So you like someone. You’ve probably been friends with her and you guys talk. And when you do, it just seems that everyday it reassures you that what you’re feeling is love.
But you don’t know if it really is. It’s never as simple as that is it? You will never really know. So you have to get advice from some friends. Odds are they’re going to tell you “Just go for it”. Maybe that’s what you want to hear. Maybe you just wanted some sort of confirmation, as if it just became possible that you guys can actually happen because your friends think so.
Then they supplement that with seemingly equally innocent advice such as “You’ll never know until you ask” or “What’s the worst that can happen?” Then for some reason you start to build up the confidence. You start to think that it could happen.
I hate that advice. That’s not the best thing you can tell a friend. It’s a selfish move. That advice is almost an indirect “She’ll say yes” or “It will happen”. Definitely not the best thing to tell someone who doesn’t even know what they’re feeling in the first place.
Giving that advice is only good for the short term and it’s almost like an assumption that she feels the same way. There is no concern for the future.
Yeah, I understand we have to live for the here and now but we also have to do that smartly. We have to weigh the Pro and Cons.
The best advice is just to weigh what you have.
Is your current relationship, as strictly platonic friends, worth risking for a romantic relationship?
We are becoming adults. I don’t necessarily believe in love at first sight and so I think that for someone to grow feelings for someone they have to have some sort of relationship beforehand. We learn to love within the friendships we make. And so when you understand the feelings you have, you need to weigh the possibility versus the present.
The Present:
You guys are friends. You talk a lot. You hang out. You are safely and securely in the Friend Zone. I think that you can do the most good in this position. You can do quasi-relationship things and mask it as “Just friends”. It’s fun, no doubt, but the problem is that you don’t know whether or not you are more than just friends. You don’t know whether or not it’s slowly killing her that you guys aren’t official the way it’s killing you. This is the safest choice but it also is the hardest choice to make.
The Possibility:
Now, this side has two parts to it because, as aforementioned, things like this are never simple.
Yes: Let’s start with the positive. The answer we always want to hear. Finally. You can stop pretending. Finally you know. Finally you can act accordingly without any reservation. Finally you can do all those Pam-and-Jim-esque friendship/relationship things that play over and over in your head late at night. It’s a good feeling. To know that this girl is your girl. Nothing can beat that. It’s like a story book good-guy-gets-the-girl ending.
No: There’s always that possibility. The possibility that you were blinded by whatever it is that you felt. You couldn’t tell what she felt because your judgement was compromised by your own feelings. Or maybe you were too cemented in the Friend Zone (Beware it does exist. Dammit, it does). Whatever the reason, it’s over. Not just the possibility of you guys happening but also you guys as a platonic friendship. “Let’s just be friends” is a lie. It gets awkward for her and it’ll be hard for you to get over her. That’s just a generalization and I know that not all girls are like that but it does come down to that. Awkwardness. If you can somehow get passed that then there is a possibility that you guys can become friends again but that’s incredibly difficult. And there’s no guarantee that things will go back to normal. It might never be the same again.
It’s not going to necessarily be a 50/50 coin flip so you always have to feel it out. Then again you can never really know beforehand.
So from a guy’s perspective, you just have to figure out how you truly feel. Is what you currently have worth risking for what you can, hopefully, become? Do the daydreams of you and here drive you insane to the point that daydreaming about it is not enough, that you need to turn your dreams into reality?
It’s not about regretting that you’ll never know. It’s about knowing that you’ll always regret it.
Is she worth it?
