NerdSquared
April 25th, 2017, 03:56 PM
Okay, I'm just going to give the long version here of what happened, if you guys have a question or need a clarification just ask. I'm new here, still learning the system.
Okay, so first things first there's a girl that I've had a crush on since November of 2015. We met in choir and math team a couple months before (hence my username, I'm a nerd and proud of it), and became really close friends over the past couple of years. There's just a couple problems as to why I didn't ask her out.
1. My parents are really weird about dating and probably wouldn't let me, though if I catch them at the right time they might. Let’s ignore #1 for right now.
2. She's a year older (i'm a junior now, she's a senior, yes that means she's graduating, going off to college at a school that I'm likely not going to)
3. Another guy asked her January 2016.
First and foremost she is my friend, and so I just decided to move on and try to support her in her relationship. I did a pretty good job for the first year. But then things started to go downhill with her relationship. Her boyfriend, who we'll just call Ryan (I don't know what the rules are here do we have to use fake names? I'll just do it to be safe) started getting in fights with her. Verbal fights, not physical, (he's scrawnier than I am if that is possible). Now don’t get me wrong, this didn’t happen too often. Most of the time they were happy. But it happened enough. We (our common friends and I) had always wondered about their relationship, it seemed like an odd match. But again, I tried to be supportive, I tried to help her out. But it began wearing on me seeing her eyes all red and face all depressed when she would come down to the dungeons for choir practice at the end of the school day (yes dungeons, this is a poor, rural school). And then came March 8, 2017. This was our final math meet together, we were travelling to a town called Madawaska for the meet, which is well over an hour away from where we go to school. After the meet, I noticed she seemed really, really depressed. At one point, as we passed the halfway point on the return journey, she started to cry a little bit. Our common friend, an asexual girl who we'll call Julia, and I tried to comfort her, but she just claimed she was feeling ill. I was very tempted to tell her how I felt about her, in hopes of trying to make her happy, but I just couldn't do it. At least until that night.
That night I wrote her a letter, telling her everything, telling her how much I would miss her, telling her how I truly felt. Remember she still has a boyfriend. It takes me a whole day, but I finally work up the courage to send the email to her. This isn’t just some little love note. This is an honest-to-god ten pages single-spaced stayed up till 2 am writing it letter. She’s both my crush and my closest friend, so losing her is going to be terrible no matter what,. I see her the next morning (it is now friday the 10th) first period in English class (she took the senior english last year, and the junior english this year cuz of scheduling issues. my school sucks by the way). She didn't make eye contact with me at all, and slipped out of the room the moment the bell rang. I was terrified that I had ruined our friendship. I worried about that all along, but I justified it to myself saying a friendship like ours shouldn't have secrets. And I trusted her not to get mad.
Fast forward to fourth period that day. She catches me in the hall. I look into her eyes, and realize that she isn't mad at me. She tells me that there is something she's been writing for me and could I meet her after school to read it. I'm not sure what she's written, I assume that it's kind of a "you are a good friend, I'm really sorry, I liked you too a little, please don't be mad at me" sort of thing, cuz that's pretty much what she was most likely to do. I'm satisfied, as long as our friendship was intact.
Anyway, sixth and seventh period, spanish and chorus, she acts just like she always does (which is to say awesome), so I figure that nothing has changed. Then we get to the end of the day. I tell my parents some BS thing about a student council meeting (yes I'm on council as well I told you I'm a stereotypical nerd. At least I don't have nerdy glasses like my little brother).
Then we get to the end of the day. I meet her in the abandoned second floor hallway. She says, "remember on the bus a couple days ago when I told you that Ryan and I had never been just friends, and that I wrote a letter to him saying that I wouldn't wait forever and that that was how we got together?" She had indeed told me this, and indeed I remembered. "Well, that was a lie. What I actually wrote him was a goodbye. I felt that after all the [expletive] years I waited for him it was only right to say goodbye. I wrote him this letter because I had a major crush on you. It was only then he decided to do something. My letter to you has more detail, I really have to leave now."
My heart literally stopped. She's in tears now. I don't even bother to ask her why she still went with him, I was too stunned. When she left (no we didn't kiss, there's still the small problem of the other dude and I think she was feeling guilty enough as is) I literally sat there on a bench for like a half hour not moving, reading what she had written. My former math teacher saw me, tried to talk to me, I just made up some excuse to avoid him.
Do any of you listen to Mumford and Sons? There's a song called Little Lion Man. It goes something like this:
And it was not your fault but mine
And it was your heart on the line
I really [f bomb]-ed it up this time
Didn't I my dear...
Yeah that song literally played in my head for the whole weekend. I realized that I had made a mistake in not saying something to her sooner. If I had, she wouldn't have had all these fights with Ryan. If I had done something, we might have been together. And that made me really sad.
