A difficult situation

[trojbi]

That’s a question for me too if a homosexual and a heterosexual male can be friends? But hopefully its just a phase.

Have you tried dating other guys

All of my closest friends are straight, stereo typically so, my fraternity brothers from college. We are all extremely close, they are my emotional support system 100% and although they don't understand it they are pretty actively interested and supportive of the gay parts of my life.

Maybe I am just lucky, in a lot of ways I know I am, but it definitely can work. It takes some maturity.

 

[trojbi]

Something rather trivial? I don’t believe my feelings for him are trivial. And if I need to end the friendship in order to prioritize my own mental and emotional wellbeing, that’s exactly what I will do. I’m not sure if you fully understood everything I said, but this guy was clearly toying with my feelings and if he was truly a “rich friendship”, he would have been understanding when I confronted him, not dismissive or defensive.

I have a ton of thoughts I will try my best to organize them in hopefully a not too rambling way.

I confessed to my best friend Jocelyn in college that I loved her after years of being her shoulder to cry on when her shitty boyfriend's were shitty, after all the signals she gave, after her sleeping in my bed all the time. I took molly for my first and only time and just confessed and she absolutely crushed me. So I really understand, I couldn't handle my emotions for weeks.

You keep saying you are fine and convicted to end the relationship here, but you're very understandably not. You are even further hurt that it's been over 10 days and he hasn't reached out to apologize. I expect he won't unless someone else convinces him to, because he is waiting for you to apologize to him.

I know you don't feel like you've done anything wrong, but it might help to try to understand why he may have reacted so poorly and still seems to be mad at you.

I find it very possible that he feels pretty betrayed by you right now. Reading your story I get the impression that he has feelings for you, but it's your point of view, it is heavily biased by the fact that you also believe that he has feelings for you. So let's set that aside for now. He told you in clear words, multiple times, that he did not have romantic feelings for you. I understand you felt differently, but sometimes we are wrong. You have completely disregarded his statements every time he's made them. He's been trying very hard to keep you from confessing and you've completely missed it.

He's known you had feelings for him for awhile, that is clear, it's possible he's tried rebuffing your advances in every ineffective way he knows how. That's what the weird girlfriend thing is, people do this all the time to direct someone's affection away from them and onto someone else. The problem is that you're gay so that's weird that he chose a girl, but do you have any other gay friends? If not that might explain it.

He's pissed because instead of listening to his words you made things extremely complicated. His reaction has been immature at best, but I feel like you need to acknowledge that you took a big leap. Maybe he does have feelings for you, but he's scared, or doesn't want to admit he might be gay. Maybe he's totally straight and loves you as a friend and doesn't want to lose you. Only he knows, you can't make that decision for him, unfortunately you can't rush him either. Are you even ok with still being friends with him if he apologizes or will you be still convinced there's something there?

Btw, I was in Jocelyn's wedding last year, our friendship did survive, but I had to realize that I made the wrong choice just hoping she'd feel the same even though she told me that she didn't, multiple times. And yes she was immature and led me on because she didn't want to lose our friendship, but that doesn't mean I didn't also make a mistake.

 

[croconiil]

I have a ton of thoughts I will try my best to organize them in hopefully a not too rambling way.

I confessed to my best friend Jocelyn in college that I loved her after years of being her shoulder to cry on when her shitty boyfriend's were shitty, after all the signals she gave, after her sleeping in my bed all the time. I took molly for my first and only time and just confessed and she absolutely crushed me. So I really understand, I couldn't handle my emotions for weeks.

You keep saying you are fine and convicted to end the relationship here, but you're very understandably not. You are even further hurt that it's been over 10 days and he hasn't reached out to apologize. I expect he won't unless someone else convinces him to, because he is waiting for you to apologize to him.

I know you don't feel like you've done anything wrong, but it might help to try to understand why he may have reacted so poorly and still seems to be mad at you.

I find it very possible that he feels pretty betrayed by you right now. Reading your story I get the impression that he has feelings for you, but it's your point of view, it is heavily biased by the fact that you also believe that he has feelings for you. So let's set that aside for now. He told you in clear words, multiple times, that he did not have romantic feelings for you. I understand you felt differently, but sometimes we are wrong. You have completely disregarded his statements every time he's made them. He's been trying very hard to keep you from confessing and you've completely missed it.

He's known you had feelings for him for awhile, that is clear, it's possible he's tried rebuffing your advances in every ineffective way he knows how. That's what the weird girlfriend thing is, people do this all the time to direct someone's affection away from them and onto someone else. The problem is that you're gay so that's weird that he chose a girl, but do you have any other gay friends? If not that might explain it.

