A
male
age
30-35,
*Nick
writes:I would estimate I’m joined by at least 65% of other college guys who don’t REALLY believe in love. What, with so many people coming and going in these brief 4 years, falling in love is just a liability. But then just like that, it snuck up on me.Okay, so I’m not going to over dramatize the rest of this. But damn it if this didn’t catch me off guard. Long story short, I met this chica about 8 months ago, we sat next to each other in class. Knew she had a boyfriend, but I’m one of those extroverted “let’s just go out and get to know everyone” types. I went out to get to know her, and damn was I intrigued. In a short few weeks, we became next to best friends.And genuinely too. Neither of us were striving for anything extra. It was totally innocent, like, hey, we’re awesome when we’re together. We should spend more time together. Her boyfriend would propose. I’d be happy for her. Genuinely. She became my best-girl-friend on campus. I became her (in her own words), “next favorite guy to her fiancé.” And that’s what next favorite guys do, they’re happy for you when you get engaged.Longer story shorter, we got drunk together recently to celebrate her 21st early. We just stayed up all night chatting and stuff, like we usually do, except this time, drunk. And since we were drunk, it was totally acceptable to cuddle and play with each other’s hair. The stuff that’s typically not okay for the “next to fiancé” guy to do.All other issues aside, because of the mainly innocent nature of our relationship, I haven’t realized I realized that our wonderful, fantastic relationship has limitations. Or at least it does while her fiancé and our scruples are still part of the equation. And since I don’t’ see either of those two things going anywhere any time soon, the normal thing to do would be to consider other girls. But, to seriously consider any girl, she’s going to at least have to pass the threshold of the relationship that myself and my engaged girl-best-friend share. And I simply don’t want that to happen.It seems several of my most deeply seated personality traits, namely my desire to treat those who put magnificent amounts of effort into friendships above all else, my inability to be jealous, and my (sober) regard for her relationship have me at a gridlock where I either wait for her to stop putting effort into the relationship, me to find fault with the relationship, or her and her fiancé to break it off, neither of which are especially likely events to occur. I feel trapped, and I feel extremely happy at the same time. I simultaneously hate it and love it.And therefore, since I don’t understand my emotions, I deduce that I must be in love. It’s just that I wasn’t planning on finding myself here. So please, help me get out XDRegards,-NickP.s., drunk me has regards for her relationship too. Drunk her just has to remind me she’s in one. Also unlikely to happen… *Sigh* So I guess we’ll just see how it goes since she requested I take her into the city to party for her 21st. Without her fiancé…
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reader, .Nick +, writes (15 May 2014):
.Nick is verified as being by the original poster of the question Update: (If y'all are willing to stick with me)We've been spending massive amounts of time together... She came to the bar with me and my friends on my birthday at midnight, we went to the club later that night, we went out to the bar just by ourselves the next day to watch hockey.. and then she came bar hopping with some friends the next day. I helped her move out and I took her out to dinner, and then the next day she took me out for ice cream. She went home, and I thought I was gonna get a break from her.The 6 or 7 days in a row going out together didn't really bother me, again, it was still just really innocent and really fun. We were apart for a whole 2 days and I got a message from her today saying that she missed going out with me, and even though it was kind of nonchalant and almost platonic, I inwardly panicked.I mean, she's home with her fiance now. I shouldn't even cross her mind. Again, maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing, but it seems off, and for the first time, I'm more scared than I am confused.I don't really want her to break things off with her fiance. Not in this context; it puts too much pressure on me to be with her, and even though I'm slowly moving towards wanting to be involved with someone on more of a serious level, I feel like, knowing me, I'd end up feeling trapped and unhappy.So I've contemplated stepping on the brakes hardcore, but there's really no easy way out, because I'm not really the type of person to check out of a relationship for no reason. Still I don't really think there is any "good" result of this relationship.If I do move on to something more serious, I'll naturally check out. But in the process, she gets hurt, I probably get torn between spending time with her and someone else, and I feel like an ass.I don't really see her cutting me out of her life. She acknowledges her fiance doesn't like me and is okay with it.Either way, because of the small size of our campus, we're pretty much guaranteed to see each other daily for the next year or so... For now that's what it looks like it'll be.Bonus info: One of the more recent times we were drinking she apologized to me for being engaged, and we were also congratulated for the third time on our engagement... -.-
A
male