At the end of her letter, she asked for time to figure this out. Her brother had just gotten released from jail, her parents were getting ready for a messy divorce, though at the time they were still just fighting, a week or so after I wrote that email her brother threatened to kill her dad and commit suicide, she had to call the cops on him (how she, literally one of the smartest and kindest people I know, came from that family is a mystery), etc. So yeah, I was more than willing to give her time. Again, she is my friend first and foremost, I would be really selfish to push it.
And then, a couple weeks later, she came to our mutual friend Makayla and I in complete tears. Ryan barely seemed to notice her crying as he left school with his friends. "He's such an [expletive]" she sobbed. We tried to comfort her to no avail. She wrote me that night and told me she was going to break up with him. And I, ever the romantic genius, tried to figure out a way for them to stay together. I knew that in the end, Ryan was a good guy, they just didn’t quite fit together. If they could just last a few more months till they graduated, she would be happier, even if that meant I couldn't date her or go to prom with her or anything. I just wanted her to be happy. She didn't break up with him.
Then their relationship seemed fixed. I was simultaneously jealous and relieved. I just wanted her to be happy. It was wonderful. And then, April 3 happened. Earlier that day, I had kind of pseudo-apologized to her for all this, and we were at a weird point. She was going down with a bunch of the math team members to the state meet, and was waiting for the bus with some of the team. I couldn't go, I had prior things going on involving my Dad's boss, so obviously I couldn't skip out of that. I went down to the busroom to wish her off, and she said that the bus wouldn't come for awhile, and that she wanted to walk down to the front lobby of the school with me, where my mom would pick me up (I can't drive, alright, strict parents, as I established previously). My friend Jack snickered (don't blame him), but I obliged.
We walked in silence to the end of the hall, where we stopped. I saw my mom’s car waiting outside, and I told her I had to leave. It was then that she hugged me. Now, I know what you are thinking. “NO KISS?!”. Well shut up, I’ve been waiting 16 months for this, I was willing to take whatever I could get.
But since then she’s been actively trying to avoid the subject of what I wrote her last month. I don’t know what to make of this. She’s also seeming closer to Ryan than ever, and they’ve stopped fighting to the best of my knowledge. And yet when she’s with me and a couple of our friends, she’ll regularly call him an [expletive] and will talk about how he barely cares about her. Is she just taking pity on me? Is she telling the truth and just trying to last the year in hopes that I go to college with her (I haven’t picked my school yet).
Here’s the other problem: The school she’s going to is University of Southern Maine. Now for those of you outside of new england, that school is known for its music program, and its affordable tuition. She’s going for an accelerated 4+1 year masters program in statistics with a great scholarship, and stats is the same degree that I want to do. But the chances of me going there are slim. You see, I have a 1540 SAT score, and so I’ve got expectations on me to go somewhere bigger than a regional school. Somewhere like Dartmouth or Bowdoin are the two most likely (at least Bowdoin is only like a 45 minute Amtrak ride away from her school). Some of these expectations are my own, some are outsiders. Also, if I end up getting money from my wealthy oil VP grandfather (not that I expect that to happen), I’m definitely going to have to go to a bigger name school. Also, my parents really want to come with me to college, which would see my professor father quit his good job at the local college to work a bad job somewhere else at like a third of the salary, I keep telling them they dont have to do that for me, that I don't want them to, but they insist.
Now, I’ve already talked to some people about this whole situation before. I tried to get some more neutral output from some friends of mine on a tabletop gaming forum (remember, I’m a complete nerd. Tabletop gaming is my hobby.). Problem is that most of them are in their late 20s, some much older than that, and thus really don’t understand teens anymore. So that’s why I came here. I figure I can get some much more relevant advice from this corner.
Just to recap:
1. I told my crush of over a year how I felt.
2. She has a rocky relationship with another guy.
3. She asks for more time. During this more time I can tell she really does like me by how she acts.
4. She briefly seems to have decided in my favor.
5. She abruptly stops, and everything goes back to how it was before I said anything. She tries to avoid the topic.
6. (this I forgot to write in). She feels an obligation to her bfriend to take him to prom, she doesn't want to ruin his senior year.
7. I'm a year younger, she is going to a school I probably won't end up at.
So here’s my question:
What should I do now? Should I just go ahead and try to make her make a decision? Should I confront her? Should I just go for broke and kiss her? Should I just let her leave? Should I just wait for her to make a move? Should I be the one to get the ball rolling? Should I at least consider her moving forward? Should I just look elsewhere? (my problem here is that I’ve tried to forget her for a very long time and find someone else, and that failed miserably)
Thank you guys so much for any advice. Also I apologize for how long this is.
