Texting a friend I'm interested in

I presume you’re past the romantic feelings/attraction you once had for him. He’s your friend. Text him you would any other friend. What exactly are you worried about?

You can not be friends with someone you have romantic feelings for.

He’s told you how he feels & he’s not feeling it.

Find some one else to hang out with. The longer you hang & pine after Mr. No Thanks, the longer it will be until you find Mr. Yes…

It seems your justifying to yourself by giving reasons as to why it’s perfectly ok to keep just texting him despite him saying no to any kind of romantic angle.

From your side its frndship coupled with love. From his side vanilla friendship. So how can it be ok to keep texting him a lot knowing that he knows you feel much more than him?

Doesnt really matter how you justify abundant texting from your side. but he will feel your constantly texting him bec your still interested in him and he may find that a nuisance and step away.

So i think you should cut way back from your texting and give both some breathing space. You need some time away anyways to get over your one sided feelings for him. Those dont go away instantly.

Keep in touch if he texts you if thats what you want. But please dont kid yourself. You need time away from him to get over him and mentally move on. By being in constant touch, thats not gonna happen and every warm caring gesture on his part will you false hope and hamper your moving on process.

So take time off this friendship for the present.

But yeah, the reason why I barely text him is exactly that: I don’t want to come across as “the girl who got rejected but still keeps ‘trying’.” And that was precisely my original question. Ever since he told me he doesn’t feel the same for me, I felt like texting him was “chasing,” which is why I don’t do it much.

And that was my question. Is it actually chasing? Don’t friends just text each other? Or does him knowing I like him change this?

Ok, how? By remaining friends?

You’re making this much harder than it needs to be. What makes you believe there are any “rules” for a situation like this?? There aren’t. And you can text your BF or a friend any time you want, no rules about that either.

Straight up… it appears that half of you knows perfectly well that any more than the occasional text will make you look like the girl who still likes him more than he likes her and is secretly hoping he’ll change his mind – because at this level of overthinking, you are that girl. And half of you wants to pretend in the most elaborately causal way it’s no big deal to text him whenever you want and wants us to give permission to do that. Can you see that this is a game of hide and seek you’re playing in your head with yourself??

The best advice is to back off and give this space. You’re doing yourself a disservice by hanging on to him as a “friend” when you still have feelings for him. Is it to protect a bruised ego? The others are right. You cannot be “just friends” with someone you are harboring romantic feelings for, it’s just not possible. It’s awkward on both sides.

But you’ve made it clear you don’t want to hear the best advice because you aren’t going to let go. OK. You are free to make that choice. But why are you texting him at all, what is it you have to say? Just casual random stuff? Or are you asking to see him? You say you already decided to just text him occasionally. So what’s wrong with that course of action now, why are you second guessing yourself?

Anyway, my question is… We all know chasing a guy is the worst thing one could possibly do. That would include texting him more than he texts you. But when it comes to a friend, you don’t give a crap who texts who more often. You see something you want to show them, you text it to them. You want to say something, you text them.

Please read above..ur words. If thats not constant and abundant texting, then what is?

Anywys based on your posts its obvious you dont want to stop texting him. Its quite ok if you dont actually. you must do what you think and feel is right. Noone can tell you otherwise unless you urself are convinced.

Tammy:
“Please read above..ur words. If thats not constant and abundant texting, then what is?”
Like I said to Angie, that’s what I WANTED to do, because that’s what friends do. That was thought process. Obviously I like talking to him, so I wanted to do like a friend and text whenever I felt like.

But I’m not “just” a friend, huh? If I were to text like a normal friend, it would be chasing.

If you really want to be friends with him at some point, I want to tell you a cautionary tale from when I was on his side of things, and I had a guy friend who was you in this situation.

I went on a few dates with a guy that went well but I wasn’t feeling it romantically. I was honest about it and he asked if I wanted to stay friends. I liked him as a person so I said yes. We started building a friendship and hung out probably once every month or two over a couple years. He initiated more often than me but it wasn’t a problem. I said I couldn’t hang out when I was busy and he seemed fine when that was the case, like a normal friend about it. A long while later, it started becoming clear that he’d never fully moved on and was starting to try to position our platonic hangouts as dates. I kept the boundaries very clear so there was no confusion, but he hung on to hope anyway and kept indirectly pushing and forcing things. I finally needed to confront him. He said I’d never led him on or shown any indication in growing things into more than a friendship, but it had been so long ago that I rejected him that he thought if he waited it out I’d be interested again.

This blew up our friendship totally because I couldn’t ever trust him again! He was not honest with me even though I was with him, did not respect me, and had an agenda that whole time. And who wants to be friends with someone they can’t trust?? If he’d been honest and said at some point he was having feelings and wanted a bit of space, I’d have understood and gladly given it to him and been happy to reconnect as friends again once he was ready. Doing it the way he did, similar to what you’re doing, made it so we’re social media acquaintances who never actually speak, and that’s that. And it wasted 2 years of his time.

So think about how you’d feel if someone was doing this to you. The answer to the question you’re asking about “rules” is this: it isn’t that there are actually dating rules or dating versus friendship rules. It is that there are healthy boundaries in different types of relationships and interactions that are agreed upon by both people. These can vary from person to person because people are different, but there are also some cultural norms influencing expectations (which can create some of the gendered roles). If you ignore those boundaries with a person, then you are not respecting another person, you are not building trust, and if they want a healthy relationship with you (whether that’s platonic or romantic), they will choose not to stick around if they feel uncomfortable because their boundaries are not being respected.

I didn’t know all of this when I was in school either, so it’s good you’re asking the questions and thinking about all this. Not being ready to hear the answers to the questions you’re asking is a bit of a cop out, so I hope this gives you some good food for thought.

What’s going to happen when he finds a girl he’s interested in & starts bringing her around?

Elle – that’s a good question. Remaining friends with someone who didn’t return your romantic feelings can protect your ego in that you don’t feel entirely rejected, depending on the degree you felt humiliated or embarrassed when you revealed your feelings and he told you he didn’t feel the same. It’s like if you were carrying your lunch tray in a crowded cafeteria and you tripped and fell and the tray’s contents spilled everywhere. Then everyone is looking at you. If that felt very embarrassing you’d get up fast and quickly clean up the mess and then try to act like nothing happened. If you didn’t care, you might stand there and laugh or curtsy or something like that and then laugh with others in the room about it.

I’ve done what you’re doing. Put my heart on the line and got it handed back to me and then said oh, never mind, we’re still friends and made a show of being friends even though I was embarrassed and disappointed and wanted to just run away to hide. Sticking around and making an elaborate show of being such good, casual friends soothed my ego.

Angie — that’s something to think about for sure. Thanks for sharing.

Tammy — “at least have some respect for yourself,” that is so true.