reader, .Nick +, writes (5 March 2014):
.Nick is verified as being by the original poster of the questionDevont:Hahaha, thank you for the reassurance. I would agree that I'm not in "romantic" love with her. It is more, as you call it, a special friendship. I guess I just used "love" for lacking a better word, but nonetheless it is different than the rest of my friendships.I'm no longer convinced it's as innocent as it first seemed either. Alcohol as a funny way of doing that, I suppose. I left this out of the main post for sake of brevity, but this was the first time we were drunk together:We're both sparkling reputation types, so neither of us knew that the other occasionally partied. Until Christmas break came, we both went home, and went to parties where word would never spread back up to where we live during school. Except that we ended up drunk texting the other, so we found out about it that way.Us getting drunk together wasn't necessarily my idea. She, knowing I had been wanting a new hat, and her finding a passion for crocheting, crocheted me one over Christmas break, and gave it to me when we came back for a Christmas present. I felt guilty for not doing anything for her.We then found ourselves talking about our partying life over break, which was new territory for both of us. One way or another, we got to the topic of how nice it would be to just have a wine night, and then I decided, since she crocheted me the hat, I’d buy us and her best friend some wine and we’d have a wine night, and that that would be proper payback for the hat.I figured it would be fine, since her friend would be there to keep things even. But she drunkenly left early. I was contemplating leaving with her friend, but she drunkenly insisted I stay, and I drunkenly listened. Nothing else happened that night. To be fair, I’m probably making a bigger deal out of what happened than what really did happen. It was just really flirtatious contact. But I felt guilty. We fell asleep on the same bed. I woke up sober at 4, realized what was going on, and moved to the floor.I woke up some hours later to leave, go back to my place and get ready for the day. My waking woke her, and we talked about it for a bit. She said she didn’t remember everything, but she remembered general premises. She said she felt guilty, and so I apologized for putting her in that predicament, and that I should have known better. She said I have nothing to apologize for, and that she had a really good time. We left it at that, and haven’t talked about it since. This was maybe 2 weeks ago. As much as I enjoyed the night, I assumed I was way out of line, and for personal convictions chalked us drinking together up as something that wouldn’t be happening any time soon.I assumed that her 21st would be just her and her girlfriends. I don’t turn 21 until a month after her, so I figured that they’d just go to the bar like most people do on their 21st, and that I wouldn’t be able to go. She told me she wants to go into the city where all the party schools are, rent a hotel room for a night, that way I can join her. Clinging to the innocence that our relationship was built on I said yeah, and in fact, don’t even worry about it. You shouldn’t be planning your own 21st, I have friends up there, I’ll take care of it. She then started to go into how awesome I am, and how she appreciates everything I do for her, and I got overly serious, and probably way too defensive and told her that’s fine and all but, it’s not like I do what I do for her for anything in return. It’s what friends do.In regards to her fiancé not going, he lives 80 miles away and is going to be seeing her the next weekend, and that he didn’t want to drive up just to end up driving back down. Lame excuse if you ask me, but I don’t know the guy, and so I refuse to cast judgment. BUT that’s another thing that gets me. I’ve never met her fiancé, other than once very superficially before they were engaged and before we were friends. If I knew him, I think I would be able to put my feelings and her feelings and his feelings in perspective and understand where I fit a little bit better. But she doesn’t even talk about him.I keep bugging her, telling her, he’s up here at least once a month. Being friends as we are, I wanna meet this guy who has such a big impact on your life. Myself and the rest of my guy friends play sports, volleyball, basketball, football, soccer, every Sunday. One Sunday he’s up here, let us know. He can pick his poison, and come play with us so we get to know him. But never has it happened. She says he just doesn’t like being around new people.I was really hoping I was reading too much into it too, because I thought the same thing you did. So, it’s not really reassuring to me that you are questioning whether you are or not. I don’t know what she wants. Hell, I don’t know what I want. I mean, I’ve managed to keep my relationship with her separate from my daily life; I’ve continued to date around, meet new people, all without thinking about her, as much as she sure as hell has kept me separate from her fiancé. But at the end of the day, when we’re together, (from my perspective) no one even comes close to the bond we’ve formed. Part of me wants to keep the innocence of our friendship, part of me just wants to let it grow in whatever direction it wants.And one final thought: She’s been with this guy for 6 years. I’m usually the first one to cry out against collegiate engagements. Either you’ve been with the