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Girl who is a [Friend Thread]
Altalicious
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Or more precisely, 'girl who was a friend thread'. This may be a girl thread, it may not be - it is up to you the reader to decide, much like those old adventure multi-choice books wherein you were always eaten by a bilebeast until you decided that you had actually meant turn to pg 76. But I digress.
Please keep in mind several things if you bother to read this. One, this is (surprise!) an alt. Two, it concerns myself, who we shall call I, and a friend, who we shall call Suzie, because that actually is her name, seeing as there is about a zero chance that anyone involved will ever meet anyone reading this. Three, the characters are all Britishers, so various more American courses of action sometimes suggested here may not be applicable – e.g. bowling, religion, or talking about emotions. Finally our ages - I am 29 and Suzie is 28, high-school advice may not apply. We have known each other for abour 10 years. Preamble over.
In the interests of TL : DR, below follows the background of the time I’ve known this girl - which I would imagine is quite important to figure out what the hell is going on, much though it has helped me do so...
The Present Day
Well, About A Year Ago
About a year ago, I invited Suzie to a family house in Italy, where I was staying for a couple of months before starting a the new job – I was doing an ‘open house’ idea, inviting lots of friends to come at random, and told her there might be other people there too. For the week she came, there were indeed some other friends there, and some girls they had brought along on the road trip. These guys were a few years younger than us, and there was quite a lot of random drinking / naked swimming type activity. I had a brief fling with one of the girls on the road trip, and though Suzie was included in all of it (and almost had her own fling with one of my friends) and said all was fine, I got the sense that she wasn’t 100% impressed or happy. The weather turned a few days before she was due to leave, and she got an early flight back, ostensibly for work reasons.
When I got back, I was starting the new job, and didn’t talk to her again for a little over a month – bear in mind, we had often not seen or talked to each other for weeks in the previous years, had gone an entire year after university without talking, and had picked up everything as normal afterwards; we are both fiercely independent, and accepted the other’s space. When I finally did call her again, there was no reply. Nor email. I got worried, and when I finally did get her from a landline-landline call, she put the phone down. Eventually I badgered a short email out of her which essentially said: I feel like we are growing apart, we don’t have anything in common anymore, that you are going to be busy with the new job, and I don’t think we should be friends anymore. I wrote back saying we never had anything in common in the first place but were still friends for 10 years, that I didn’t want to lose her, and then let it go at that. Since then, I have sent her messages at Christmas, New Year, and on her birthday – simply to let her know that I’m not going to forget her that easily.
Several months ago, I got a text on my birthday from an unknown phone saying: Happy Birthday x. Away on the job, I called the unrecognised number back a week and a half later, and said:
“Hi who is that ?â€
“It’s Suzie, who’s that - is that Will?â€
“Suze…no, it’s [me]…remember, we used to be friends…â€
She hangs up. Utter confusion. The text came from a different number from any I had ever had for her, so it couldn’t simply be an old phone sending some kind of automatic greeting. For that matter, nobody I’ve talked to has ever heard of an automatic greeting feature. It was sent at 9:34pm on the night of my birthday, so doesn’t look particularly automated. Clearly my number wasn’t in her phone, since the name didn’t come up when she answered it (I have the same phone number as before). I can only conclude that she intentionally entered my number and the message Happy Birthday x on my birthday at 9:34pm and sent it. And then hung up when I replied. I sent a message after she hung up apologising that I couldn’t have answered sooner for work reasons, that it was great to hear from her, and that if she did want to talk, she knew where I was. And since then, again silence.
The Present Day
No, Really
I am once again entirely confusion. I still think that the act of actively breaking off a long friendship in the way she did is somewhat traumatic behaviour, most people (including her, as I had seen her do to another friend before) being content to simply let it trail off, and let the other person do something to try and make it work again. I do not know whether it was from latent dissatisfaction with our friendship, or even wanting it to go further and finally deciding that I wasn’t worth waiting around for (which was the interpretation of various friends). I don’t quite understand why, at the point that I actually took a more admirable, responsible, and generally-more-like-her path in life, she seemed to think we were growing apart and having less in common. Most of all, I have no fucking clue why she would make contact in such a bizarre way then totally ignore me again.
