Exploding friendship!

[k2004myway]

I made a post in the "can men and women be friends" poll regarding this relationship, but here's some more detail. This friend and I used to have a great time together. However, she has issues with closeness with people--she freaks out and moves to other friends when she gets close (male or female). Such is our case--however, our closeness has far exceeded our mutual understanding of how we define our relationship. We both deny to each other and others that there is attraction--but I think we are in denial--at least one of us is anyway. Anyway, she's at this point where she gets uncomfortable with closeness and is tempted to run. However, she wants to overcome this and promised not to run.

When she gets uncomfortable, however, she goes into ignore mode for a day or two (sometimes gets downright mean and has to apologize later) and then explains why she was ignoring me and we're still cool. However, this constant repitition of this pattern is really starting to drain on me. My thought is, when I get back from this speaking trip, to explain what I explained above about our closeness/understanding disparity (which I just came to the conclusion of) and that we either need to take our understanding to where our closeness is or vice versa--because this is just driving me crazy. The second option will require significant time off from eachother and things may never return to the same thing--an innocent and fun friendship. The rough part is that we are both part of the same social group and her dad is a friend of mine. A cutoff, even temporary, will require that either she or I find a new social group. Her dad has warned me about this tendency, by the way. Anyway, any thoughts on what to do?

[Mrocza]

Do you really want to be involved with someone who has intimacy and commitment issues?

 

She does sound like she's draining you, but why are you putting up with it? She doesn't sound like much of a friend, anyway.

[k2004myway]

Do I want to be involved romantically with such a girl? Not at this point. This issue is that she is just a really, really fun person when she's normal and I kind of hope that we could just simply go back to that. I may be holding onto a fleeting hope. I believe that part of the problem as well, is that it all started as a professional relationship (I was her boss for a while) and when she transferred, we started hanging out socially. Also, being a friend, and indirect boss (I'm the right hand to our division's head), in the life of her dad, I feel the need help the girl out because I hate to see such a promising person stuck in such a relational rut. I do have experience as am emotional counsellor, so I'm a bit of a sucker for this kind of stuff.

[Mrocza]

I don't think there is any reason for you to continue a normal friendship if you have not yet crossed the lines of intimacy.

 

However, you are not her healer. You cannot help her unless she helps herself and even then it's best you do not stay involved. You may want to try to help and fix her, but it's not up to you.