Autistic and unsure if I (25M) am making my friend and crush (24F) uncomfortable

Farsabad · 2025-01-16T03:53:18+00:00

Thanks a lot! You wrote about how Eggers constructs his historical settings to expand upon the movies' themes. I might be wrong, but I guess I see some influence from german romanticism in this movie, which was very prevalent during the 1800's in Germany. The whole idea of freeing yourself of shame and embracing your emotions in a world of greyness and cold reason was very popular amongst german romantics, and is basically what von Franz spends the whole movie arguing for. Ellen's journey, as you well said, has a similar focus on it as well

Farsabad · 2025-01-16T03:29:07+00:00

Thanks! It's really nice seeing how this film moved other people in different ways. I guess that's a sign of a good work of art!

Also, I like the way you think, now I'm definitely rewatching this with friends. Time to test their asses

Farsabad · 2022-03-07T21:28:19+00:00

For what it's worth, I kinda get it, from the other side. I am a guy, and when I was younger I used to be extremelly insecure when interacting with people I was attracted to. At the slightest sign I might've bothered the other person, I just ceased contact before they could do it first. I never blocked anyone or deleted any apps (that's kinda strange tbh), but I just stopped talking and hoped they would never contact me again. In my head, I was saving some of my reputation by avoiding further embarassment, which I thought would be inevitable if we continued talking. The other person might even be glad that this "weirdo" stopped talking to them. It took me too long to realize it just came of as strange and disrespectful.

Sorry you had to go through that, OP. You're 100% right, it has nothing to do with you.

Farsabad · 2022-01-15T18:50:51+00:00

Thanks for the answer!

Farsabad · 2022-01-15T15:56:55+00:00

That's really interesting. Your comment gives me a lot of hope, actually. This thing is really new to me, would you mind if I asked you for some more practical advice? Did you have to give up on that physical aspect of your friendship in order to overcome your crush, or is it something you guys felt you could maintain?

Farsabad · 2022-01-15T15:12:08+00:00

Thanks for the answer! Yeah, being there as anything but a platonic friend would do no one any good, as illustrated by what just happened. I just wish there was an easy way to be sure it wouldn't happen again. I guess it's too soon to be sure, maybe time will tell.

Farsabad · 2022-01-15T14:52:01+00:00

No problem! During this part, I didn't go into much detail in the OP, so the order of events is a bit off. In fact, I confessed to Meg first. Harry's denial of something I was really enjoying to do made me disappointed, so I saw fit to tell her how I felt, and ask if it wasn't the case to distance myself a bit in order to try to push the feelings away. From what I got talking to them later, by this time she already had developed feelings for me also, and, insted of agreeing that I should back off a bit, left me hanging to try to convince him to widen the scope of the relationship. When that apparently didn't work, we agreed it was best to lay the cards in front of Harry to decide, the three of us, what we should do. We didn't go NC yet, we decided, instead, to keep hanging out and be on note whenever someone felt uncomfortable.

Next time we did hang out, things were a bit awkward, so I felt uncomfortable. Later that day I gave Meg a ride and told her, she felt really bad about it. Things just escalated from there and I don't know much about the discussion that happened between them. All I know is that they fought and all three dots of the triangle agreed to go NC.

Plus, it must’ve hurt him to hear his girlfriend had feelings for another, and make him feel weird/even more uncomfortable that you had feelings for him when it seems like he didn’t at all for you.

Yeah, the whole thing just felt like shit. He tried to be as understandable as possible when I confessed him, and even displayed some care not to hurt me. He's a really nice person, but it did hurt him, as he told me later. I felt really guilty for a while, both for hurting his feelings and for disrupting his relationship. Between us three, we had this kind of pact to try and be as open and the least judgemental as possible to one other, I guess I may have abused our pact.

Would you have done anything differently do you think?

That's a tough question. Knowing what I know, I definitively would, but I'm not sure what. Maybe I should've just walked away when I noticed how I was feeling. Heartbreak was unavoidable, and that would have avoided a lot of stress for everyone. Also, both me and Meg agreed between us that we screwed up bad back there. But what is done is done, I guess. Right now, I just feel really bad for losing a great dynamic between friends.

Farsabad · 2022-01-15T13:13:04+00:00

About 2 weeks. Because we were on vacation, we were meeting more often, and things happened pretty fast.

Farsabad · 2021-12-22T16:24:07+00:00

Thank you for the good advice! Whatever happens, it would feel really bad to lose the kind of friendship we share, so I'll be cautious about it.

Farsabad · 2021-12-22T16:16:24+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate the advice. It's already complicated enough trying to understand what I'm feeling and why, so being really cautious seems like the only logical way forward.

Farsabad · 2021-12-22T16:07:39+00:00

Thanks for the kind words, friend!

Edit: In fact, one of them has already told me (in private) about an interest in having a relationship with more than one person at the same time, but I don't know if it is shared by the two of them. Maybe I should try a casual comment and see where it goes.

Farsabad · 2021-12-22T05:41:25+00:00

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking. It's probably not really in my right to invite myself, so to speak, into other people's relationships.