I finally have the opportunity to try and talk to her face to face – I know she still lives in the same place, and can get a free day in town to go sit at the pub outside her place and catch her when she comes back from work. Lest this sound stalkerish, I feel I have been utterly restrained in obeying her wish to break contact (3 texts over the course of a year to send birthday and Xmas greetings hardly constitute a restraining order), but since she actually made contact with me this time, want to try and find out what the hell is going on – which I don’t think is unreasonable after 10 years friendship.
So, H/A…pronounce verdictz. I loathe this kind of internet personal disclosure but have finally been brought low with a problem I find terminally inscrutable. What the hell is going on?
Please keep in mind several things if you bother to read this. One, this is (surprise!) an alt. Two, it concerns myself, who we shall call I, and a friend, who we shall call Suzie, because that actually is her name, seeing as there is about a zero chance that anyone involved will ever meet anyone reading this. Three, the characters are all Britishers, so various more American courses of action sometimes suggested here may not be applicable – e.g. bowling, religion, or talking about emotions. Finally our ages - I am 29 and Suzie is 28, high-school advice may not apply. We have known each other for abour 10 years. Preamble over.
In the interests of TL : DR, below follows the background of the time I’ve known this girl - which I would imagine is quite important to figure out what the hell is going on, much though it has helped me do so...
Episode I. Or possibly IV.
Suzie and I met at university, living in the same halls for our first year. Despite a mild attraction in our more drunken moments, we never had teh sex or even teh drunken fondling, and for pretty much our entire time at uni, one of us was always seeing someone else. We did hit it off & become close friends however, even though we are (were) vastly differing personalities – she the responsible, level headed, knew-exactly-what-she-wanted-and-took-no-shit type studying Geography & Anthropology, and I the more changeable, wild ideas, always-directing-some-impossible-project-to-salve-low-grade-megalomania, unconcerned by his English & Music degree type. Stayed friends throughout entire time at university, when – as I’m sure plenty of people here know – our other ‘1st year’ friends went the way of the dodo.
After university, we went separate ways for about a year, both of us into new things and so on, and didn’t really speak at all. In the end, Suzie phones me up and we meet up, all as it was before. We regularly meet up for drinks, go to the cinema, dinner, etc etc. Though we have each briefly met friends of the other, we have otherwise entirely different social circles, so no real mutual friends. For about 4 years, this remains the pattern. During this time, I’m working my way through various low-paying jobs while she is on high-flying corporate City type salary, and she is always extremely gracious about it – only going out places I cannot afford if she is fine about paying for it, etc. We do Easter lunch and similar things together each year. She sees me go through a variety of temporary relationships, and I see her do the same – she was going out with one long-term boyfriend for the two years post university (ie the year we didn’t see each other, and about a year afterwards) but he is more or less a complete disaster and very possibly not actually into the wimminz, she dumps him and he is resigned to the running joke bin.
Throughout these years, there are a few little signs that something more than friendship may be going on here. Occasional odd phrases when talking about girl/boyfriends or relationships, and the like – equally I could easily have misinterpreted or imagined things. I do know that sometimes I wondered what us together would be like – but usually in down moments, after one of the aforementioned temp relationships, and so on. Various of my friends (female & male) would often tell me that Suzie & I should be together, but as I said above, they didn’t really know her, so that is no indication of how she felt.
Two years ago, I got a shot at a great job which was entirely different to anything else I’ve done. It took a year getting through the application process, but doing so significantly changed (perhaps matured) me – in fact, I became much more like Suzie than I had been – and in the end got the job…Suzie was initially surprised by the choice, but explicitly noticed & said she liked the change. Downside is that I have essentially moved (only in UK terms bear in mind, which means about 2 hours journey away) but more importantly have effectively zero free time and can look forward to being moved around and travelling a lot for the next 5 years or so. Quitting this job is not an option.
