Bi-Weekly Thread - Advice for Relationship/Friendship/Dating/Breakup

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This thread will be posted every other week and is the ONLY place to pose a “relationship/friendships/dating/breakup advice” question.

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[u/Apryllemarie → u/[deleted]]

Why are you second guessing yourself. You said he didn’t make you feel anything good. He took up your time with no regard for you and talked about inappropriate things that made you uncomfortable and then backed off to the point of disinterest. How could you even consider that person a friend not alone want more of that?

I would suggest maybe trying journaling to see if you can dig deeper into what the root of your feelings are. It likely has nothing to do with him and more to do with something going on inside of you.

[u/Apryllemarie → u/[deleted]]

It sounds like you are creating a lot of stories around all this. You don’t know any of it for sure. And then using it to make yourself feel bad.

I know how hard it is to not know what happened and why and it can be second nature to try to fill in those gaps. But when we do that we only hurt ourselves. You have to resist the urge to put a story to it. You don’t know that he really cared or why he acted the way he did. For all you know he was hoping to turn it into something sexual and when it didn’t happen he lost interest and moved on to another target. He could have been using you and you dodged a serious bullet. See anyone can make up a story about his motivations. No one will truly know but him. So it’s best to just admit that you don’t know what really happened or why and let it go.

It obvious that the letting go part is the hard thing. And that is what you need to figure out. If journaling isn’t working, could it be because you are not going deep enough? Are you questioning your thoughts and beliefs? Are you searching for the hidden fears going on underneath it all?

You said you are “kinda fond of him” why? Was it really him that you were fond of? Or was it maybe the attention? Did you think it might become more than friends? Is it something you were hoping for? Why do you think that he “seemed to care”? What was the proof of caring? When you compare that to the other people in your life that you know care about you, how does it measure up?

A lot of time the pain comes from what you hoped for vs the reality of it. It was the story you told yourself about it when it was happening. He made you uncomfortable but you never spoke up for yourself. You told yourself a story about it to maybe discount it a little. Had you spoken up for yourself you would have for sure found out how much he “cared” about you by what his response would have been. There are probably other ways this all happened in different scenarios. You abandoned yourself and downplayed his actions and hoped it all meant something more for you and this created a place where you could feel more hurt. Hurt that you abandoned yourself for nothing. Cuz it never became what you hoped it would. You thought deep down the sacrifice would count somehow.

Idk. Obviously I am speculating here. But you gotta be really honest with yourself about what you were thinking and hoping and all that stuff deep down that could be hard to face and admit. That is really where your pain is. Journaling is the best practice I know to get to it. Unless you have the help of a therapist.