Still struggling to move on
Just here to vent a little so this post will probably be deleted in a few days to prevent my friend from finding out.
My friend (guy) and I (girl) were quite close. We had worked together for a project for about half a year but only became friends after the project cos that's when we actually started talking about stuff outside of the project. We ended up texting every day cos we both enjoyed texting each other, talking about life and goofing around.
Somewhere along the way I started catching feelings for him, which was unexpected cos I hadn't liked anyone like that in years. It took me a while to understand my feelings but I eventually decided to shoot my shot and confess. He was surprised, and told me he didn't feel that way but he wanted to give it a shot.
I was happy ofc, but kinda regretted confessing cos he told me the last time he liked someone was in primary school. I knew the chances of him developing feelings for me were probably slim, so throughout our roughly one-month talking stage, I tried to keep my expectations realistic.
Eventually he rejected me very nicely because he didn't want to give me mixed signals. He told me that he just couldn't see me as more than a friend, but he would like to stay friends cos he treasured the friendship. Tbh, I was quite ok with getting rejected cos I had already mentally prepared myself for it. I told him it was fine and that I still wanted to be friends with him as well. I continued to text him daily (as usual). I thought that even though things would probably be awkward for a while, we'll still tahan through it cos we both wanted the friendship and I know my feelings will fade eventually. I just didn't want to lose a perfectly good friendship.
But he pulled away after that. He didnt tell me, but it was super obvious so I asked him directly about it. He said it was for my own sake but when I told him that it wouldn't help me, he said that he was okay with this level of friendship now and that people don’t need to talk frequently to remain close.
That really hurt me cos our friendship was built on talking every day. Sometimes when conversations died down, he would even initiate new ones himself just to keep talking. So when everything suddenly changed after my confession, I couldn’t help but feel like I got “downgraded” as a friend.
While I understand that some people don’t need frequent communication to feel connected, it’s hard for me not to associate the change with my confession, because before that, he clearly had no issue talking to me daily for months.
I also understand that maybe he was trying not to lead me on or hurt me further. But I have expressed to him after the rejection that I genuinely just want to stay friends and that I wasn't secretly hope to change his mind by staying. It hurts me more feeling like I'm being punished for revealing my feelings to him.
I still tried talking to him like how I usually spoke to him, but it felt like he was speaking as if I was an acquaintance. He never seemed interested in continuing the conversation anymore and I felt so alone in them.
The last straw for me was when I realised I was basically carrying an entire conversation by myself before eventually getting left on read. That was when it finally hit me that I was trying to hold onto a friendship that was already gone... It would just hurt me more if I ever went back to talk to him...
We still keep each other in our close friends list on IG tho, which is quite ironic... It's been weeks since I last spoke to him. He never reached out.
I just miss our friendship dynamic and I wish that he would have been more honest with me in whatever he's going through in all this...