Which brings us to…
Suzie and I met at university, living in the same halls for our first year. Despite a mild attraction in our more drunken moments, we never had teh sex or even teh drunken fondling, and for pretty much our entire time at uni, one of us was always seeing someone else. We did hit it off & become close friends however, even though we are (were) vastly differing personalities – she the responsible, level headed, knew-exactly-what-she-wanted-and-took-no-shit type studying Geography & Anthropology, and I the more changeable, wild ideas, always-directing-some-impossible-project-to-salve-low-grade-megalomania, unconcerned by his English & Music degree type. Stayed friends throughout entire time at university, when – as I’m sure plenty of people here know – our other ‘1st year’ friends went the way of the dodo.
After university, we went separate ways for about a year, both of us into new things and so on, and didn’t really speak at all. In the end, Suzie phones me up and we meet up, all as it was before. We regularly meet up for drinks, go to the cinema, dinner, etc etc. Though we have each briefly met friends of the other, we have otherwise entirely different social circles, so no real mutual friends. For about 4 years, this remains the pattern. During this time, I’m working my way through various low-paying jobs while she is on high-flying corporate City type salary, and she is always extremely gracious about it – only going out places I cannot afford if she is fine about paying for it, etc. We do Easter lunch and similar things together each year. She sees me go through a variety of temporary relationships, and I see her do the same – she was going out with one long-term boyfriend for the two years post university (ie the year we didn’t see each other, and about a year afterwards) but he is more or less a complete disaster and very possibly not actually into the wimminz, she dumps him and he is resigned to the running joke bin.
Throughout these years, there are a few little signs that something more than friendship may be going on here. Occasional odd phrases when talking about girl/boyfriends or relationships, and the like – equally I could easily have misinterpreted or imagined things. I do know that sometimes I wondered what us together would be like – but usually in down moments, after one of the aforementioned temp relationships, and so on. Various of my friends (female & male) would often tell me that Suzie & I should be together, but as I said above, they didn’t really know her, so that is no indication of how she felt.
Two years ago, I got a shot at a great job which was entirely different to anything else I’ve done. It took a year getting through the application process, but doing so significantly changed (perhaps matured) me – in fact, I became much more like Suzie than I had been – and in the end got the job…Suzie was initially surprised by the choice, but explicitly noticed & said she liked the change. Downside is that I have essentially moved (only in UK terms bear in mind, which means about 2 hours journey away) but more importantly have effectively zero free time and can look forward to being moved around and travelling a lot for the next 5 years or so. Quitting this job is not an option.
Which brings us to…
The Present Day
Well, About A Year Ago
About a year ago, I invited Suzie to a family house in Italy, where I was staying for a couple of months before starting a the new job – I was doing an ‘open house’ idea, inviting lots of friends to come at random, and told her there might be other people there too. For the week she came, there were indeed some other friends there, and some girls they had brought along on the road trip. These guys were a few years younger than us, and there was quite a lot of random drinking / naked swimming type activity. I had a brief fling with one of the girls on the road trip, and though Suzie was included in all of it (and almost had her own fling with one of my friends) and said all was fine, I got the sense that she wasn’t 100% impressed or happy. The weather turned a few days before she was due to leave, and she got an early flight back, ostensibly for work reasons.
When I got back, I was starting the new job, and didn’t talk to her again for a little over a month – bear in mind, we had often not seen or talked to each other for weeks in the previous years, had gone an entire year after university without talking, and had picked up everything as normal afterwards; we are both fiercely independent, and accepted the other’s space. When I finally did call her again, there was no reply. Nor email. I got worried, and when I finally did get her from a landline-landline call, she put the phone down. Eventually I badgered a short email out of her which essentially said: I feel like we are growing apart, we don’t have anything in common anymore, that you are going to be busy with the new job, and I don’t think we should be friends anymore. I wrote back saying we never had anything in common in the first place but were still friends for 10 years, that I didn’t want to lose her, and then let it go at that. Since then, I have sent her messages at Christmas, New Year, and on her birthday – simply to let her know that I’m not going to forget her that easily.
