JustFriends

I've known this girl for almost a year now, but fate just seems to be keeping us apart. I'll try and lay-out everything I think will help you understand the whole situation, but it'll be long as hell, so I apologize in advance. I noticed this girl in my English class last year - beautiful, smart, great personality, nice, well-liked, the works), and I knew from the beginning that she was way out of my league (I've always been pretty shy, quiet, reserved; I have absolutely no experience with girls, and I'm not exactly the best looking guy in the world - I'm not trying to complain about myself, I'm just painting a picture). Oh, and she also always seemed a little shy to me too, but I guess it could just be my imagination. Anyway, by chance I met her in the hall one day and talked with her. After that first meeting, I started meeting her at her locker every now and then and we would talk a little bit. It was a gutsy move for me, as I had never done anything like just go randomly talk to a girl I barely knew at her locker one day, and the reason I did it was because we didn't have any other classes together, and in English we sat at opposite sides of the room. I figured it was just too easy for us to never talk to each other again. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have kept talking with her. I was horrible at making conversation, but blinded by my optimism, I didn't realize how hard it'd keep getting. The whole experience taught me a hard lesson: I was horrible at making conversation, and the awkward silences that existed between us didn't make for any good impressions. But I was persistent (foolishly so, the more I think about it). As time went on I fell harder and harder for her, but by the time summer came and went, she seemed as uninterested as ever, and the old problems between us getting to know each other crept right back up again. I was convinced that my problem was our lack of shared classes, and since I never sat by her, the only opportunity for conversation were the busy couple of minutes between classes. To make things harder, I would always have to go out of my way to find her and start a conversation, something I didn't exactly like to do but always did, because there was simply no other way to talk with her, and I would have drifted out of the picture faster than you can say 'what's his name again?' I decided that if I invited her to Homecoming, maybe we'd get a chance to finally break the ice. I had never been to a school dance at this point, much less asked a girl to anything at all. It wasn't easy, but I finally asked her, albeit fully expecting her to give me some kind of excuse for not going. She said she'd get back to me. I took that as a definite no, and I'll admit that I was sad, but it wasn't that bad since I didn't have my hopes up too high to begin with, and it's wasn't like I could blame her - I'd probably say the same thing if I were her. Later a friend of mine asked me what happened, and since we'd always laugh and joke with each other about our terrible luck with the ladies, he said something like, "Well, cheer-up, man. It could be worse - she could've said no before you even asked!", and laughing along with him, I think I said something like, "Yeah, 'I'll get back to you', what's that supposed to mean?" It was then that I saw her further down the hall. She was with a group of other people, talking, but when I looked up she was staring dead at us. It was fairly noisy in that hallway, and I have no idea how loud my friend and I were talking, not to mention the fact that it looked like she had been talking with a bunch of other people at the time, but I think she might've heard us. I have no way of knowing for sure. It might've just been a coincidence that our eyes met, but who knows? The next week I saw her again and, not expecting her to say anything about Homecoming, said hi, when suddenly she said that she'd be happy to go with me if the offer was still open. I said "sure, of course it is" and that day I was king of the world. It only hit me later that she might have only said yes because she heard my friend and I joking around in the hall, but there was absolutely no way for me to know, so I tried to not worry about it. I tried to stay optimistic until the dance, which wasn't easy to do considering what people kept telling me: "How the hell did you manage to get her as you're date? She's the prettiest girl in our class.", "You'd better know how to treat her right, because there's a million other guys waiting in line that would kill to go with her.", "You lucky son-of-a- * * * * *.", etc. Since I was old enough to drive I agreed to take myself, my date, a friend, and his date all over to dinner and then to the dance. Someone warned me that Homecoming was gonna suck, considering the two of us couldn't hold a decent conversation with each other, and the night would turn out to be a disaster. I should've listened. That night I picked her up. Her parents wanted to meet me, and after they did, I could tell she was in a hurry to get the hell out of there (someone would later point out to me that she obviously didn't want her parents to take any pictures). On the way to pick up the others, we had a good chat in the car. I thought it was a good sign of things to come. God, was I wrong. After the four of us set-off for the restaurant, the conversation quickly died down. The silence was only interrupted by periodic sparks of someone saying something random. This would set the tone for the rest of the evening. The restaurant was no different. I tried my damndest over and over to start up a conversation, but all my attempts failed miserably, and the four of us kept slipping back into this uneasiness. At the dance, we arrived too early and ended up wandering around, looking for people we knew for about half an hour. We killed another forty-five minutes by standing in line to have our pictures taken. The whole time I was dying inside, because here I was with the girl of my dreams, looking more incredible than ever, hours to ourselves', and I couldn't do anything. Any other guy would've used this golden opportunity to sweep her off her feet, but not me. I wasn't a smooth operator. I was no ladies man. I was just a headstrong fool that bit-off more than he could chew. Probably the worst thing of all was knowing that she deserved better than this. I could tell that she was nervous too and was trying to make an effort, but nothing worked. She made the best of the situation, but I should've been better prepared. I could tell she was bored, anxious, and dying to have gone with someone else, and it killed me, especially since no matter how hard I tried nothing seemed to change. I really liked this girl, and she didn't deserve to have gone through that. I'd see her meet people she knew, and talk with other guys she knew, hug still others, and then she'd be stuck with me. She kept excusing herself to go to the bathroom or to get something from her purse, but I knew she was just trying to put some gaps in the awkwardness. A far as dancing went, she told me that she really wasn't much of a dancer (someone else had told me that they heard her say that she didn't really like dances anyway). So there I was, unable to show her a good time to begin with, but to make matters worse, we were at a place she already hated! I didn't know the first thing about dancing (and yes, I know, all of you are saying to yourselves: "Then what the hell were doing at a dance?" That's a good question...) I excused myself to go to the bathroom at one point. When I came back, they were playing the first slow song of the night. I looked for my date and saw her sitting down at a nearby table. To me, she looked sick; she was slightly bent over, with her hand on her forehead. I asked her if she was alright, and she said yes, so I thought that it must've been my imagination. I asked her if she wanted to dance, and she said sure. We placed our arms around each other and began to sway to the music, but about two seconds into it, she let go of me and quickly ran-off to the bathroom. As you can imagine, I thought that it was me at first, but I realized that maybe I hadn't been imagining her being sick after all. I waited for her when she got out and I asked if she was ok. She nodded yes but was caught-up by a group of girls all wanting to take some pictures with her. As they all went off I stayed behind because I wanted to talk her, but somehow she had disappeared into the bathroom again, and in that crowded area people were asking me what had happened with her. I told them that I thought she was sick, and another girl coming out told me that indeed she was. After a long time I started walking around, and I finally saw her sitting at the same table. Once again I asked her how she was feeling, and she told me that she was sick to her stomach and had a headache. I offered to take her home but she refused, and kept apologizing. I told her that she didn't need to be sorry about anything, and I sat down next to her. She kept insisting that I go enjoy myself and dance with some other people. I told her that I really wasn't much of a dancer anyway, and that I didn't mind just sitting there talking. I could tell that she thought that she had somehow ruined my night, but all I wanted was to be with her anyway, and to be honest I couldn't care less whether we were out there dancing or not. She just seemed so sad that now I feel like me having stayed there and not going off somewhere else only made her feel worse. At the time I didn't think about that. I didn't want to leave her there all by herself, alone. It just didn't seem right. Of course we barely talked the rest of the night. People later would tell me what a bad date I was for making my date sit out like that. I know it may have looked bad form the outside, especially since we were the only ones sitting off to the side. We sat next to each other for the rest of the night. I'd ask her if she needed anything from time to time. She'd talk a little bit with other girls that came up and asked her what was wrong as I sat kept her company. The dance finally ended and we left. I felt horrible then (and still do) about the terrible time I know she must have had that night. She kept apologizing on the way back, but the truth is, I came there with her, and for me, I still got to spend the evening with her, something that I know will never happen again. As I walked her to her door she was one step ahead of me - I could tell she was in a hurry to get inside. She apologized once more, and gracefully (albeit quickly) made her way in. Sorry I ended up writing my life story, but I felt like I needed to get all the necessary details in there. I don't know if I did the right thing by staying with her all night. I wish I could turn back time and forget about asking her, so she wouldn't have had to go though the embarrassment of sitting out an entire dance like that. I guess what I want to know is: Should I keep trying to maintain my measly, barely tangible relationship with this girl, or should I just stop trying so hard? If I keep trying, things will be like they always were: tense, awkward, and nothing will change. But if I stop trying, we'll easily drift so far apart that we'll never meet face-to-face again in the bustle of everyday life. Sometimes I think that our my excuses for conversation are better than never talking to her again. But on the other hand I know she'll be free to meet a great guy that can do all the things I was never able to do, so maybe it's better I let fate do what it may... Anyway, I'm kind of at a loss here and don't know what to do...this whole thing has at least put me off going to any more dances for a while I really needed to get this off my chest, and once again sorry about the space I took; I don't actually expect anybody to read the whole thing. Best Wishes.

