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Dating - I love the way you swipe


Larry of the Lawn

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The continuing thread to discuss the joys and worse of dating and connecting with other humans.

 

So lately I've been really attracted to a really good friend of mine.  I've given it some time and it's not just some passing feeling.  We've been pretty much spending all our free time together the last couple months and what was a already a very strong friendship has been growing really quickly.  About two weeks ago I was mentally and emotionally committed to letting her know how I feel, but then an ex-boyfriend came back into her life and I didn't want to bring it up when I knew she was already in a complicated emotional place.    

We're going camping this weekend together at a music festival and I feel like being more than friends has kind of been an elephant in the room for us recently, and it feels kind of inevitable we'll talk this out at some point.  I'm feeling great but also super confused.  

I know a similar situation came up in the last thread and I've been kind of curious about how that worked out.   

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1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

 I know a similar situation came up in the last thread and I've been kind of curious about how that worked out.   

Pretty sure that's referring to me, and unfortunately I still have yet to do anything about it, so it hasn't worked out one way or another.

I find myself in a very similar situation to what you describe actually. We've been spending a lot of time together recently, and the friendship feels like it's been growing very quickly. We flirt a lot (or at least it feels like flirting to me), and it hasn't exactly gone unnoticed by other friends. And yeah, it kind of feels like an inevitability that we'll talk this out at some point. And yet, I'm still confused, and hesitant. This is all uncharted territory to me.

I'm going on an extended sailing trip with her and her family in a few weeks, and then on holiday with her and a mutual third friend a little while after that. I'm really wary of potentially rocking the boat in situations where we might struggle to get away from each other if things get weird.

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Good luck to both of you! Friendships turned romance is always a tricky line to walk and has the potential for both greatness and a lot of loss, since losing a good friendship is way more of a stake than not seeing some rando Tinder dude again.

As for me...well, last month I was in the UK for a conference. Made a joking comment to my friend that one of his friends was cute. Next day my friend somehow ends up inviting us both out to lunch with him...long story short, the guy and I ended up hooking up. I was wary of this because I'm new to this field and don't want to get a reputation as being someone going around hooking up with people at conferences, but whatever. We went on a couple dates during the conference and the weekend after as we were both in London. Then I was headed out to do some traveling on my own (was supposed to be with a friend but she ended up having to bail last minute). We were texting a lot during that time and he ended up inviting me to Switzerland (where he works), and I decided to go (my friend was also there). We had the most perfect few days together, but I left knowing that it was just a brief interlude of perfection, seeing as I live in the US, this guy lives in Europe and is from Australia. But of course we kept talking constantly...and I keep liking him more and more...and now I'm flying back to Switzerland this month and he's coming to Chicago in September and I KNOW this has no future but gods I am so happy in the moment that I can't even bring myself to care about all the heartache I am going to bring upon future!Nora.

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Nevermind the distance! Love CAN find a way. I know of at least two friends who have found love overseas and are now happily married. (Sweden-US and Sweden-New Zealand.)

And even if it doesn’t work out in the end, I’m not so sure it was a bad thing to try. Better to be happy for a while and then go through some heartache than never to have loved in the first place. 

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Nora,

Enjoy it while you can and when you can.  This is one of those times when living in the moment is best and the heart ache will be worth it.  Heck, you might even make something work in a way you never expected or you learn a little bit more about what you like and what you need in a relationship.

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20 minutes ago, Starkess said:

Thanks for enabling my hopeless romanticism :wub:

It looks like someone needs to keep a diary to build upon for her future bestselling love novel that becomes a movie starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams.

Jokes aside, go full tilt on this. You’ll regret not seeing this out regardless of where it winds up.

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Nora,

I agree, give it a try, if the distance is all that's giving you pause. I had a friend who carried on a long-term engagement with someone from another country and they finally tied the knot last year. And you don't have to be thinking of marriage, of course, but just the dating and socializing can be worth it. 

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Enjoy it!

Also, is hooking up at conferences not the whole point? God knows they're usually wastelands intellectually speaking and appear to serve no purpose but socialization anyway.

I'm...going on a date. Nowish. With a postdoc whose communications have become increasingly stilted and awkward somehow. And he picked what turns out to be a board game cafe (sidenote: there are board game cafes.) as one of the options. The other was a Peetz. I'm expecting catastrophe. Will update. (He might be Indian. I'm not sure. Hey, I don't discriminate.)

