How do I act like I'm not in love?

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Hi! I'm Elanor. I introduced myself over on the appropriate forum but this is the first "real" post I've made, haha.

I am in a weird situation. I've never been very lucky in love. I'm not a virgin but I haven't had any relationship last very long because people get weirded out by me being an unusual person with a dorky sense of humor who has intense interests and needs alone time, or sometimes because I decide I don't like them that much and then I just stop talking to them :/ Anyway, for the first time I think I've really fallen in love. I don't know how to tell if it's "love," I just know I haven't felt it before. The guy is my best friend. We've known each other about a year. We see each other several times a week and text in between. I want to share every little thing with him and it just makes me happy being near him. I realized a couple weeks ago when he was talking about looking for someone to date that I felt really jealous and wanted him to date me instead. We'd never talked about being more than friends. I finally got up my nerve last night and told him I wanted to be more than friends and needed to know how he felt.

Well... he said, no, he doesn't feel the same at all. He said he could tell for some time that I had feelings for him (which means I apparently showed it to him before I realized it myself.) He likes me and likes spending time with me but doesn't want me that way. I don't know why but I really didn't expect him to say no. I guess I just assumed he felt the same and we would be together. Now I'm kind of heartbroken and I haven't felt that before. It really hurts. I didn't know it could be this bad.

Despite that, I really, really want to go on being his best friend. He means everything to me and is closer to me than anyone else. We spend holidays together, we watch TV and play video games together, we make mix cd's for eachother... I'd lose so much in losing his friendship. I don't know who I'd talk to the same way, and besides all that he's the ONLY person I can 1) look in the eyes and 2) hug, which is a really big deal. He says he isn't upset and still wants to be friends, but I feel really awkward seeing him now. I've told him I need a week to myself to think about things, but I want to see him again after that, however much it hurts

How do I keep on being friends with him without acting like I'm in love with him, like I still am? I don't want to make it any more awkward than it is. Apparently I was really obvious and I'd feel dumb acting that way now knowing he isn't interested. How do I react if he finds someone else? can I still hug him? Can I still make eye contact? I have no idea what differentiates "flirting" from "being friendly." I didn't even know I was being flirty, so I don't know how to stop Help please!! !!

Hi Elanor.

You poor thing. You're in a situation where, if you're not careful, you could lose a friendship you value. The worst thing you could do is try and 'convince' him of being in a relationship with you. Sounds like you haven't done that, which is good.

If he's known for a while and not made a big deal out of it, chances are he's going to realise that it might take a while for you to 'rewind' your feelings, and will be quite understanding of it. How long have you felt this way about him? I've heard it said, that you take the time you've had feelings for him, divide that by two and that's a person's average 'recovery time'. Or you could cheat and use a bit of NLP, but that's another story.

At the same time, it's a little mean of him that he's known about your feelings for some time, and hasn't broached the matter with you - perhaps he was scared of losing your friendship, too, if he had let you down before now.

If your life is much better off with him in it as a friend, then without it altogether, you're going to have to tread carefully. It might take longer than a week to get over this - even seeing his face might set off strong feelings. I'd suggest reducing texts to him to wean yourself off him, and if you are talking about emotions concerning him, keeping them flat as possible - you don't want to damage future relations while you are feeling so vulnerable. You can talk about them here at WP instead, should you need to.

I'd say surrounding yourself with new people is probably better for your mental health.

Elanor, I'm sorry to hear you're in such a difficult situation. Things get very complicated when the line between love and friendship becomes blurred and two people don't feel the same way, and I wish there were an easy answer. Your friend certainly seems to care for you, even if it is not in a romantic way, so I can understand why both of you would want to get past this uncomfortableness and maintain the friendship.

Unfortunately, the only answer I have for your question is that I have no idea how people are able to act like they feel something other than what they really feel in order to better navigate a social situation. This is something that has bewildered me for years. As a teenager, I never understood the concept of "flirting" and was always shocked when people told me I was doing it. In particular, everyone knew that I was in love with my best friend when I didn't even really know it myself, and I never understood how they could tell. (What shocked me even more was learning years later that he had been in love with me too, but that's a different story.) One of the things that led me to question whether I might have Asperger's (which I still don't know for sure) is how I can be so intelligent and yet so naive and childlike in the way I relate to others, especially people I like or love. Maybe you feel the same way.