(also FYI, neither of us are really emotionally ready for sex at this stage in our lives, so keep that out of your advice please and thank you.)
Okay, so first things first there's a girl that I've had a crush on since November of 2015. We met in choir and math team a couple months before (hence my username, I'm a nerd and proud of it), and became really close friends over the past couple of years. There's just a couple problems as to why I didn't ask her out.
1. My parents are really weird about dating and probably wouldn't let me, though if I catch them at the right time they might. Let’s ignore #1 for right now.
2. She's a year older (i'm a junior now, she's a senior, yes that means she's graduating, going off to college at a school that I'm likely not going to)
3. Another guy asked her January 2016.
First and foremost she is my friend, and so I just decided to move on and try to support her in her relationship. I did a pretty good job for the first year. But then things started to go downhill with her relationship. Her boyfriend, who we'll just call Ryan (I don't know what the rules are here do we have to use fake names? I'll just do it to be safe) started getting in fights with her. Verbal fights, not physical, (he's scrawnier than I am if that is possible). Now don’t get me wrong, this didn’t happen too often. Most of the time they were happy. But it happened enough. We (our common friends and I) had always wondered about their relationship, it seemed like an odd match. But again, I tried to be supportive, I tried to help her out. But it began wearing on me seeing her eyes all red and face all depressed when she would come down to the dungeons for choir practice at the end of the school day (yes dungeons, this is a poor, rural school). And then came March 8, 2017. This was our final math meet together, we were travelling to a town called Madawaska for the meet, which is well over an hour away from where we go to school. After the meet, I noticed she seemed really, really depressed. At one point, as we passed the halfway point on the return journey, she started to cry a little bit. Our common friend, an asexual girl who we'll call Julia, and I tried to comfort her, but she just claimed she was feeling ill. I was very tempted to tell her how I felt about her, in hopes of trying to make her happy, but I just couldn't do it. At least until that night.
That night I wrote her a letter, telling her everything, telling her how much I would miss her, telling her how I truly felt. Remember she still has a boyfriend. It takes me a whole day, but I finally work up the courage to send the email to her. This isn’t just some little love note. This is an honest-to-god ten pages single-spaced stayed up till 2 am writing it letter. She’s both my crush and my closest friend, so losing her is going to be terrible no matter what,. I see her the next morning (it is now friday the 10th) first period in English class (she took the senior english last year, and the junior english this year cuz of scheduling issues. my school sucks by the way). She didn't make eye contact with me at all, and slipped out of the room the moment the bell rang. I was terrified that I had ruined our friendship. I worried about that all along, but I justified it to myself saying a friendship like ours shouldn't have secrets. And I trusted her not to get mad.
Fast forward to fourth period that day. She catches me in the hall. I look into her eyes, and realize that she isn't mad at me. She tells me that there is something she's been writing for me and could I meet her after school to read it. I'm not sure what she's written, I assume that it's kind of a "you are a good friend, I'm really sorry, I liked you too a little, please don't be mad at me" sort of thing, cuz that's pretty much what she was most likely to do. I'm satisfied, as long as our friendship was intact.
Anyway, sixth and seventh period, spanish and chorus, she acts just like she always does (which is to say awesome), so I figure that nothing has changed. Then we get to the end of the day. I tell my parents some BS thing about a student council meeting (yes I'm on council as well I told you I'm a stereotypical nerd. At least I don't have nerdy glasses like my little brother).
Then we get to the end of the day. I meet her in the abandoned second floor hallway. She says, "remember on the bus a couple days ago when I told you that Ryan and I had never been just friends, and that I wrote a letter to him saying that I wouldn't wait forever and that that was how we got together?" She had indeed told me this, and indeed I remembered. "Well, that was a lie. What I actually wrote him was a goodbye. I felt that after all the [expletive] years I waited for him it was only right to say goodbye. I wrote him this letter because I had a major crush on you. It was only then he decided to do something. My letter to you has more detail, I really have to leave now."
My heart literally stopped. She's in tears now. I don't even bother to ask her why she still went with him, I was too stunned. When she left (no we didn't kiss, there's still the small problem of the other dude and I think she was feeling guilty enough as is) I literally sat there on a bench for like a half hour not moving, reading what she had written. My former math teacher saw me, tried to talk to me, I just made up some excuse to avoid him.
Do any of you listen to Mumford and Sons? There's a song called Little Lion Man. It goes something like this:
And it was not your fault but mine
And it was your heart on the line
I really [f bomb]-ed it up this time
Didn't I my dear...
Yeah that song literally played in my head for the whole weekend. I realized that I had made a mistake in not saying something to her sooner. If I had, she wouldn't have had all these fights with Ryan. If I had done something, we might have been together. And that made me really sad.
