Romance

It's ok to be hurt, Nightwire. Your feelings make you feel human. Your feelings help you in the long run. The best thing is you let them out. You're hurt now, it hurts now but it lessen as time goes on. And eventually you will find someone. The wall of text is nothing much to read, tbh, considering that I've read and written more.

It's good that you both kept in touch with each other, even though there are feelings that come across. Nothing has changed in your friendship that much. You CAN love her without needing to be with her. It's called being her friend. You still have your jokes, your conversations, your emotional value to each other, it;s just that there's someone who is there and she picks who her heart has. You did nothing wrong. Just remember this.

I know that you want to take care of her, be with her every day but, unfortunately, she has feeling for someone else. I cannot imagine what pain you're going through, not at all, but I have kind of been there. However, with time, the pain and heartbreak will go away and you'll find someone. You will. Trust me. And that person will like you as much as you like them. You will both tell each other your secrets, your regrets, your dreams, your hopes, your disappointments. Both will eventually never imagine a day where you will be apart. And it will fill your heart to its content.

But you'll still have your friend. You'll lead separate lives but you'll still have each other. It's a lot to take in at the moment but give it time. You will pull through. We're here for you.

Thank you so, so much for saying all of this. Your kind and understanding words legit made me tear up. Thank you.

I will adjust, eventually. I have been in love with her for five years now, so it will be pretty difficult, but I know I can still love her without needing to be with her. I just need time. And yeah, I never want to lose her again. I am happy to be someone important in her life.

It's not a problem. Just take it one day at a time.

Yep .

Is it too early to ask a girl to be my Valentine? I feel like it's the perfect excuse for me to confess my feelings, though admittedly, I'm feeling so much anxiety from this that I just want to get it over with ASAP. Plus, I don't want to wait too late and she gets taken by someone else...

Then again, I technically don't even know if my crush is even single. Or if she even likes men for that matter.

Is this even a good idea at all?

First of all, make sure they are single. It would be awkward if they weren't. Ask someone who is close to them if they are.

Its ok if you tell your feelings to this person but Valentine's Day is a little on the nose. It's fine but maybe another time. Maybe don't confess everything at once. Get to know them. Be friends with them. Don't go into it because you may scare them off. Going forward into something like this ASAP is not a good idea.

Take it slow. Be friendly. Who knows, maybe they like you too. And if nothing happens, at least you went for something.

Tbh, not sure if I even know anyone who is close to her. She mostly just keeps to herself and rarely interacts with anyone unless spoken to first. I don't think I've even seen her call or text anyone whenever I see her on her phone after work, at least as far as I can tell. She does tend to greet me if she happens to run into me, however.

We've had a few short conversations with each other, so we're not total strangers or anything. When they're not work-related, our conversations are usually us geeking out over our very many common interests. Though I'll admit, my very long strings of rejections, often due to waiting until it was (in some way or another) too late to make a move, is another reason why I wanted to confess ASAP. Now that I've calmed down a little, I'm uncertain if I'll do it that soon, but at this point, I still want to give her a Valentine gift sometime before V-Day though.

I've had a bad idea about romance...I read too many YA books where love is so often packaged with great supernatural drama or dystopian conflict...

It's hard for me to imagine a relationship not plagued by outside conflict, and actually raising a family in a life that's totally mundane.

Like, where's the turmoil. Where are the forces constantly threatening to tear your love apart. What's the great political statement in the two of you staying together.

I've recognized that it's problematic to make your significant other the deuteragonist in the novel of your life, but...what exactly is "happily ever after" in a marriage that is meant to continue?

If you are comparing YA novel romance to real life relationships...in not the same at all. Yeah a lot of relationships have outside conflicts that might stress a relationship but ones exist and outside conflicts don't define relationships...they just shape them.

And happy ever after is just that. Two people that are happy to be together for long time. Of course no one knows if that's what happens or not but it's nice way to end a story when done well.

I personally think marrying someone and growing old with them can be a beautiful thing.

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 2nd 2020 at 3:13:50 PM

I have the sense that people marry people expecting them to stay the same throughout the years.

They really don't. People are changed by the political and economic climate as unknown values surface.

I used to be a lot more of a romantic...until I learned that love doesn't always save you in the most trying circumstances.

More instead it's a resilience to take things as they come and do what you can to put your own influence in the world. Love is...supplementary to that.

well yeah thats true. Marriage and long term relationships need more than just love. But a lot of people don't know or don't get it. Other factors could be financial, emotional support, to raise kids in a intact household and other stuff.

Marriage and relationships need more than love is an unpopular aesop these days unfortunately

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 2nd 2020 at 4:01:20 AM

I think I might give up on relationships for a while now. I just went through the craziest and most chaotic experience of my whole life involving a girl and it really fucking hurt.

