How have you guys gotten over crushing on your friend?

[Null]

I’m 20 and have known my friend, who is 31, for a few years now and they’ve always been decent to me, never made any advances, or spoken to me inappropriately and I really appreciate that. However, we’ve been getting closer lately and every now and then, I feel like I could be developing feelings. How can I knock that out of me? 

I’m not interested in pursuing a relationship for two reasons: 

1) I’ve been in a relationship with a very close friend before and we broke up - when that happened, I lost a friendship I valued more than anything and my partner, all in one. I don’t want to go through that again and I really, really don’t want to lose the person in this post. 

2) He’s way out of my age range and I don’t want to set the precedent for him getting into relationships with very young women, because I decided to “open that wormhole” with him. I don’t think it’s appropriate. (And I’d prefer to not debate this.)

[Null]

I had feelings a year ago, but I was able to ignore those when I rationalized how much of a bad idea it would be to act upon them. It just looks like they’re returning again full force a year later.

And for the record, I’m not in a relationship right now and haven’t been for two years. I don’t really want to be getting into that scene any time soon, I just say this to make it clear that these feelings aren’t intefering with any romantic relationship I’m in.

[Jaunty]

Just have the feelings and don't act on them.  It's a normal part of life.  Uncomfortable, but so is not eating the whole cake when you feel like it.  

It's a crush.  

[Batya33]

Yes, react to the feelings by reminding yourself of the potential downsides.  The guy I had a crush on for years I don't think ever knew (if he did thank goodness he never said anything -and yes he flirted back a few times when we were both single but nothing ever happened -totally harmless flirting).  In fact I dated his older brother for a couple of months.  It faded over time and was replaced with quite a strong friendship for many years (it's been well over a year now that we've been in touch -nothing at all do with the long ago crush just partly because of the pandemic/drifting apart).  

The reason I never acted on it was because I was pretty sure he didn't feel the same way and for a lot of the time he was in a serious relationship, then in a serious relationship with his future wife who I befriended as well.  

It really affected me when my crush was strong and he got involved with our really attractive coworker for a few years -they even got engaged (he broke up with her basically once he met his future wife as a friend) - I mean it hurt! But again I knew the downsides of sharing how I felt would not be worth it. I let time pass and time helped the crush fade and the friendship that grew stronger was so worth it.   Good luck.

[Null]

45 minutes ago, Batya33 said:

Yes, react to the feelings by reminding yourself of the potential downsides. 

I let time pass and time helped the crush fade and the friendship that grew stronger was so worth it.   Good luck.

Thank you so much for your advice. I’m really happy to hear that your friendship is stronger than ever now and that you have a good relationship with both him and his wife - your situation, stressful as it might have been for a while, turned out very well. Kudos to you. 🙂 

Although if I can ask, did you find that distancing yourself from him while you were crushing helped a little bit? Like you suggest, I’ll continue to remind myself of the downsides, since it’s the only thing that seems to knock sense into me. I admit that I sometimes worry about “how close is too close”, if that makes sense. My friend is very affectionate towards me and I appreciate that because it’s how he shows his care, but I’m afraid of being quite as affectionate back. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I worry about him developing feelings for me because as it is, we are very close - again, he’s never been inappropriate and has always been firm about being a dependable, non-perverse presence in my life (as I’ve had a lot of bad experiences.) But I just don’t want to open that wormhole. I don’t want to go cold on him, either. 

 

[Batya33]

43 minutes ago, Null said:

Although if I can ask, did you find that distancing yourself from him while you were crushing helped a little bit? Like you suggest, I’ll continue to remind myself of the downsides, since it’s the only thing that seems to knock sense into me. I admit that I sometimes worry about “how close is too close”, if that makes sense. My friend is very affectionate towards me and I appreciate that because it’s how he shows his care, but I’m afraid of being quite as affectionate back. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I worry about him developing feelings for me because as it is, we are very close - again, he’s never been inappropriate and has always been firm about being a dependable, non-perverse presence in my life (as I’ve had a lot of bad experiences.) But I just don’t want to open that wormhole. I don’t want to go cold on him, either. 

I maintained appropriate boundaries during the times it would not have been a good idea for me to explore more than friendship.  I think we hugged hello and goodbye back then and this continued when he was married (this is who he is with everyone -me too) but all I did when I was seeing if we could take it further was literally just show up to gatherings where he was, talk to him as friends, etc -I left the ball in his court and there were times I wondered if he was going to ask me out (he didn't -as mentioned his brother did many years later and we dated). 

I would not have been affectionate with him beyond quick hug hello and goodbye at social gatherings because we worked together and because it generally wouldn't have been appropriate.  I never ever played with fire so to speak.  And I never asked him out.  I remember when he had the girlfriend we worked with -before they started dating -we were both invited to a small party he was having-and she got very territorial (meaning I was going to go in with her on buying snacks to bring and she went cold on me and was unhappy about me doing that -she wanted to impress him I guess) -turns out they were already secretly dating.  I didn't know. So this is where if you maintain appropriate boundaries it's all good.