I don't really have any useful advice for you, but your questions do lead me to some related questions you might want to ask yourself, if you haven't already. If you remain close friends, will it prevent you from finding someone else who does like you romantically? There's nothing inherently wrong or inappropriate about hugging or making eye contact with someone who is "just a friend," but since it's such a big deal for you personally, will continuing to do so make you feel weird or make him feel weird or continue to fuel a connection that you would be better served by lessening? If he finds someone else, will you be able to pretend to be okay with it and be happy for him? What I've ended up doing in similar situations is forcing myself to be such a convincing actor that I actually convinced *myself* I was okay with it, which led to bigger problems for me when I needed to figure out how I was really feeling -- is that a trap you can see yourself falling into?

I guess what I'm getting at is that whether you can or should try to resume and maintain your previous friendship really depends on how doing so will affect *you,* your emotional and mental well-being, and your ability to move on. If part of your motivation for staying his friend were to keep him close in case he ever changes his mind, that probably wouldn't be healthy for you in the long term. But I can also absolutely understand the desire to maintain a friendship simply because you enjoy spending time with the person, and I think it is possible to do that in a way that won't affect you negatively if you are able to figure out what you need and where your boundaries are in the relationship. Unfortunately, if you're anything like me, boundaries may not be your strong suit, so that may be easier said than done.

Sorry I can't be more help. If you just want to talk, though, I would happy to hear more about your situation and/or share my own experiences, either on the forum or via PM. Best of luck to you!

P.S. I read your first post after reading this one, and I must be a huge nerd, because my first thought was, "Oh cool, her name is spelled like in The Lord of the Rings."

Oh, Elanor, I feel so bad for you! Having been there, I know how it feels. I had a friendship with this guy who I had feelings for who also gave me the friend card, and because he had trouble saying no, and we continued to hang out, I allowed myself to think that there was a possibility that he'd feel the same way about me in time. So it went on like that, as a mostly one-sided obsession for 7 years. Yes, 7 years!

I have also gotten in trouble with the whole not knowing what's flirting thing; I had a coworker where we were talking one day, and I got really excited about what we were discussing. It turns out to him it seemed like I was flirting.

My question for you is, why do you want to continue being friends with him? What do you hope to achieve? If you want to continue a friendship with this guy, tread carefully. And you also have to think about how he feels, too--he may feel awkward as well.

Well since he was such a close friend I'd say he valued your friendship. Perhaps also and this is just spectulation, he got a mental lift from being with you and knowing you liked him. Like an ego booster, though it doesn't sound like he acted in a actually 'user' way. When you brought it up he was honest and that is good.

It just goes like that of course, and theres no way to really alter how people feel. The best you can do for both parties sake is be honest and don't do anything to hurt one another.

You have to learn to not hurt yourself too, and that can be harder. We are all different and you have to gage yourself, but if I was in a similiar situation I would probably not hang around the person for a long time. I have found it only prolongs the sadness. It may be that your feelings for a relationship fade away. It can happen. At that point it is ok to be friends again. Its kinda rare in my experience but has happened.

Give it time Elanor and you will probably find that (although it may occasionally be painful or confusing in the interim) your romantic interest in him will recalibrate itself along lines more appropriate to a close friendship. It's quite OK to feel strong love for a friend, too, so it doesn't mean you have to suppress your feelings entirely. It's also perfectly understandable to feel jealous or and/or threatened if your friend one day announces he's found a partner, even if you weren't previously attracted to them. New partner = less time for you. All you can do is be there throughout, positive to his new partner (even though you may secretly hate her, and have to stick up for her when he whinges about her to you), and be there to comfort him if and when it all goes pear-shaped.

I've had friendships that have developed out of thwarted love interest and they're quite interesting, because although you might eventually come to realise that you would have been totally incompatible as partners, your warm love for them never really goes away. That's a good and life-enhancing thing.

Thanks for your kind replies everyone!! I'm sorry for those of you who are/have been in the same boat, it sucks! I take the advice as good that I should achieve a little distance for a while. But I really don't want to "break up" our friendship because he means a lot to me and I love the time we spend together even if it isn't anything more than friends. He doesn't seem like he feels the need to break things off. He said it's okay and obviously he hasn't been uncomfortable about it if he knew I felt this way before I said it

But I worry about if he gets a girlfriend, how I will react to that, whether I'll be able to be nice to her and deal with that. I know he's looking for dates but he's awkward like me, but he's an attractive guy and I know he will find a worthy girl at some point. I think I will be okay with things as they are but I worry about that scenario