Leaving the Drama Behind

Dear Bro Jo,

So I heard about your blog today and totally jumped at the opportunity to email you. I am in desperate need of some advice.

Buckle up because this is going to be a long ride. There is a lot of information that you need to know first.

A little over a year ago I met this guy. I met him though my best friend who told him to ask me to the homecoming dance. It was my senior year and his junior year. He was the new guy in town and I had never officially met him before the day of the dance. The dance was super fun and we hit it off really well. We became good friends and right off the bat I had a crush on him. I hung out with him and our other friend quite frequently. There were parts of me that thought he liked me as well but assumed that maybe he never did anything about it because our other friend liked me a lot. That was frustrating. But I thought I would rather just be friends with him than nothing so we continued to hang out. Even though I have had more people than I can even count who have asked me if we were dating or who have made comments about how we are a cute couple (we are not a couple).

Over the course of the year that I have known him I have felt like I have known him forever... I have always felt that there was a "special connection", almost, between us. It's kinda weird to describe. Ever since I met him I have had at least four dreams about him and then a few days later those dreams come true... super trippy but way cool.

He is and has been a member of the church all his life. But for the past several years he has been dealing with substance abuse problems and dealing with the passing away of his mom.

I have been there for him for everything. And he has been there for me. I would be one of the only ones to visit him the multiple times he has ended up in the hospital. He would come to my house in the middle of the night when his dad and step mom were fighting. I have tried to help him in the best way I could, to help him get over his substance abuse problems.

We tell each other EVERYTHING.

It wasn't until it was time for me to leave for college that I realized that I actually love him. I care about him more than I have ever cared about anyone else. I would do anything for him.

When I left I honestly didn't know how our "friendship" would end up because he is still in High School. But it seems to have made it better. He goes out of his way to call me just to talk when usually I would have to be the one doing that. He told me that if any guy hurts me that he would come chase him down with a shot gun.
At one point I asked him a silly question like if I make funny faces when I talk because some of my friends in college had been commenting on my facial expressions. His reply was that I do. He went on to tell me how he has my smiles and facial expressions memorized like the back of his hand...

Well a few weeks ago I felt impressed to write him a letter(and this is not the first letter I have written to him) about the things he is "doing wrong" and give my insight based on my scriptural knowledge and so forth. In this long letter I started off by telling him how I realized that I love him.

Note* that I love him, I don't think I am ready to say "in love" with him.

I didn't hear from him for about two weeks or so.(He never responds back to my letters but he had never before just stopped talking to me) I was devastated because I thought I ruined our friendship. But when I went back home for the Thanksgiving break something changed. He asked if I wanted to hang out so we made plans to go to a movie. Then he calls me back saying he is really sorry because he can’t go because he had asked a girl on a date earlier that morning but it wasn't until just now that she said she wanted to go. I said that it was fine and we could do something another time. Then I went to a play, during the play I left my phone in the car. When I got to my phone I had 5 text messages, 3 missed calls, and 1 voicemail from him. He had canceled his date. In one of the texts he said that he felt like an idiot for canceling his plans to hang out with his best friend who is ignoring him now. We ended up hanging out and all was grand. Then he also replies back to my latest letter I wrote him saying how much he loved it and how he will keep it forever along with the other ones I had written him. He went on to say other things like how much I had helped him and so on and so forth. But no mention of me telling him how I felt about him.

This is the extremely condensed version of our super confusing relationship.

So I guess my question is..... Am I really just his best friend? What in the world are his intentions? This boy is the complete definition of confusing.

Sincerely,

Desperately in need of clarification



Dear Desperately,

I dream of a time when Girls are Less Confusing than Boys . . . but I doubt that will ever be the case!

None-the-less, I understand your struggles. Let me shed a little light if I may.

This guy is no less confused than you are. Are you a Girlfriend? Are you a buddy? Are you his mother?

Dare I suggest that you don't know either?

I think that's why it's so complicated.

For the both of you.

You say you love him but you're not ready to say that you're "in-love" with him (very astute, by the way), so let me ask: what is it that you love?

The attention? Who doesn't want to be adored, right? He says he thinks about you all the time, and that makes you feel attractive. Totally normal, by the way.

Is it that you think you can help him? Save him in some way? Perhaps because of your relationship he'll get his act together, right? Also normal, but slightly dangerous. It's very right to want to help people; it's not such a good idea to confuse being your brother's keeper with attraction.

To be honest, I don't think he thinks of you as a "best friend"; it's much more likely that he's attracted to you, and that attraction is amplified by his perception of your concern for his wellbeing.  You may not think you're a couple, but I'll bet he does.

Perhaps he told you he had a date because he wanted to make you angry or jealous. Perhaps he really had a date and then broke it because he felt it would be smarter to spend time with you. Perhaps he had a date and she cancelled so he turned to you as his Consoler and Consolation Prize.

Ultimately I don't think it matters. I think all of this is a bit more Drama and Complication than you need in your life right now.

I say you should still be nice to this guy. If you're home from school and he wants to take you out on a date, if you feel like going, if you can make him stick to the Dating Rules, AND if you can be sure to keep things very Casual between you, then fine (but notice that those are a lot of "ifs").

You're in College; he's a little High School Boy with A LOT of baggage; focus on the Return Missionaries and step into the next phase of your Dating Life.

You're at the point now where you can move from Dating Boys to having Relationships with Men.

Congratulations!

Enjoy!

Focus on finding one who's ready to treat you as the center of his universe for Time and All Eternity.

- Bro Jo