[SooSad33]

19 hours ago, Null said:

1) I’ve been in a relationship with a very close friend before and we broke up - when that happened, I lost a friendship I valued more than anything and my partner, all in one. I don’t want to go through that again and I really, really don’t want to lose the person in this post. 

Then you remind yourself of this.

I also had this happen once.. or twice 😕 .  Yeah, if you are friends, keep it that way, in order to not lose this again.

Should you maybe just spend less time with them for a while?  Make yourself less available.  To work on keeping respectful, decent boundaries.   

If it's too much, you change it.

 

[Andrina]

Sometimes, you have to expect if you have a friend of the opposite sex, once he gets into a relationship with another woman, you might be shoved to the back burner, or the friendship might totally end, since not all people are comfortable with their SOs have buddies of the opposite sex.

I don't know how much time you spend with him. If it was once or twice a week, I'd probably ease that number to something like 4 to 6 times a year.

Read some articles about avoiding emotional affairs and you can likely pick up some pointers. Do you have a lot of female friends, or at least a handful you regularly get together with?

[SherrySher]

23 hours ago, Null said:

I’m 20 and have known my friend, who is 31, for a few years now and they’ve always been decent to me, never made any advances, or spoken to me inappropriately and I really appreciate that. However, we’ve been getting closer lately and every now and then, I feel like I could be developing feelings. How can I knock that out of me? 

I’m not interested in pursuing a relationship for two reasons: 

1) I’ve been in a relationship with a very close friend before and we broke up - when that happened, I lost a friendship I valued more than anything and my partner, all in one. I don’t want to go through that again and I really, really don’t want to lose the person in this post. 

2) He’s way out of my age range and I don’t want to set the precedent for him getting into relationships with very young women, because I decided to “open that wormhole” with him. I don’t think it’s appropriate. (And I’d prefer to not debate this.)

How to "knock that out of you"? You already know how to. You stay away from him, choose to have self control and leave the situation.

If you are already developing feelings for him, easiest way to deal with something that is not going to work out, is to just stay away.

Change your focus, get involved with either work or school. Pursue a new hobby, hang out more with family or friends.

Just find time to busy yourself with other things that have nothing to do with him.

[Null]

@Andrina, I don’t really have too many friends that I hang out with at all. He’s my closest friend, which is probably why I’ve become so attached. 

——

Anyway, you guys have good points. I’m going to focus on my hobbies and interests a bit more. I’m still going to keep in contact with him, but I’ll dial it back a few notches because we had been talking near constantly. I’ve gotten my feelings under control before and I can do so again. And I do honestly want him to get into a relationship with someone else so he can have that source of joy, even if it would cause us some distance. He deserves it. 

 

[Jaunty]

How long have you known him?  It seems kind of unusual for a man in his 20's to become best friends with a teenaged girl.   Which must have been the case if he's your very closest friend now that you are 20.   

[Null]

9 minutes ago, Jaunty said:

How long have you known him?  It seems kind of unusual for a man in his 20's to become best friends with a teenaged girl.   Which must have been the case if he's your very closest friend now that you are 20.   

I’ve known him since I was 17. We met on a site and he assumed I was in my 20s, because I had my age set outrageously high on there. Otherwise, being a minor, I wouldn’t have access to most of the chat rooms. When I turned 18, I changed my outrageously high age to “18” and then I’m sure he realized I wasn’t in my 20s. He’s asked me before if I was comfortable pursuing a friendship given the age difference (he’s always put the “ball in my court”, so to speak, always wanted to be sure I’m never uncomfortable) and I said yes, that I was fine with us keeping in contact. 

We didn’t become super close until I was 19. From the ages of 17-18, we’d only chat periodically and check in with each other. 

[OdliDPrincess]

How I got over my straight crush was by doing exactly what you're doing: Avoiding him. I still think about him, but those strong feelings are gone. We still text though, but haven't seen each other in person for many years. We're friends, so breaking off all contact is kinda dumb, because he's a good person. He's been in a relationship for about 2 years now, and I must admit - I was very jealous of her because she can have him and never me. Seeing how happy she makes him, though, has also helped a great deal getting over the crush. He knew about my feelings for him, and it hasn't affected our friendship in any way (not to my knowledge anyway). We will always have things to talk about, because we met through our mutual love of horses and -riding. That will never change.

[catfeeder]

I’d keep the friendship but diffuse it by spending more time with family, other friends, neighbors and making new friends through things that interest me.

Loved ones and community are great normalizers. They are grounding, especially when I make our time about them-not-me. This breaks an intense focus on stuff that might otherwise cause me to ruminate myself into a problem of my own creation.

You’ve done the work of figuring out where you stand and where you want to stand, so behave accordingly, and watch the problem fade off into the distance without resurrecting it.