guy a year and are jumping in way ahead of yourself, or you’ve been with the guy your entire life and haven’t had time to truly see what else is out there for you. Now, he’s military, and I forgive most cases of military engagements, but still I think the latter might be true in this case.I also, in general, have a policy, no matter how committed my relationships have been, no matter how long we’ve been dating, that if the girl meets a guy that she she’s genuinely interested in, and she has an opportunity to get to know him better, that she do so. All I ask is that at the end of the day, she comes back to me and tells me where I fit in her life. I really just want the people I care most about to be happy. And when it boils down to it, I want her to be happy too. Maybe it’s wrong of me to project my personal rules onto her relationship, but if she wants more from our relationship, I want her to be honest with herself and not be trapped by conventions of engagement… Anyways, I digress…I chalk it up to inexperience on both of our parts. Hers with relationships in general, and mine with feeling this way. I guess there really isn’t any immediate solution. And that honestly we just have to let it run its course and que sera, sera. In the meantime, I guess one positive is I have a nasty habit of being able to find the best in people, and I usually settle when it comes to dating. At least for now, my relationship with her will help filter some of the undesirables out :PThanks Devont, you’ve been great!______Anon:You are misguided. I do not want the “excitement”; I want her friendship. The “excitement” is a secondary condition of the friendship, and, while yes, it has me questioning our motives, I have plenty of other means to get said “excitement.” What I don’t have is another relationship quite like this one.I guess, to put it in your terms, my question is how to maintain the relationship while navigating this “excitement.”As to the quip about my future fiancé not having a friend like me, well, let’s just say when I finally settle down and have a fiancé, I would be ecstatic if my fiancé had a friend like me. Knowing that he’s there to look out for my fiancé well when I can’t/won’t be. In all honesty, one of my main considerations for going into the city with her was because I do know what happens at parties. I know, because I consider myself a mild mannered guy, and I know what happens to me when I get enough alcohol in me. I know what happens to girls when they let their guard down around a bunch of guys they don’t know who are crawling with worse motives than I. If this is what she really wants, then I want to be there for her to default to when some guy starts hitting on her. At this point, I just can’t decide if I want that for me or for her.I’m not saying I’m not in the wrong, but I am saying that this is something I would do for any other friend, male or female, who I held in similar regard. Also, I’m saying if I did have a fiancé, I would be a little more involved in her life.I’ve never understood the viewpoint that once an engagement or wedding occurs one becomes “property” of the other without regard to the other’s feelings…______Gauntlet:I must say I laughed at myself, because when I started to read that first line (due to a typo in which you spelled fly as in flaw), I thought you were taking it in a direction that truly described my feelings, and then starting in the second line, it took a turn for the worse that I didn’t particularly care for.That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m certainly not waiting to get in her pants. As illustrated in my lengthy response to Devont, this newfound lack of innocence in our relationship is what has me distressed. I’m not sure what to do with the potential that our relationship could head in that direction. I will say, I will probably give into that temptation if it presents itself. However, I will do nothing to force our relationship in that direction. Anything that happens is going to be on her terms. I do enjoy the sincerity of our relationship where we do things for the sake of the other without ever expecting anything back. Beyond anything else, I want that to remain at the core of our relationship.I will also say, I’m guilty of exaggerating. I believe I said next to best friends in a matter of weeks, and never asserted we became best friends in weeks. The point of it was we were simply getting along great. Again, I left out many a detail for the sake of conciseness.Further, you’ll have to forgive my laxness to the entire situation when I refer to her as “chica.” It’s an American bastardization of the Spanish, and has simply come to be an endearing term for a girl. My apologies for the mix ups.Lastly, she has no set date for her wedding. She still has 2 years of schooling left, and as she describes is still a ways off from getting married. I can’t say if I’d wish for her to cheat on her fiancé. It certainly won’t happen now, we’re both too cautious for that. But her fiancé means nothing to me, and I can’t accurately factor his emotions into this equation until I meet him. Her emotions, however, are important to me, and I trust her enough to be capable of rational thought and doing what’s best for her. But make no mistake, anything like this happening is a remote way off, and will be preceded with serious conversation. For now, however, I just want to figure out how we can have our relationship keep growing, no matter what happens in the next two years.Gauntlet, if my additional information has given you any new insight, I’d love to hear what you think.