Being single long-term is a challenge. Sometimes it’s awesome to be so free, and sometimes it sucks because loneliness is no picnic. At a certain point, we unwittingly take on the identity of “single af,” which just means that we’ve accepted our single status and aren’t in a hurry to change it. When you’re single AF and suddenly meet someone interesting, there are some thoughts you’re likely to have.
- He seems great as a friend. This thought is the start of the great denial stage, in which you’re unable to imagine having a romantic relationship with anyone so they all get thrown in the wildly confusing “friends” category. Deep down, you know it could be more but admitting it would be too scary.
- We have so much in common. It’s just because we’re going to be such good friends, of course. The more similarities we discover, the more we want to be around him, but we keep on telling ourselves that it’s just a friendship.
- I shouldn’t be thinking this way about a friend. On the other hand, it could be construed as a perfectly normal friend thing to notice his handsome smile and amazing eyes, right? Well, no, not really. If you’ve been imagining him in ways you don’t typically think of your friends, you probably can’t be just friends.
- Those aren’t butterflies in my stomach; it’s just the burrito. It’s unsettling when you start to feel the butterflies after they’ve been noticeably absent for a while. It’s tempting to pass them off as anything other than what they are: feelings.
- Oh crap… I think I like him. At a certain point, even the most single of us has to admit that we’re shockingly still capable of having feelings for someone. Once we’ve admitted that to ourselves, we inevitably ask “what’s next?”
- What should I do? It’s a tough decision to make, because feelings don’t just go away if you ignore them. That leaves us with the options of telling him and risking rejection or suffering in silence.
- I’m not ready for this. We were comfortable sipping wine in our sweatpants and watching Netflix; we didn’t ask for feelings! The thought of dating again is really daunting when you’ve been rolling solo for a long time.
- Let’s just tiptoe in slowly and hope for the best. When you’ve been on dating hiatus for a while, it can be hard to commit to trying again, so it’s easiest to take baby steps and not jump into anything too quickly. If he’s worth your time, he’ll be okay with taking things slowly.