At the end of her letter, she asked for time to figure this out. Her brother had just gotten released from jail, her parents were getting ready for a messy divorce, though at the time they were still just fighting, a week or so after I wrote that email her brother threatened to kill her dad and commit suicide, she had to call the cops on him (how she, literally one of the smartest and kindest people I know, came from that family is a mystery), etc. So yeah, I was more than willing to give her time. Again, she is my friend first and foremost, I would be really selfish to push it.
And then, a couple weeks later, she came to our mutual friend Makayla and I in complete tears. Ryan barely seemed to notice her crying as he left school with his friends. "He's such an [expletive]" she sobbed. We tried to comfort her to no avail. She wrote me that night and told me she was going to break up with him. And I, ever the romantic genius, tried to figure out a way for them to stay together. I knew that in the end, Ryan was a good guy, they just didn’t quite fit together. If they could just last a few more months till they graduated, she would be happier, even if that meant I couldn't date her or go to prom with her or anything. I just wanted her to be happy. She didn't break up with him.
Then their relationship seemed fixed. I was simultaneously jealous and relieved. I just wanted her to be happy. It was wonderful. And then, April 3 happened. Earlier that day, I had kind of pseudo-apologized to her for all this, and we were at a weird point. She was going down with a bunch of the math team members to the state meet, and was waiting for the bus with some of the team. I couldn't go, I had prior things going on involving my Dad's boss, so obviously I couldn't skip out of that. I went down to the busroom to wish her off, and she said that the bus wouldn't come for awhile, and that she wanted to walk down to the front lobby of the school with me, where my mom would pick me up (I can't drive, alright, strict parents, as I established previously). My friend Jack snickered (don't blame him), but I obliged.
We walked in silence to the end of the hall, where we stopped. I saw my mom’s car waiting outside, and I told her I had to leave. It was then that she hugged me. Now, I know what you are thinking. “NO KISS?!”. Well shut up, I’ve been waiting 16 months for this, I was willing to take whatever I could get.
But since then she’s been actively trying to avoid the subject of what I wrote her last month. I don’t know what to make of this. She’s also seeming closer to Ryan than ever, and they’ve stopped fighting to the best of my knowledge. And yet when she’s with me and a couple of our friends, she’ll regularly call him an [expletive] and will talk about how he barely cares about her. Is she just taking pity on me? Is she telling the truth and just trying to last the year in hopes that I go to college with her (I haven’t picked my school yet).
Here’s the other problem: The school she’s going to is University of Southern Maine. Now for those of you outside of new england, that school is known for its music program, and its affordable tuition. She’s going for an accelerated 4+1 year masters program in statistics with a great scholarship, and stats is the same degree that I want to do. But the chances of me going there are slim. You see, I have a 1540 SAT score, and so I’ve got expectations on me to go somewhere bigger than a regional school. Somewhere like Dartmouth or Bowdoin are the two most likely (at least Bowdoin is only like a 45 minute Amtrak ride away from her school). Some of these expectations are my own, some are outsiders. Also, if I end up getting money from my wealthy oil VP grandfather (not that I expect that to happen), I’m definitely going to have to go to a bigger name school. Also, my parents really want to come with me to college, which would see my professor father quit his good job at the local college to work a bad job somewhere else at like a third of the salary, I keep telling them they dont have to do that for me, that I don't want them to, but they insist.
Now, I’ve already talked to some people about this whole situation before. I tried to get some more neutral output from some friends of mine on a tabletop gaming forum (remember, I’m a complete nerd. Tabletop gaming is my hobby.). Problem is that most of them are in their late 20s, some much older than that, and thus really don’t understand teens anymore. So that’s why I came here. I figure I can get some much more relevant advice from this corner.
Just to recap:
1. I told my crush of over a year how I felt.
2. She has a rocky relationship with another guy.
3. She asks for more time. During this more time I can tell she really does like me by how she acts.
4. She briefly seems to have decided in my favor.
5. She abruptly stops, and everything goes back to how it was before I said anything. She tries to avoid the topic.
6. (this I forgot to write in). She feels an obligation to her bfriend to take him to prom, she doesn't want to ruin his senior year.
7. I'm a year younger, she is going to a school I probably won't end up at.
So here’s my question:
What should I do now? Should I just go ahead and try to make her make a decision? Should I confront her? Should I just go for broke and kiss her? Should I just let her leave? Should I just wait for her to make a move? Should I be the one to get the ball rolling? Should I at least consider her moving forward? Should I just look elsewhere? (my problem here is that I’ve tried to forget her for a very long time and find someone else, and that failed miserably)
Thank you guys so much for any advice. Also I apologize for how long this is.
(also FYI, neither of us are really emotionally ready for sex at this stage in our lives, so keep that out of your advice please and thank you.)