______IAHTHY:I respectfully beg to differ about her taking advantage of the friendship. Again, for clarity, and readability, I left a LOT of background info out, some of which has been added in my above responses to comments. Our relationship hasn’t really taken a turn (and even then just barely) until we ended up having that night 2 weeks ago.I agree that we are crossing boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed, and I know it’s not a love story and that I’m not going to end up with her. When I say love, I mean I love her in a very deep friendship way, certainly different than a romantic love, and I apologize for lacking a better word and using a word with such heavy emotional connotations.But that night did open up the possibility that there is more to than we thought there was with our relationship. I think Gauntlet was apt when he described it as playing with fire. I just question whether it’s as messed up as you say it is.And to be fair, with last week being a heavy testing week being midterms, I practically locked myself in my room and neither saw nor talked to anyone. It was fine, as it has been in the past when we’re not together. Because I keep a large and diverse group of friends, most of my friends are used to me calling on them and organizing things, that way I keep all of my work and play separate in a way that works for me. Likewise, I’m not so used to people calling on me. But she did, she texted me saying it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, we should meet up soon. And she remembered us talking about how I had an hour long presentation, and she texted me in the morning just to wish me luck on it. And it’s things like that keep me coming back, and no matter how much “distance” that gets put in the relationship, she will keep putting effort into it, and I will keep reciprocating to that effort.I know it sounds like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth when I say both that I trust her ability to make rational decisions and that her engagement is merely a convention that doesn’t reflect how she truly feels. But I firmly believe in having an overarching framework to things, I also believe in giving into hedonistic tendencies every now and again. While they don’t necessarily help you reach your long term goal, they do allow you to put things in perspective. They let you either see why you chose what you chose in the first place, or, maybe that wasn’t as good of a choice as you thought it was.Or maybe what’s truly messed up is my fondness for making mistakes. Everyone else is terrified of them, but I love mistakes. You call it a willingness to be her side guy, but to be honest, I don’t mind being other people’s mistakes, nor do I mind making mistakes. Because it turns out like this: If I end up being her mistake, she simultaneously becomes my mistake, and we both learn from the experience. We’re both the type of people to pick up and move on. However, on the odd chance that we end up not making a mistake, well then we’re getting into a whole different territory, I guess.You use those big letters to emphasize engaged, but I can’t help but reiterate that her being ENGAGED means nothing to me, for whatever reason. I was happy for her when she was happy. Now that she seems unsure, well, I’m sensitive to that. I’ve never been one to advocate staying in a relationship where one doesn’t feel it. I know it seems awfully convenient that I’m saying this while simultaneously being the fallback… But I’ve made a habit of truly getting to know people beyond labels and stereotypes. I’m not really holding out for anything, but I’m simultaneously not discounting the fact that a lot can happen in the next 2 years. I do love where our relationship is, but at the same time I’m cognizant of everything and looking for more with other people. It’s just I can’t find it.As I’ve said to everyone else, if I did know her fiancé personally, this would be a different game for me. And I think that’s one of the underlying problems here. But it’s too complicated to introduce him into the picture now, and too convenient to keep him out. I don’t want to have to consider his feelings, and she’s helping me to not consider them. But the fact of the matter is, I don’t really want to think about that, not now. I’ve acknowledged that our relationship has the possibility of reaching that. But for now, I want to keep the girl who sends me encouraging little texts throughout the day, even when I’m too busy studying to think of her. The girl who wants to hang out with me, even though I hadn’t even given her a thought in the world. I want to do this while her still being happy in her other relationships, and me in mine. But I just don’t know….Merh, well I’m getting lost in thought again. In any case, thank you all once again for being a solid source of opinions when I need bounce ideas and emotions and explanations for how I feel off of something. I apologize for the lengthy reply, but I ramble and just wanted to be fair and make sure I addressed everyone. For now, I think the general consensus is que sera, sera. I don’t think there’s any point intentionally guiding our relationship one way or the other, since I really want to preserve the coolness of a relationship that really just came out of nowhere.Further feedback is always welcomed.Thank you all so much again,-Nick.
