Sami Holden discusses how to move on from someone who doesn’t return the feelings you have for them.
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GMP Readers – next week we’ll have the ever dapper Lincoln A. Castellanos, also known as Tobias from Fear the Walking Dead, as our first celebrity guest advice provider. Yes, he’s briefly taking time away from fighting off Walkers to provide some dating advice for all of you. Send in your love/dating/relationship questions for him (and me) to [email protected]. Let’s get to this week’s advice…
Dear Sami,
I have very recently (yesterday) gone through a kind of breakup. I say it is a kind of breakup because we weren’t officially together in a romantic sense. There was no romantic part about it from the other person. There was and is on my part, but I still haven’t let that aspect slip.
Notice I haven’t used gender pronouns. That is because I am a man, and so is he. He is straight, and I am…not, let’s put it that way. He and I have been really good friends since April, when we met where I’m an intern. He was working as an intern for another branch of the company. I am 24 and newly out of school; he is newly 21 and a senior in college. We both have similar interests.
What I felt for him was immediate and passionate, and has not stopped. He has since left his internship and my internship will end later this month. This means I don’t get to see him often. As a side note, neither of us have cars, and I actually live in another county. As a consequence of this, we have until today maintained an active texting relationship.
He is too busy. Busy is a nice word, an understatement, for what he is. I don’t have anything else to do besides search for and apply for jobs on the three days a week and weekends I am not working at my internship. I wanted to give him an outlet for when he’d get overwhelmed by being so busy. I wanted to make him happy. But over time our relationship has become strained. He doesn’t see what I send him for hours, and then he doesn’t reply, or replies in one-word answers. He has warned me multiple times about pushing him on this, and I always said okay, but I never fully listened.
I wanted him. I wanted his presence in my life. I wanted him to react to what I sent to him, to react to how I exposed my feelings. I wasn’t thinking of how inhumanly busy he really is. We have been able to see each other sometimes, but we never discussed this during those times. I’m not sure if it was due to the fact we had so much to talk about or the fact that it wasn’t the best time or environment, or the fact that we wanted it to be a happy occasion and not talk about thorny things.
Last weekend he “suggested” I keep myself to a limit of one message per day. I agreed, and even came up with a list of “gems of wisdom” I planned on giving in the one-message per day I was allowed. I still have these. I am proud of them. I so want to show them to him, to let him see them, so they can make him smile and think.
Yesterday I sent him a daily message and asked him if he’d seen a few emails I sent to him over the course of the previous weeks as he never replied – what we didn’t talk about when we met up. He said he had seen them. It was at this point I decided I was done. I unfriended him on Facebook and wrote him a note describing what I had done. He has acted very maturely in his response, and seems grateful to no longer have the stress of communicating with me.
My question is what now? I told him I am completely willing to talk with him, but that I won’t start the conversation anymore. I tried to be diplomatic, and so has he, but I think both of us let at least a little of our tension into what we said. I have no idea when we will talk again. It may be months. He wished me well and said he will message me when he gets the chance, but he is so very busy I doubt it will be soon. We also have friends in the same social clubs and it is at least within the realm of possibility we could end up seeing each other, although I doubt it for him. I have no clue what I will do if/when this occurs.
I so love him. I am so terrified of losing him. I am so scared of arguing with him or making him feel anything but happiness. I am quite frankly terrified now. I have no idea what to do. I have never been in anything resembling this situation in my life. I have never been in a romantic relationship, so I have nothing to compare it to. I am crying on and off again. I need help.
What now? How do I not screw this up any more than I already have? How much of this is my fault? How much of it is his? How much of it was always unavoidable? How can I let him know I care for him and only wanted what I thought was best? How do I survive day by day without breaking my promise and texting the hell out of him? It is going to require a mammoth level of discipline.
Signed,
Lost in Unrequited Love
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Dear Lost in Unrequited Love,
I’ve thought about so many different ways I could start this out. First, I’ll say I’m not a licensed professional, just a fellow dater and human being with feelings. I’m eating a Snickers bar. Maybe you have a pint of ice cream (I swear it helps). We can both listen to Elliott Smith. If that works for you, let’s get right to it.
