Best friends for almost a year

To continue the story ~

He told me he wasn’t ready for a relationship and although he has thought about kissing me, it never happened because we’re friends. When I spoke to other friends about him, they mentioned he felt really awkward when I told him I liked him. He though asked if we could have dinner to talk about our situation and we just called it as we’re just friends. June/July we didn’t really interact or see each other that much but it picked up in August and September. We started seeing each other more in September especially because it’s my birth month and during my birthday week I saw him every day. In October, he mentioned that he thinks he’s ready to start dating again and moving on with his life. October of 2022 was a hard month of him because that’s when his last ex broke up with him and he had a really hard time moving on from her. He said it was hard for him to start dating again because he built up a story and put her on a pedestal compared to other girls. In November and December we would still continue to see each other either in group settings or 1on1s. In December since we were hanging out in group settings, one of the other guys noticed me and started calling me hot. I would notice that he would also agree. We started doing other activites together like we would cook together. I would call him bro or dude and he would do the same by the way all through this. In January 2025, I would call us a we and he told me he liked that. We started making future plans together of what we want to do together. He also mentioned that he enjoyed coming over to my place. I’ve told him that I enjoy our time together. However, this past week has been intense. We were invited to a friends birthday party which was for a weekend and noticed he hardly interacted with me. A couple of days later on a Thursday, he mentioned to me that he has big news and will tell me during our group hangout in the night. I asked him what’s the big news and he told me he has a date with a girl that lives in another country whom he met a month ago for work. It went about that his colleagues told him if he asks her out and if she says yes, they will pay for the ticket. She said yes and apparently he’s going there next month. It is a nearby country so the time difference isn’t big and she goes to our country from time to time and he will be in her country this year in April for business. So it could work out as a long distance situation and he has mentioned her to me but I just didn’t think much of it cuz she doesn’t live in our country. As you can imagine, this was soul crushing for me and made me really sad. I don’t really know how to interact with him.