Several months ago, I got a text on my birthday from an unknown phone saying: Happy Birthday x. Away on the job, I called the unrecognised number back a week and a half later, and said:
“Hi who is that ?â€
“It’s Suzie, who’s that - is that Will?â€
“Suze…no, it’s [me]…remember, we used to be friends…â€
She hangs up. Utter confusion. The text came from a different number from any I had ever had for her, so it couldn’t simply be an old phone sending some kind of automatic greeting. For that matter, nobody I’ve talked to has ever heard of an automatic greeting feature. It was sent at 9:34pm on the night of my birthday, so doesn’t look particularly automated. Clearly my number wasn’t in her phone, since the name didn’t come up when she answered it (I have the same phone number as before). I can only conclude that she intentionally entered my number and the message Happy Birthday x on my birthday at 9:34pm and sent it. And then hung up when I replied. I sent a message after she hung up apologising that I couldn’t have answered sooner for work reasons, that it was great to hear from her, and that if she did want to talk, she knew where I was. And since then, again silence.
The Present Day
No, Really
I am once again entirely confusion. I still think that the act of actively breaking off a long friendship in the way she did is somewhat traumatic behaviour, most people (including her, as I had seen her do to another friend before) being content to simply let it trail off, and let the other person do something to try and make it work again. I do not know whether it was from latent dissatisfaction with our friendship, or even wanting it to go further and finally deciding that I wasn’t worth waiting around for (which was the interpretation of various friends). I don’t quite understand why, at the point that I actually took a more admirable, responsible, and generally-more-like-her path in life, she seemed to think we were growing apart and having less in common. Most of all, I have no fucking clue why she would make contact in such a bizarre way then totally ignore me again.
I finally have the opportunity to try and talk to her face to face – I know she still lives in the same place, and can get a free day in town to go sit at the pub outside her place and catch her when she comes back from work. Lest this sound stalkerish, I feel I have been utterly restrained in obeying her wish to break contact (3 texts over the course of a year to send birthday and Xmas greetings hardly constitute a restraining order), but since she actually made contact with me this time, want to try and find out what the hell is going on – which I don’t think is unreasonable after 10 years friendship.
So, H/A…pronounce verdictz. I loathe this kind of internet personal disclosure but have finally been brought low with a problem I find terminally inscrutable. What the hell is going on?
[Postscript] For my part, I often think about her, and do – in fact, did while we were friends – genuinely love this girl…whether that is only as a friend, or more, I honestly do not know. However, I find myself in the position where I am looking at a life-consuming job for the next 3-5 years, minimal opportunity to meet anyone outside it, and the more I think about it, the more I feel that I’ve lost the one woman who I stood a genuine chance of putting up with my shit and visa-versa, the more I feel like I should actually have turned to pg 76. Porcupines mate very carefully…if they mate at all?
Altalicious on
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Maybe you could talk to a friend of hers? I know you have no mutual friends, but it might be worth a shot.
I hope it all works out.
Which was the only contact in two years...
Do I have that straight?
10 years is a long time dude but so is two years of no speaking.
If you honestly feel this girl would even appreaciate your trying to get back in her life at this point go for it. I think the amount of time we're talking about here put this kind of scenario in it's own catergory.
Usually I'd say it's long gone but 10 is a significant amount of time.
You should write her a letter explaining how you feel. That you want her in your life and hope she feels the same way. Explain that you love her as a friend and maybe more than that but be honest about the "maybe more" part. Write that you hope to hear from hear but DO NOT put a deadline on it.
A letter has several advantages to phoning or setting up an "ambush" to talk to her face to face. One is that it lets say everything you want to say without going shy/stupid in the middle of a sentence and another is that the receiver gets to take it all in at their own pace. They can thing instead of having to react. Remember if you contact someone without them being prepared you may catch the person at a bad time.