He's pissed because instead of listening to his words you made things extremely complicated. His reaction has been immature at best, but I feel like you need to acknowledge that you took a big leap. Maybe he does have feelings for you, but he's scared, or doesn't want to admit he might be gay. Maybe he's totally straight and loves you as a friend and doesn't want to lose you. Only he knows, you can't make that decision for him, unfortunately you can't rush him either. Are you even ok with still being friends with him if he apologizes or will you be still convinced there's something there?

Btw, I was in Jocelyn's wedding last year, our friendship did survive, but I had to realize that I made the wrong choice just hoping she'd feel the same even though she told me that she didn't, multiple times. And yes she was immature and led me on because she didn't want to lose our friendship, but that doesn't mean I didn't also make a mistake.

Hey, I’m sorry to hear that you had to experience a similar painful situation with Jocelyn, I really admire and respect the fact that you were able to be friends with her after enduring such a heartbreak.

Yeah I’m definitely not fine, very much still in the healing process of this entire situation. Of course I miss him and think about him a lot, and it really sucks that it all happened in this way. I’ve let go of the idea of him apologizing for how he reacted, although it would be nice if he did, but I do understand that it was a difficult situation for him to be in as well

I don’t feel as if I did anything wrong, I just expressed my feelings for someone that I care about very deeply and that means a lot to me. In fact, I’ve been holding it in for months at the expense of my own mental health to try and be there for him, talk to him and spend time with him. But it just reached a boiling point, and I knew I needed to just cut the cord and go through with it for my own wellbeing.

He could feel betrayed that I compromised the friendship and I do understand that, but I think his reaction is what set me off and brought me to take these extreme measures of no longer speaking to him. If he was able to let me down in a nicer way and be considerate of my feelings, it would’ve been a different story. Also, he never explicitly told me he didn’t have feelings for me, he did mention girls a few times to me - but whenever we’d go out together to clubs or bars, he would never interact with anyone, he would constantly be with me or around me, even if we were with different groups he would always look at me and make eye contact. Which is what I found a bit strange (apart from some of the other comments he made, and the actions as well)

In regards to the girl he kept bringing up, he knew she had feelings for me but knew that I didn’t reciprocate because im gay. But he would still constantly make remarks about her and I, and would say things like “oh going to see your gf and get some head from her?”, “you’re dressed so smart, going on a date with your gf” etc. Even once or twice when guys approached me, he would proceed to make fun of the guys that approached me and would go like “oh are you really into that guy?” So all of this led me to believe it came from a place of jealousy in a way. But you could be right, maybe he was just deflecting and wanted me to entertain the possibility of others. But everytime I would interact with people, he would always be waiting for me to finish the conversation and would just hang around.

I feel like at this point, based on everything that happened with us, sure I could be over romanticizing things.. but this is the first time I’ve ever had a straight guy act this way with me. And for some reason, I do feel that he feels a certain way with me that he doesn’t feel with a lot of other people. Not sure if it’s romantic or platonic anymore but I’m certain that the connection we had was more than just two bros hanging out.

I agree with you and I am not playing the high horse at all, and I don’t want to undermine what he must be dealing with in this situation either. But I just think if he really did suspect I had feelings for him, he shouldn’t have matched the energy I was providing and say strange things like to “think of him mid-smash” it was just a bit misleading. I will always care for him and I really hope that I didn’t put him in a horrible position in this entire thing - but I just really needed to prioritize myself

 

[shalimar]

@trojbi, is it possible you're projecting your own experience onto this situation? OP's first two posts, at least to me – don't line up with your reading of it. I don't think he acted in bad faith or with the goal of trying to bed him, he shared that he felt confused about their unusual friend dynamic, had developed feelings for him, and felt that they needed to address it. I don't see any mistake there.

 

[johndoeisready]

I don’t have much to add but just wanted to say I appreciate you all for being so vulnerable and honest here.

 

[trojbi]

@trojbi, is it possible you're projecting your own experience onto this situation? OP's first two posts, at least to me – don't line up with your reading of it. I don't think he acted in bad faith or with the goal of trying to bed him, he shared that he felt confused about their unusual friend dynamic, had developed feelings for him, and felt that they needed to address it. I don't see any mistake there.

