Hi, I've been lurking on enotalone.com for sometime now, and thought it was finally time for me to post my own personal dilemma.
For the past few months, I have been involved with a colleague. There was a strong, mutual attraction, and our personalities seemed to click. While neither of us ever initiated a conversation spelling out the direction of our relationship, it was obvious that we were moving towards becoming more than friends. I always felt comfortable around him, and appreciated his advice and encouragement. I have known him for only a year, but feel like I have known him forever. Even though we work together, we talk on the phone (outside of work) several times a day. We talk about everything; I felt comfortable talking to him about almost anything. He's given advice, sometimes not what I wanted to hear. Other times he gives me encouragement when I needed. And I do the same for him. Like I said before, we talk frequently every day. He calls me when he's on his way to band practice, on his way home from practice, on his way to and from the store, etc. - you get the picture. In fact when he band's song was first played on the radio, who did he call, screaming and hollering? Me. I wondered what the meant that I was the first person he called at such a big moment in his life.
On that side of things, everything seemed to be okay. However, it always bothered me that we had only gone out -- on an official date -- a few times in all the months we had known each other. He said that being in the band takes up a lot of his time, but I had thought that if he definitely wanted to pursue a romantic relationship with me, he would have found the time. I was confused weighing that against the other aspects of our friendship. I really believe it was going somewhere, not necessarily at the pace I would have liked, but it was moving. It was obvious to our colleagues how he treated me versus how he treated the other women in the office. He would call me before I got to work to ask me what I wanted for breakfast, and then made a point of remembering my favorite foods. A few weeks ago, I came to work with a terrible cold, and he brought me some chicken noodle soup for lunch. I did't think that a guy would do that for just *anybody*.
Well, last week, out of the blue he tells me that he wants to be "just friends" while we're at lunch. I was floored. Rather than fall to pieces, I held myself together and told him I was okay with it...although I wasn't. I asked him outright if perhaps he was seeing another woman, and he told me there was no one else. He said that he hopes to get married within the next 2 years, and that he valued my friendship too much to get involved and risk losing a friend if our relationship ever went south.
What makes matters worse is even though he spewed the "just friends" rhetoric, he's still calling, flirting and acting as if we are "more than friends." If another male in the office comes by my desk or crosses my path, my "just friend" gets "territorial" and has an awful lot to say about it.
At this point, I am confused and devestated. I can't bear to think of him in a relationship with someone else. I don't want to be on the sidelines as "just a friend." But I also think he is tossing out some mixed signals. Just the other day, while we were talking, he said "I love..." and caught himself before he finished his sentence. Before anyone says it, yeah, we're skirting around the issue. I am scared to death to talk about this face-to-face with him, and maybe he is, too. I've dealt with rejection one too many times, and I can't fathom facing that pain again. I care about him very much, definitely more than as a platonic friend. But I don't know what to do at this point. All I know is that I'm tired of losing sleep, tired of worrying, tired of wondering what I should do. It doesn't help matters that we work in the same office and in close proximity to one another.
Maybe I have been reading too much into this from the very beginning, and that may have prompted his "just friends" speech. Maybe it's a bad case of wishful thinking -- I wish he wanted me as more than a friend. Maybe he's running from his true feelings. I don't know. All I know is that I've lost enough sleep over this. Can anyone give me any advice? I would really appreciate it...