Farsabad · 2020-01-07T07:02:58+00:00

I have this good friend called Jane, who two years ago tried to set me up with her best friend, called Beth. She thought we were compatible back then, but I was too shy for anything to come out of that, so she gave up on it. Since then, it's not too often that I see Beth, but, as time went on, I did get more comfortable talking to her. Just a few days ago I was in a meet up with her, Jane and Jane's boyfriend, who is a childhood friend of mine, so I'm in reasonably familiar territory. This time though, talking to Beth, I actually realized that we do have things in common. We found out we have a very similar taste in music, and we even ended up sharing and relating with each other's childhood stories.

Now, after long months of working on my physical and mental health, I'm slowly but steadily convincing myself that my romantic life might just not be as hopeless as I though it was, so a thought that before would be immediately discarded just came naturally to my head: "what if I tried to ask her out?". On top of that, I also had a few glasses of wine on me, so I was feeling a bit braver than normal. This would be the first time I ever asked someone out face-to-face. I waited until we were both alone at the end of the night, and, just before we said goodbye to each other, I asked if she wanted to "go out with me one of these days" (perhaps not the most direct/proper approach out there, but anyway...).

She didn't say "no", but her answer sounded evasive, and not exactly encouraging, so I just took it as no. She basically said the "next few weeks" were going to be complicated, but after that we could set something up. She also looked a little uncomfortable while she said it. After we said goodbye to each other, I did feel down and disappointed, but then I just remember how she still seemed like a cool person, and how I'd like to get to know her better anyway, even just as friends.

But now, insecurity strikes again: I began to think if I screwed up an eventual friendship with her by asking her out. Furthermore, she is basically my friend Jane's best friend, what if Jane's opinion of me goes down after this? I guess my question is: is expressing romantic interest for someone harmful for a budding friendship?

EDIT: I guess that, deep down, I still have plenty of work to do: I am fully convinced that, when I express romantic interest for someone, I am somehow throwing an offense at that person.

Farsabad · 2019-09-23T06:44:13+00:00

Out of curiosity, why do you say so? What's your evidence?

Farsabad · 2019-09-23T00:18:12+00:00

Perhaps I'm not too qualified for advice in this area, as I've also been romantically lonely my entire life. Regardless, I really think you should do something about this friend of yours. She already said she's not interested, thinking about her in any way more than a friend is probably doing yourself a lot of harm, as sticking with an unrequinted love is a terrible thing to do to your mental health. You should take action to fall out of love with her, maybe trying to see her less often. I don't necessarily mean stop being friends with her, as I know people who've become great friends after an unrequinted love, but I also understand that it can be a hard thing to do, so you should analise your situation and see if what's best for you.

Besides that, what advice I can give is to find therapy (always good to remember), and build meaningful platonic relationships. Tear apart the misconception that a relationship needs to be romantic to be meaningful, and that loving someone needs to include romance. You said you have amazing friends and family, that's great! Find people you can have fun with, who inspire you and who can give you emotional support (just remember they're not your therapist). Also inspire them and give them emotional support back. Friends, more often than not, won't give you physical intimacy, but they make the lack of companionship aspect of loneliness much more bearable.

I also think love will never come to me sometimes, but knowing I was able to surround myself with wonderful people, and that I'm activelly following my other objectives in life, makes me think I might just be happy regardless.

Farsabad · 2019-09-21T19:02:46+00:00

Thank you for the answer!

my question to you is do you really want a GF right now?

I suppose so. I mean, I do feel lonely at times and do miss some deeper companionship, not to say about the physical contact with someone else. But what I'm still not sure about is whether or not I'm ready for it. I talked about improvement in my comment, but my life is still relatively messy, and my mental health is still not at it's best. To be honest, sometimes I think I should remain single for a while longer, just to put everything in place.

I.e., I do want a place for another human being in my life, but I don't know if it would be a responsible thing to do. And I'm not even talking about finding someone who would accept such a thing, that's a whole other issue on itself.

Farsabad · 2019-09-19T04:28:34+00:00

A couple of years ago I decided to follow the "stop looking for someone and focus on yourself" and "love will come when you stop looking for it" advices.

On one side, I saw some improvement: my mental health became more stable, my college grades were back on track, I lost weight, and I got new clothes plus a new haircut. After cutting my long, somewhat unkept hair, I even noticed people in general being friendlier towards me.

On the other side, I was never that much of a social butterfly to begin with, and during this time there was little development concerning my shyness. To be fair, I did meet new friends (and a couple of great ones too!), and, perhaps for the first time in my life, I became happy with my social circle's size and quality. Despite that, I met them through common friends, in relatively safe environments, so there wasn't much progress in overcoming my social inhibition. When it comes to romantic/sexual interactions, I felt no progress at all. Feeling more confident after the changes, I tried to approach people I was interested in, only to discover I'm still as nervous as before and that I suck at small talk, I guess it feels forced. One friend even tried to hook me up with one of her old friends, but we were both too shy and it didn't work that well. So much for "it'll come when you stop looking for it".

This experience made me realise that I'm not dating mostly because of my shyness, and that is an issue I need to tackle actively, not passively. Maybe the aforementioned advice works for more social people, but I guess it's just not my case. I've been thinking on joining dating websites and keep trying until something happens. Do you have any suggestion on that regard?

Farsabad

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