What you experienced was not a loving situation. I need you to repeat that to yourself and believe it. I need you to buy into that. Don’t feel silly about it either. I packed on the freshmen fifteen by eating a second breakfast because my crush worked in food service. I’d eat a meal at home and then tell my parents I needed to get to campus early for a study group, and then would pay $4 to eat a bowl of Lucky Charms and stare at my crush. I was a little bit of a creepy sixteen year old. Now I’m twenty-seven and know not to eat a second breakfast no matter how cute the guy is. We all fall for people who don’t fall for us.
I believe that you perhaps loved your friend, but in life we cannot love enough for ourselves and for someone else. That’s too much of a burden to place upon yourself. You deserve someone that loves you just as much. Do you realize that you deserve that? A pattern like this can become an infinite loop. Years ago, I thought I loved someone who was in a committed relationship with me. It was not love. It was the furthest thing from love. Much like your texting issue, I would get yelled at if I even sent him a single text at a time he randomly determined was inconvenient. I never expected a prompt response. It was just an opportunity for him to cut me down. I was a weak target at the time.
After this, I realized I needed to spend time working on myself. I allowed the situation to get so bad that I could no longer with confidence say that I loved myself. If you feel like you can’t say that, that’s where you need to start. Realize that you have value. You shouldn’t need to beg someone to want to be your friend. Don’t repeat this pattern into your next relationship – platonic or romantic. My friends would never make me feel bad about texting. Believe me, I’ve done the over-texting. If one of my closest friends told me that I was only allowed one text per day they would get a face from me that could only be described as that of a gremlin that just had water thrown on it. All of my friends reading this sentence are now laughing picturing just that because it’s true. I’m verbose. My parents paid me $5 to be quiet for ten minutes in a 22 hour road trip to Florida when I was five years old because I couldn’t stop talking. I laugh so loudly I can be heard rooms over. I have quirks. We all do.
If one of my best friends sent me a message saying they needed to talk now, if I was able, I would drop whatever I was doing and get on that phone. Why? That’s what love is. It’s not this set of rules. I can’t even give you a clear cut answer as to how the love thing plays out because I don’t even entirely know. I know it’s not supposed to cause pain. I dislike his unnecessary delayed response, his disregard to your e-mails yet still hanging out with you, and his one word responses. The kindest thing he could’ve done was to just cut ties if that’s what he wanted, not put limitations on you. He wants the attention on his own terms. Don’t play his game.
Bravo to you for removing him from Facebook. I think that’s an excellent decision. How do you stop texting him? Remove his contact information from your phone. Really, delete everything. Write his phone number on a slip of paper and tuck it away. In time you’ll realize that maybe the urge to contact him will be less. See if one of your other friends will be “that person” you text whenever you feel the urge to text him. If he starts contacting you again, know that you could be playing into some strange controlling game on his behalf. Again, games are not love.
If you do see him out at a social or work function, as it sounds like there is potential for that, just nod politely from a distance. You don’t have to engage in conversation with him. If he does come over, you can make brief small talk before saying you have to move on elsewhere. Do not shit talk him. It is likely this will make it back to him and just reflect poorly upon you. Anyone that has an inkling of how he treated you already knows that he is in the wrong. If you say terrible things about him, no matter how true they are, it deflects away from him being awful. Do not make him look good. Remaining civil works to your benefit. It shows you know how to take the high road.
My dear, you haven’t lost him. He wasn’t yours to begin with. You hoped for more than he could provide you, and he dangled you along because he most likely enjoyed the attention. You need to not worry about his happiness because that is on him. Worry about your happiness. You’re young. Get out there and live life! Make the most of your youth. Do things for you (crying is OK). I think it’s important after having spent so much time catering to someone else. You should never feel like you’re giving pieces of yourself away. When you feel fulfilled in your life, I suspect you’ll find love. I hope it’s great and everything you thought it would be with a partner who can’t wait to hear from you, makes time for you, respects you as a person, and never makes you feel like less than you are worth. Save the messages for someone who can’t wait to write you notes of encouragement as well. That’s what you deserve. Nothing less than that.
Here’s for better dating days ahead,
~Sami
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Listen to the mustn’t, child. Listen to the don’t. Listen to the shouldn’t, the impossibles, the won’t. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be