That’s a fair assessment because I was kind of on purpose. I was less trying to give a 100% accurate parallel to what is going on and more trying to allude to it being more complicated than 1 person revealing their feelings and the other arbitrarily reacting poorly.

And I certainly don’t want to characterize wanting to have a mature adult conversation about your feelings about someone as a “mistake”. I mean written out like that how could that ever be a mistake, being mature and adult, but I can’t help but feel it was unwise to broach.

I was attempting to give a bit of advice so I didn’t go into my honest feelings about the situation in my first comment. I feel like from what has been said that this guy is an emotionally immature young man who has homosexual feelings for his best friend, but is no where close to ready to acknowledge that to himself let alone admit that out loud to anyone else.

I’ve been with a lot of deeply closeted “straight” guys some of them married in my early 20s and this is precisely when is it unwise to be upfront and honest about your feelings, unfortunately.

 

[trojbi]

I don’t feel as if I did anything wrong, I just expressed my feelings for someone that I care about very deeply and that means a lot to me. In fact, I’ve been holding it in for months at the expense of my own mental health to try and be there for him, talk to him and spend time with him. But it just reached a boiling point, and I knew I needed to just cut the cord and go through with it for my own wellbeing.

I don’t want you to feel like you did anything wrong to be clear, I don’t think you did. I just know from my experience that it’s nearly impossible to get out of your own head and consider the other person’s point of view. Especially when you’re, fairly, feeling kinda bad for yourself.

I wanted to challenge you to consider ways you might both think each other wronged you or both believe you acted entirely rationally.

That said, no I don’t think you’re imagining things. I didn’t say it intentionally because the options aren’t ideal, it sounds like you at this point need to address it and I don’t think that’s possible for him. You’ve tried multiple times and he just turns into a child and calls you stupid.

He’s offered you the status quo again because that’s likely all he’s capable of. It sounds like that’s the last thing you want right now. Maybe if you give yourself some space and time away from him you might come to a different conclusion though.

 

[Stephenmass]

I don't think you misread him at all tbh. From what I read from your original post, it seemed pretty clear to me that he was interested in you. To toss out another perspective here, to everyone else he identifies as straight. It seems relatively clear to me he was interested. If he has NO m2m experiences at all, it could be that he simply wasn't ready for you to show a definite interest in him. It freaked him out kind of thing. I don't think you pushed him per se, but to him he perhaps thought he could go through with it and then when actually confronted with it (I don't think you were aggressive in your approach or anything) he freaked. He responded the only way his freaked out self could, with putting it back on you. Simply put, he just isn't ready even though as I've said you didn't misread his signals. I say all the time out here, especially with straight guys, to respect their space. You did that. He kind of came into your space and did and said things that clearly showed interest. The only way he knew how to respond to you when confronted (confronted makes it sound like you did something wrong and I don't think you did) with it, was to push you away with words. Simply put, he clearly isn't ready to allow himself to go somewhere where he seems to want to go, but is fearful of his own feelings and confusion.

If the friendship is a good one, it may be worth it to remain simply friends. I'm not sure I would close off all the doors to him as you have. Try to remember (most of us go through this) how difficult it was for even you to fully accept who you are. Seems to me he hasn't fully accepted himself yet.

 

[croconiil]

I don't think you misread him at all tbh. From what I read from your original post, it seemed pretty clear to me that he was interested in you. To toss out another perspective here, to everyone else he identifies as straight. It seems relatively clear to me he was interested. If he has NO m2m experiences at all, it could be that he simply wasn't ready for you to show a definite interest in him. It freaked him out kind of thing. I don't think you pushed him per se, but to him he perhaps thought he could go through with it and then when actually confronted with it (I don't think you were aggressive in your approach or anything) he freaked. He responded the only way his freaked out self could, with putting it back on you. Simply put, he just isn't ready even though as I've said you didn't misread his signals. I say all the time out here, especially with straight guys, to respect their space. You did that. He kind of came into your space and did and said things that clearly showed interest. The only way he knew how to respond to you when confronted (confronted makes it sound like you did something wrong and I don't think you did) with it, was to push you away with words. Simply put, he clearly isn't ready to allow himself to go somewhere where he seems to want to go, but is fearful of his own feelings and confusion.

If the friendship is a good one, it may be worth it to remain simply friends. I'm not sure I would close off all the doors to him as you have. Try to remember (most of us go through this) how difficult it was for even you to fully accept who you are. Seems to me he hasn't fully accepted himself yet.

