< PREVIOUS LETTER   ||   NEXT LETTER >
 

Dear Breakup Girl,

I know you've heard this one before, but I'm in love with my best friend. We met at school and have been friends for about five years. Since day one, everyone has assumed that "Jay" and I were a couple, which we have never been. Our friends think it. (Some guys wouldn't go out with me because they said I was "Jay's property.") Strangers think it. (The checkout lady at WalMart asked us how long we had been married, and we'd only known each other about a month at that point.) Our families aren't sure what to think about our friendship at all.

About two years into the friendship, I told him how I felt. I wasn't ever going to tell him because I knew that he didn't return my feelings and that it was useless to try. But he kind of forced my hand. He was trying to get back together with his ex-girlfriend who was my closest female friend at the time. She knew how I felt about him and told me she had no more interest in him, so I was upset when they hooked up again, feeling more betrayed by her than anything. Jay asked why I was upset, and I told him. We yelled and screamed and cried on each other's shoulder for hours. We didn't really speak for four months after that. I just had to get some distance from him to get over it, over him. He still doesn't understand that. He says I ran out on him and our friendship and that he'll never forgive me for that.

Anyway, I did get over him. I met someone else and fell in love. Of course, it ended badly, and I was kind of an emotional wreck over this other guy for about a year. Jay and I had started speaking again and he had moved on to other girlfriends. We'd all hang out, and things were fine. My feelings towards Jay were very platonic, and everything was perfect. Our friendship was stronger than ever.

Then Jay went to Europe for a year on an exchange program. I really missed him, and somewhere along the line I started to get a crush on him. I started thinking about all of his good qualities and what a great guy he really is. I rationalized that I was only crushing on him because it was safe -- he was on another continent -- and because I was lonely. (I hadn't gone out with anyone since the breakup with the other guy over a year before.) I thought as soon as Jay got back in the country, everything would get back to way it was before he left. He would be his annoying old self again and that would squash the crush.

Well, he got back this summer, and in a month's time, I had completely fallen for him again. We were really acting the couple after he got back. All of our friends were very, very confused. I was very confused because he was acting differently towards me. He was being physically affectionate in public, something he had never done before. If I had tried to put my arm around him or put my head on his shoulder before, he would have just shoved me away. But now he was instigating this behavior. So I asked him about it. He said that it meant nothing, that he had just missed me a lot the year he was gone and that I was his "buddy." I hate that word.

He was also getting a little bit more affectionate in private. We've always slept in the same bed (when we didn't have significant others -- I practically lived in his dorm room for a while at school) and we've always slept spooned up together, but that was it. No fooling around. (OK, we kissed once four years ago, but that was it.) But then Jay started sleeping with his hand on my breast. It would just sort of end up there. And I knew it was just because he's a guy and there's a breast in groping distance. So I put a stop to it. I told him that it was making me "too comfortable," to use the phrase he came up with when I made him "too comfortable" sleeping topless.

So anyway, Jay was home from Europe for about a month and half. Then he got a job 300 miles away and moved. I went with his sister (who is one of my closest friends and wants me to marry Jay) to visit him. We, of course, slept in the same bed and this time something happened. By 90210 standards it wasn't much, but for us it was fooling around. It crossed a lot of lines in our friendship. We talked about it briefly and said it shouldn't happen again.

I know I need to talk to him about my feelings for him, but I'm scared to. He's become so unfeeling and cold since he got back from Europe. He says that showing emotions makes you weak. Well, I happen to think that showing emotion is healthy and normal, but, because he's being like that, I don't feel I can talk to him at all. And I'm scared he's going to get mad at me. He tends to talk me out of my feelings, and I'm having to work on accepting that I have a right to my feelings just because they are mine. Doesn't matter that he doesn't return them. But then again, I'm not sure that he doesn't return them. He's so repressed I don't know how he feels about anything.

He had several casual relationships while he was away, and he still talks about those girls to me. And this upsets me somewhat but I don't let on. It makes me feel quite invisible sometimes, but I just don't know how to tell him. I guess I am kind of OK with him and these girls because I know that he will never get serious with them. He runs at the first sign of getting serious. He has actually said that he plans to get married when he's 32. (He's 24 now.) But until then, he's just going to play the field.

I am trying to get over him and keep this friendship. But I honestly don't think we've got much friendship left at this point. If I get upset about him and other girls and he won't open up about anything, what is left? I know he has his faults, more than I can count, but he is the best person I know. He makes me laugh harder than anyone. Hell, he even went with me to the OB/GYN. We call each other our "soul mate" and "twin." I want to know this man when we're 80. I can't explain it. I know I should move on, but I just can't. I date other guys, but I just can't get serious about any of them. I kind of feel that I shouldn't date at all because it's not fair to the other guys because my feelings are otherwise engaged. I just don't want to hurt anyone.

I just don't know what to do to get over him. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

--L.

Dear L,

To be fair, I'm pretty sure the Wal-Mart lady thought you were married on account of everyone's married at Wal-Mart. But other than that, my, my, my! With "friends" like these, who needs boyfriends?

Sweetie, of course you're stuck, of course you're bereft. You said it yourself: "What is left?" Nothing, except the intense fluorescent residue of someone who, really, hasn't ventured farther away than groping distance for five years. The friendship hurts; the more-than-friends stalls -- you can't deal with the dish or the spoon. Not too comfortable, huh?

So yeah, this is a biggie. But you really do, much as it smarts -- much as you'll feel like you're hopping on one foot -- need to start venturing to the doc and the store and the bed alone. To say, "Actually, I need some space and time apart." To pull back from this groping in the past.

And in the meantime, yeah, maybe you don't feel like dating, yet. Maybe you don't feel LIKElike for someone else, yet. That's fine. But there's not going to be some sudden loud magic "Attention, shoppers!" announcement signaling your return to the market. Don't wait for that. Nor will -- or should -- the next guy you date necessarily be the guy holding the soulmate rain check. If he's not, um, your other twin, that just means the "click" wasn't included. Next!

Take your time, keep your distance. Know that as close and tight and constant as you two have been, you, L., are paying more than you should be for what you're getting. What this shopper needs to find is someone who's not inclined to shove you away or pull his feelings inside. Someone who talks to you about your feelings, not out of them. Someone who talks about only one girl hint: begins with "L"). Grope -- even in darkness and discomfort -- for that.

Love,
Breakup Girl

< PREVIOUS LETTER   ||   NEXT LETTER >