Yeah. I think I might just give up and hope I don't fall for someone for just a little while now.

You'll be ok.

long distance is the worse. Can't believe its been 4 years already. But I wouldn't be sticking around if I thought it wasn't going to work. He's also pretty my only friend which is probably unhealthy but eh I dont like any of the people that live where I am enough to be friends with them.

Also, having someone that's a lot more reserved and closed off emotionally than me is kind of challenging. I either say the wrong or come off as self centered to him in my responses. It rarely happens but getting the silent treatment for a day after you say something wrong kind of burns more than just being yelled at.

Maybe I am just socially dense.

Question, how does one casually flirt, or hell even flirt in general? Honestly I have no idea.

Umm. Well since I have update to my situation I guess I'll give my own bad advice.

Long story short is: Dating and romance and liking other people and relationships make no sense at all. In my case, we had started this weird habit of complimenting each other on something tangentially related to current topic, then both of us backing off (like using being tired as excuse) and that repeated until it got to the point it was so bloody obvious one of us had to ask, and neither of us still knew we liked each other until we checked on it. That is how it works for socially awkward people who mutually like each other I guess.

Flirting is hard to give advice on since its really both cultural and personal thing. In cultures where everyone compliments each other all the time its much harder to notice than in less talkative cultures. And either way, what feels as flirting to one person is friendly conversation to another. And then there are people like me who are utterly in denial about idea of someone liking them.

Like umm, turns out that the old sage advice of "Go to new places, meet new people, make new friends and repeat until it works out" worked in my case (despite it being type of advice that I really hated to hear), I just happened to meet them when I was training to for job searching and we started hanging out since we had lot of shared interests and then things got weird over time. I have no idea how to give advice for actively trying to find a partner though.

On the previous topic umm. I don't think passion and love is same thing, what you describe sounds more like passion. Passion is when you really strongly want to be with someone and care for them really hard and don't want to be ever separated from them and pamper each other and etc. Love is when you both mutually want to spend a boring life together. Its more like really intimate friendship really.

Edited by SpookyMask on Mar 4th 2020 at 3:28:45 PM

...Um okay, something odd just happened to me. My friend told me that they liked how my eyes looked colorful. My eyes are extremely dark brown that they're almost black. Hell, they look black to me sometimes. Normally I wouldn't think anything about it, but this is also a friend of mine who some people think likes me a lot. But they're also dating someone...

I'm probably overthinking it but that just caught me off guard. I've never had anyone comment on my eyes before. I've always considered that to be a romantic gesture or flirting.

I've been dumped.

Probably TMI, but apparently I'm emotionally unavailable. I don't try to be, which makes this more galling, but I've been given wonderful advice while in horrible moods and never taken it to heart, and I really liked this person(and through my teeth, I'd like to stay friends) and now I'm just trying to suffocate my sorrows through whatever means are available.

but goddamnit

I'm so sorry. :(

Thank you.

Edited by Prowler on Jul 11th 2020 at 8:11:17 AM

So I'm behind this thread from the other night. Perhaps its tone was a little too paranoid, or perhaps I rambled too much, or perhaps I potholed too many parts of it. (Hey, I like to multi-task!)

But the central point of it, for the purposes of this thread is... does romance cause people to be insincere for the purposes of impressing their loved ones? (Putting aside that I've lied for pettier reasons; I'm trying to avoid falling into that trap again.) I see certain opinions that seem correlated with monogamy, and I'm not sure whether that's for romance proving those ideas valid, or giving them incentive to feign them to impress their loved ones. What do you make of this?

I somehow managed to get this cute girl's number today. I liked how she would play with her kitten in our online film class.

Make sure you back that number up.

I lost one when my damn cellphone reset itself.

Tried to contact the gal by other means, and did run into her a few times at university... but... well, you can't really ask for a woman's number a second time.

Probably'll kick myself for the rest of my life for not telling her how i feel about her, since the pandemic kinda kaiboshed any chance of meeting at school, and she hasn't answered online either. TBH, it's the not knowing that's killing me. At least if she'd told me i didn't have a chance in hell, I could move on.

I actually got a girl's number in high school once just before summer. I texted her at one point asking how her summer was going, but I don't think she texted me back.

She was cute but not one of my biggest crushes, so I wasn't exceptionally broken up about it.

Edited by TParadox on Dec 21st 2020 at 9:10:41 AM

Gal I'm talking about was already friends with me, beautiful, smart, funny, compassionate, and had one of those smiles that brightened a room.

and due to be a high-functioning autistic, as well as, well, being a guy, i couldn't small talk to save my life around someone like her. also didn't help I was going through a lot of depression issues at the same time when we met.

Edited by Pendrake on Dec 21st 2020 at 7:18:04 AM