing these feelings when I noticed them. but she's been quite hostile to me sometimes and seems to struggle to accept attention (like, major anxiety and feeling sick about guys wanting to go on dates wth her) and the fact that I did USED to like her, it disturbs her greatly, to the point where 8 months after me being honest she obviously has made up her mind that she isn't willing to let our friendship heal and get back to normal, which really hurts, and the fact that I told her it would never come up again, from Nov2020 to now we have never spoken about it. I feel her reaction has been unfair and that the blame she's placed on me isn't entirely my fault. yes initially by telling her I made her uncomfortable but I feel her struggle to accept and process emotions around these sorts of things is largely why after 8 months our friendship hasn't healed. I feel she hasn't let it. I was over her a long time ago before I even told her last Nov, and I made that clear, so why does the idea of me having once liked her disturb her so greatly where she is willing to let it uphold this rift in our friendship to this day?

    Now that the night has passed (two days ago) where we all sat down and spoke about the other problems (coldness, lack of communication and support, things around the house like above etc), she isn't willing to talk about it despite me asking afterward for the same fair, comfortable chance (eg not in a group setting) to raise this personally with her, she insists she needs our friends present. I now feel like its not worth pushing to clear up despite how I kinda want to hear her answer to the issue, considering the more personal pick-apart this would be for her and would be in front of our friends too. I don't want to make her more uncomfortable like that. (even though she picked me apart at the previous group talk) and I don't want to make things worse between us by doing so, as clearly she struggles to accept this and deal with the idea of people liking her, and I feel she sometimes uses the fact that I used to like her and that I did make her uncomfortable to begin with as a bit of a cover-up for her own emotional issues/anxieties.

    Do I just stifle this and try and let it fizz out? I really would like to stand up for myself but I just feel the time has passed and its maybe not worth it because it will only make the gap bigger between us. Any advise would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:
     
  2. SteveBi45

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    It sounds like there are a lot of communication issues between you and your friends, which unfortunately seems to have turned into all of them against you in some way. I've experienced this kind of situation before and it's not a nice feeling to have, even if it's unintentional from them.

    It was good that you had a group discussion about it and this shows that your friends care about you and want to work it out. What wasn't ok was for this girl you previously had feelings for to raise these issues which are obviously between both of you and not a group (at least from what I can understand from your story). That feeling of being overwhelmed with everything being said to you at once is awful. Sorry to hear that happened to you.

    I would ask - if you know she is someone who is not comfortable with getting positive attention, what was your reason for telling her you used to like her? If you have gotten past this attraction, then what does it solve by raising it?

    I know a lot of straight people get a mental hangup about someone of the same gender showing even the slightest hint of interest in them. Perhaps she's thinking that you are raising the issue now to see if there's still a chance that something might happen and this is panicking her to the point that she won't discuss this privately with you.
     
  3. WinnieLucy

    Regular Member

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    Hey sorry hadn't checked back for a while since. So pretty much since the chat its been mostly cleared up, all the miscommunication between my friends and I, and they even ended up admitting that they let their own issues deteriorate the situation between me and them further and unfairly against me. (their own words) (ie: one actually diagnosed with depression, another with other mental difficulties at the current time.) so it seems it was largely just a big lack of communication.

    at the time of telling her, I wasn aware of the extent of how uncomfortable she gets with this sort of attention. that's something I learnt afterwards unfortunately. Its hard to describe, but like the motivators that pushed me to come out in the first place, mainly the feeling that I was being deceptive, I felt they simply deserved to know especially considering I live with them all, and my mentality was that for good or for bad, they deserve to know and be able to react however they wished to. same goes for her directly. I wanted to be honest, and if that were me in her shoes, id want someone to be honest with me if that's how they were feeling. I was largely over her a while before I decided to tell her, it was only when I was very drunk with them that my mind started looking back down that path ever so slightly. I wanted that thinking to end. I wanted no scraps of that left even in the furtherest corners of my mind (=very drunk lol). hence choosing to do what I did.

    Ive spoken with another one of the group since, because they walked in on me crying on the phone to another friend haha, and I explained this to that friend in the group. she totally understood and feels sorry that i'm stuck in this unfair position (not sounding like im totally innocent, I know I triggered it In some ways for sure. but multiple people who know the dynamic of our group have said that what they did was not really good at all and also not nice to me either.); not being able to fix it and not being able to do anything else about it. that really helped relieve a lot of pressure I was holding at the time of posting this, and I was glad to hear that this friend also recognised the difficulty in accepting emotions that the girl I told appears to have. they also said they progressives realised how bad of a position they put me in with the whole group interrogation thing haha. Even just getting this out into words away from just my head has helped, and since, my friends have been more open and I've been able to comfortably clear a lot of this with them which has been amazing.
    Thanks for the responce!
     
    SteveBi45 likes this.