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A
male
reader, Gauntlet  +, writes (5 March 2014):
 Here are things as they are: you are just waiting like a spider in its web for a flaw in order to have your way in your so-called "best-girl-friend" pants. You are not a genuine friend, and if she was not so inclined to play with fire, she should dump your so-called "friendship" (by the way, you say you two became "best friends" in just weeks, which means you don't have a clue about what is a real best friend).If you still have two atoms of morality in you, you'd better cut your relationship with this "chica" ("chica" meaning "little girl" in spanish, which tells a lot about how you really see her) who is about to get married. What are you expecting otherwise, her to cheat on her fiance with you just before her wedding ? Shame on you !
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reader, anonymous, writes (5 March 2014): If you don't want trouble, stay cool off your friendship. Be civil during class but don't spend time alone with her. You have to nurture love for it to grow. If you stop watering it, it will go away.But I suspect you want the excitement since you are considering taking her out for her 21st without her boyfriend there. Let's hope when you have a fiance you trust, she won't have friends like you.
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A
male
reader, devont  +, writes (5 March 2014):
 First of all... I don't think you are actually in love with this girl. I hope that comes as good news haha. I think you hold a very deep regard for her and have a special friendship, but loving someone as a wonderful friend does not mean you are IN LOVE with them. Also, when you know you can't have someone that you like, it can make you think you want them more than you actually do. But from what you have said, I think that you would be a little more anxious (for want of a better word) if you were actually completely and utterly in love with her. I think that knowing she had a fiance would be more painful, even if you are not a jealous person.If that was it, I would say, don't worry, it will fade, you will eventually find another girl you like more than her that you CAN have. However, there is an extra dimension to this... I don't really get this girl or what she wants. I'm not convinced your relationship IS as innocent as it seems. Why has she asked you to take her out on her birthday and not her fiance? And I find it a bit weird she's given you the label of 'next best guy'. I mean, you're not her 'deputy' fiance! I love my girlfriend very much and there is honestly no-one I could put as 'girl I like next best' to her.I have known my best-friend-who-is-a-girl since we were children, we get on very well and she is a brilliant person and we talk all the time... But she's not second to my girlfriend. There is NO second to my girlfriend. There is only my girlfriend and then... other people in my life who are on a different level of relationship. I wouldn't even say my MUM is second to my girlfriend, they are all very separate and different loves, there is no comparison, so there is no 'second'. If one team came first in the league for football and another was top in hockey, you wouldn't say the football team was SECOND to the hockey team, or vice versa. They are playing different games!To put you in the same 'league' of relationship as her fiance... That makes me wonder what she wants. But maybe I'm just reading too much into it. I don't really have much advice other than just let this flow until you grow out of it. You say yourself there is no obvious way out, she's going to remain your friend, she'll stay engaged and you'll still value her friendship. This will carry on for as long as you both let it. Your relationship will change when you get a girlfriend you like more than her. I'm sure it will all work out. All the best.
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