Yeah, I don’t really believe that I read into things because a lot of the signs were deliberately there and noticeable to others who saw us interact as well. I don’t think he has any M2M experiences, genuinely it feels like he’s not accepted that part of himself yet and whenever people ask him about his sexuality he gets quite defensive in a way that most straight guys don’t. I do think that he did freak out though because if there really wasn’t anything more there from his end, he would’ve just let me down gently — like a normal friend would. I don’t think there would’ve been as much defensiveness in his attitude.

And to reply to the point you mentioned about him coming into my space, that’s literally what it was. He very much knew I was queer, and from the get go I did ask him if he was straight and he said yes. So I never allowed myself to get too close to him, but then in recent months whenever we would bump into each other at places, he’d make it a point to come and spend time with me and talk to me. So after that, we started to get closer and go to things together.

But anyways, it’s been 3 weeks now and we still haven’t spoken to each other. I’m not sure what’s going on in his head, but there’s not been any initiative from him to reach out and speak to me. The friendship was good, and we really enjoyed the time we spent together. Hopefully in the future we would be able to go back to being friends again.. although I worry it will never go back to being the way it was, simply because maybe after I confessed my feelings to him, there will be a hesitation to get close from either of our ends.

 

[grumpykit]

I've been in your shoes.

Constant touching, smiling at each other, feeling like all the world disappears. To a point some teachers had to comment that it's unhealthy for two males to act so (in a homophobic country).
Said that I was his publicly, which raised a lot of eyebrows and commentary.

But the pull was so strong, it's like you're drunk from breathing each other, even without alcohol.

"Be a best man on my wedding", "be a godfather of my children", "let's fuck a girl together".

Maybe if I got him drunk enough for that 3some things would've been different.
But I told him I loved him instead. Cue shitstorm.

Last time I saw him was 5 years later during festivities, he was shitfaced, smooching some dude's neck and then punching him, while his wife's parents tried to pull them apart.

Still loved him, for more than a decade.
..
Spain has so many beautiful people, and you are young. Don't let yourself be gaslit or tripped into guilt. You said your peace, now it's time to make place for someone who'll match your vibe without accusations.

 

[croconiil]

Wow he was married and smooching up with some other dude? Thats crazy! In front of his wife too… that must’ve been such a crazy experience for you to witness. I wonder why he started to punch him as well?

Unfortunately I don’t live in Spain, I live in the Middle East and I’m using VPN, so I’m also in a homophobic country :/ but you’re right and honestly, someone that is meant for me shouldn’t be leaving me this confused. I’m sure I’ll see him as well a few years down the line making out with some dude somewhere

I've been in your shoes.

Constant touching, smiling at each other, feeling like all the world disappears. To a point some teachers had to comment that it's unhealthy for two males to act so (in a homophobic country).
Said that I was his publicly, which raised a lot of eyebrows and commentary.

But the pull was so strong, it's like you're drunk from breathing each other, even without alcohol.

"Be a best man on my wedding", "be a godfather of my children", "let's fuck a girl together".

Maybe if I got him drunk enough for that 3some things would've been different.
But I told him I loved him instead. Cue shitstorm.

Last time I saw him was 5 years later during festivities, he was shitfaced, smooching some dude's neck and then punching him, while his wife's parents tried to pull them apart.

Still loved him, for more than a decade.
..
Spain has so many beautiful people, and you are young. Don't let yourself be gaslit or tripped into guilt. You said your peace, now it's time to make place for someone who'll match your vibe without accusations.

 

[grumpykit]

Wow he was married and smooching up with some other dude? Thats crazy! In front of his wife too… that must’ve been such a crazy experience for you to witness. I wonder why he started to punch him as well?

Unfortunately I don’t live in Spain, I live in the Middle East and I’m using VPN, so I’m also in a homophobic country :/ but you’re right and honestly, someone that is meant for me shouldn’t be leaving me this confused. I’m sure I’ll see him as well a few years down the line making out with some dude somewhere

It was a public celebration, so picture a crowd of thousand people dancing tightly packed on a street.
He looked very drunk, kept hugging the other dude, rubbing foreheads and then sloppily kissing his ear and neck.

So that other dude tried pulling away, failed, and then hit my dude fist to temple. They started throwing punches and soon wife's parents rushed in, trying to stop the fight. I'm not sure if they saw the kiss, and if they discard it to being so drunk. They haven't divorced yet, as far as I know, and even had a daughter some years later.

And the worst thing, I would probably throw everything and run to him if he called even for a chance of a taste of those feelings. Never felt so safe, happy and cared for, than when I was in his arms.