The one disadvantage to writing a letter is that one can never be sure of getting an answer (also if using regular post one can't be sure the letter actually arrives but that is solved by hand carrying it to her letterbox).
One observation. The whole "not able to call back right away because of work". Unless you work in a sub marine which you don't since you did get the text message just fine that is just plain disrespectful. You need to get back to her quickly if she contacts you again instead of making excuses. If you can't call within normal hours then at least send a text message saying that and tell when you can call.
Tried that - unfortunately, the only friends of hers I knew are now not friends of hers anymore (from university days mostly), and the only friend of mine who knew her enough to get in touch has had no response.
Which is what I thought, until I got her text a few months ago. Without thatone thing, this is would all be fairly simple and I would be reading the writing on the wall.
And I got the text from her in August, she cut off contact last September. So it's been one year, not two.
EDIT:
If you use your imagination, I'm sure you can come up with plenty of jobs aside from sub marine where one would be uncontactable by mobile phone for a few weeks (Facebook, perhaps less so) not to mention that plenty of businesspeople nowaday carry multiple mobile phones - one for the country / region they are travelling to, and one for when they are back at home. There are times when I genuinely do not get messages for a few weeks, and there is nothing I can do about that.
The letter is a good suggestion that I have considered previously, but I know how stubborn she is, and my guess would be that a letter is too easy to avoid replying to, or simply chuck in the bin.
If you think she'll just chuck it in the bin, you might be out of luck. If she doesn't want to talk to you, you can't really force her.
Write her a letter as others have suggested. I would certainly NOT profess your 'maybe' love for her in this letter, just ask her what happened, and if theres any way you can open communication back up. Then leave the ball in her court. No response? Then move on, and let it go.
To quote Doc Brown
"To the future"
There are two basic possibilities here.
1) She regrets breaking contact and wants to hold strong to it but sent you that text message in a moment of weakness. She hung up because she got freaked out that you called her back.
2) She HAS broken contact, doesn't think about you, and there is another reason that text got to you. She hung up because she didn't expect to hear your voice and it seemed stalker-ish.
Either way, though, it's just not worth it. If she does want you back in her life, she is being passive aggressive and dramatic and incredible wishy-washy about it and ultimately, she's made it clear that no matter how she might feel, she's not going to act like an adult on those feelings, so fuck it.
If she doesn't want you back in her life, move on. You're 29. I have a hard time believing you have no shot at meeting someone new. I don't know what your job is like but there are still avenues to meet new people. Hell, if you meet a single woman who's also around your age, she is likely career-consumed as well and she'd be more accommodating of your own busy schedule.
People DO grow apart. Whether this is something she said to throw at you to get rid of you, or whether this is fact, your lives have at least drifted apart. If you want to salvage your friendship because it means that much to you then sure, go ahead and make the attempt, but I would certainly not count on dating her, nor would I hold out hope for an encounter that goes positively.
Does she owe you an explanation? Yes and no. Yes because you were once so close. No because as far as SHE's concerned, she's already given one. You can either respect that she's being honest with you and take it at face value, or you can assume she is lying because of how trite she was at breaking contact with you and because of the text.
Ultimately it comes down to what you feel is more worth your time and it's up to you. Me? In your situation I'd just let things lie, but that's just because I'm a dramaphobic and my view tends to be that if my friend tells me something serious, I'm going to assume they are being honest because they are my friend and I trust my friends to be up front with me.
If they're not being up front and get all bitter about it later, the fault's not mine, there is no guilt no me; they should've just told me straight-up what the problem was from the get-go.
Life is a series of "hellos" and "goodbyes." I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again.
(Seriously, though, people change and grow together and apart and sometimes back together and sometimes not. There are three billion women on the planet and while none of them have a 10-year friendship with you, the odds are that at least a few of them are pretty great. Broaden your horizons).