Anyway, first date in probably over a year, and IIRC, the last one ended after twenty minutes and a firm but polite handshake. Well, at least this way I can tick the box for another year.

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Well...it was not a catastrophe. It was not good in any imaginable form of the word - we had terrible coffee and walked around because everywhere was packed, and the only thing we managed to actually carry a conversation was a tepid agreement that it is indeed sometimes complicated asking for recommendation letters. That's too low a bar. Nice enough guy, but seems to have absolutely nothing happening in his life that he could describe, no curiosity as to mine, nothing in common and no rapport.

This is probably not a good indicator, but I might have preferred catastrophe.

I think I'm going to back off the online dating for a while (she said, one date in after an 18 month gap) and try giving the old 'real life' (as the kids are calling it) approach a try while I get my bearings here.

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Catastrophes can at least be entertaining! I agree I'd rather have a spectacularly bad date than a milquetoast one. (Assuming that the spectacular badness isn't harmful, obviously.)

One week to go until my trip to see Switzerland Dude! I'm both very excited and starting to get super anxious. We skyped today for over an hour (at his request, no less) and yet I still had a panic attack as soon as we hung up that he doesn't like me anymore but doesn't know how to get out of me coming to visit. I realize this is ridiculous but...brains gonna brain.

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yeah, I was just thinking...I can't even come up with a funny story around this one. I suppose by my standards a date that is not a clowning pratfall is progress.

Relax and enjoy Switzerland! No one who is trying to get out of seeing you is spending an hour on the phone!

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Wow. If even Datepalm can’t get a good story out of a date then it must have been a bland date indeed. I mean, remember the awesome plant story? It was about a plant. Just sayin.

Myself, I’m waltzing on through the online dating jungle. It amazes me how many fascinating people there are out there. Now I’m chatting with a girl who is taking a year off from her architect job to work as an opera singer. How cool isn’t that? Bad news is I asked her if she wanted to meet and since then I haven’t heard from her for hours, so I probably botched that one. 

Oh yeah, and Starkess: relax. He’s totally into you. 

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Yeah, I'm a little baffled - this started in a crowded board-game cafe, he turned out to be from a conservative-sounding family in the Pakistani North West Frontier - I'm Israeli, I feel like we could have done something with that, er, producing a decent-story-wise - and had lived in Korea and Japan, and still - just nothing. The conversational fragment...

Me: "OK, so that's your job. So how do you like it here though? What's life like?"

Him: *a bunch of talking*

"You know," teasingly/inquisitively/flirtatiously/in alarm, "that's really not at all an answer to that..."

...was repeated four times. I still got nothing.

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  • 3 weeks later...

@Liffguard yeah it was you I was thinking of, just felt weird tagging people in the dating thread.  Best of luck with your situation.

After a couple of weeks of not being able to think of anything else I ended up writing my friend a letter, then took a picture of it and sent it to her.  Whole story in one line is She was flattered but said she didn't feel the way I did.  This happened about 20 minutes ago.  Kinda of relieved that the anxiety of not knowing is over but also kinda really sad.  I don't think it will fuck up the friendship but that's what I'm most worried about now.  

I think if I had it to do over again I would just repress my feelings, go sleep around, and just self medicate with heavy doses of marijuana and moderate but regular applications of beer.  

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2 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

@Liffguard yeah it was you I was thinking of, just felt weird tagging people in the dating thread.  Best of luck with your situation.

After a couple of weeks of not being able to think of anything else I ended up writing my friend a letter, then took a picture of it and sent it to her.  Whole story in one line is She was flattered but said she didn't feel the way I did.  This happened about 20 minutes ago.  Kinda of relieved that the anxiety of not knowing is over but also kinda really sad.  I don't think it will fuck up the friendship but that's what I'm most worried about now.  

I think if I had it to do over again I would just repress my feelings, go sleep around, and just self medicate with heavy doses of marijuana and moderate but regular applications of beer.  

It's better to know,  you can mourn the loss of what you felt, do all you just said and be prepared for the next horizon 

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Btw, my last visit to see my Australian-European dude went very well and we've decided to give it a shot. Feels weird having a boyfriend again! He's visiting me next week and I'm quite excited for that. Unfortunately the timeline for visits after that is looking a bit murky, as I start class again soon and won't be able to travel and he's already committed to going back to Australia for Christmas and is then moving to Germany. We'll find a time though!!

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