Friendship implies that there’s absolutely no romantic relationship at all, no feelings or romantic attraction to each other either—no hookups, no desire to be with one another, totally platonic. That’s why, if I have feelings for a man, I can’t be “just friends” with him.
- If he’s still in my life I’ll never get over him. I need someone to be out of sight if they’re ever going to be out of mind. If I’m still seeing him on a regular basis then my heart won’t have the space it needs to heal. Instead, the more time I spend with him, the more I’ll fall for him. I’m just going to dig myself into a hole so deep that I’ll never be able to climb my way out. It might sound harsh, but if I really want to move on, I need him out of my life for good.
- Every time he meets a girl, my heart will break a little more. Why choose to stay friends with someone if that friendship is going to cause me so much pain? If I see him out with someone else or if even worse he tries to introduce me to these amazing women, I’ll be absolutely heartbroken. I’ll want to know what they have that I don’t and in the end, I’ll just be down on myself wondering why the hell he likes her and not me.
- I have enough guy friends already. I’m not the type of person to like having a lot of friends in the first place. I’d rather have just a few really good friends than a lot of okay friends. So I’m not going to fill up even more of my free time on a guy I like who only wants to be my friend. I’m going to devote that time to my real friends and an extra time goes to finding a guy who actually likes me back.
- If the friendship is going to last, it has to be 100 percent platonic. I don’t have a history of hooking up with my guy friends. I like to keep some sort of boundaries when it comes to my friendships so pretending like we’re just friends when I want something more just feels wrong. I’d feel like I was lying to him and even worse, lying to myself. Eventually, I’d tell him how I feel and we’d either end up together or our friendship would be ruined. I’d rather put my feelings out there from the beginning than waste time on a friendship that was never going to last.
- I won’t be able to be myself around him. I’ll always be trying to impress him. I’ll walk around acting like I have something to prove. If we were perfect strangers I could be myself even if I felt a spark, but knowing that he doesn’t have feelings for me when I have them for him would ruin my entire demeanor. Instead of being myself, I’d try to be a girl he’d actually want.
- I would never want to make the rest of my friends uncomfortable. If he’s friends with me then eventually he’ll become part of my friend group and once he’s in, I can’t ask them to kick him out just because I’m uncomfortable. Even if I try to cut him out of my life, my friends have every right to invite him out too. So the future either involves me ending our friendship or being forced to stay in each other’s lives because we now have mutual friends.
- He’ll never be able to lean on me. True friendship is about being there for someone when they need you, but if he’s having relationship issues or gets his heartbroken I won’t be able to handle that. I can’t be the shoulder he cries on and I can’t give an unbiased opinion. At the end of the day, I can’t be a good friend because no matter how hard I try I don’t look at him as just a friend.
- That friendship will prevent me from finding the man I’m meant to be with. If I’m holding out for a guy who’s clearly not interested, then that’s keeping me from finding a man who is. I’m taking myself out of the game on the off chance that he’ll change his mind about me. I’d compare every guy I met to him. No one would have a clean slate because as my record shows, I can only focus on one man at a time.
- Every time he asks me to hang, I’ll try to turn it into a date. We’ll never be able to just chill because I’ll always try to sit close, flirt in any way I can, and hope that all my efforts make him see that we’re not just friends. We can’t just hang out or go out as friends because I don’t see us as just friends. Anytime we’re together I’ll be wishing it was a date and I’ll do anything in my power to make it one.
- My jealousy will get the best of me. When he introduces me to the women in his life, I won’t know how to be nice to them. I won’t be able to make friends because, at the end of the day, I’ll want what they have. My green-eyed monster will come out and I won’t know how to put it back in its cage. I’ll want to be happy for him, but I’ll be wishing he could just be happy with me.
- Even moving on would be awkward AF. Say I do manage to meet someone else. If a man I have/had feelings for is still in my life then keeping that fact a secret from my new boyfriend would just feel like deception. At the same time, it wouldn’t be fair to make the new man in my life worry about the old one. So for the sake of my future relationships, it’s better if I leave the men I’ve had feelings for in the past.
- I’ll always hope that someday he’ll want more. The problem here is that if he’s still around, I’m never going to give up. I might pretend like I’m cool with just being friends and that I’ll put my feelings aside, but I won’t. I’d just be living a lie because the whole time he’d be thinking we were buddies when really I was hoping he’d change his mind. We would never be just friends because no matter what I’d just keep holding out for the day when we could be more.