I understand that you don't want to change your personality, but the idea that initiating conversation, etc. with women is wrong just isn't true, at least in most sistuations. I know that me saying that probably won't change the way you feel about it, but if you just take a step back you'll see that objectively, if you're intentions aren't bad, then there's nothing wrong with approaching women you don't know. The only thing I can say is that the more you try it, the more you'll realize that it's not something bad at all.

although it's probably easier said than done, just going up to her and asking her thereby getting it over with really is the best way to do these sorts of things. what's worked for me in the past is to not think at all about what it's going to be like, what i'm going to say, what she might say, etc., and just plunging into the situation. i think that would force you to instinctually deal with the situation at hand, and everything would happen much more naturally. I'm not saying you'll necessarily fell any different right before you're about to talk to her, but if at thagt moment you jus shut your mind off and stop thinking about anything and everything and just take the plunge when it seems like you can't, you'll find that it wasn't so hard afterall and everything will go much more smoothly.

yeah, dude go for it. if you don't try then you'll never know what might've happened and you'll probably regret not taking the risk.

Man, I can relate. your situation is almost word-for-word what I went through. If my experience has taught me anything, it's that if two people don't find that they click right away, then they look for compatibility elsewhere, and you can't just make people like you. If she used to be shy but has started talking with other guys way more than she ever did with you (like what happened in my case), then you're better off trying to forget about her and move on, because it's not going to work and you'll save yourself a lot of suffereing in the long run. Right now you'd have to go out of your way to talk with this girl in a different setting and/or overcome the apparant barrier you already have between you verbally. If these things didn't just happen naturally to begin with, then it's no use trying to fix them now.

thanks, crazy300; i'll keep that in mind!

thanks, again!

i really appreciate all your help, guys. you really gave me some good advice, so i feel like i don't need this post up here anymore. thanks again! God bless!