It can be really awkward and difficult to stay friends when one person has feelings and the other does not.
That is the situation one man found himself in. One of his friends admitted she was into him, and he made it clear he was not interested in anything romantic. You would think they could move past that and stay platonic. But instead, her behavior started making him increasingly uncomfortable. She kept ignoring his boundaries, acted possessive, and eventually left him uneasy enough to cut ties.
The hardest part is that she is disabled, and now he fears ending the friendship may have left her with no one else to lean on. Struggling with guilt, he turned to Reddit to ask whether he did the right thing.
Read the full story below.
The man decided to cut ties with his friend after she admitted she was into him and would not stop making him uncomfortable
Image credits: Vitaly Gariev (not the actual photo)
But because she is disabled, he is now struggling with guilt over the thought that she may have no other friends
Image credits: Getty Images (not the actual photo)
Image source: indyjonesjunior
Almost everyone experiences unrequited love at some point in their lives
Image credits: Getty Images (not the actual photo)
Unrequited love. Poets have sung about it for centuries, writers have devoted entire novels to it, and filmmakers keep returning to it like they can’t help themselves. From Laurie and Jo in Little Women, who seemed like the perfect pair but weren’t, to Eponine and Marius in Les Misérables, whose feelings only ever ran one way, it’s a trope that keeps on giving.
Perhaps it’s such an enduring theme precisely because of how often it happens in real life. Who hasn’t had at least one unreciprocated crush? Researchers have found that roughly 98 percent of the population has been on one or both sides of unrequited love at some point, and some studies suggest it’s four times more common than love that goes both ways.
Despite how painful it tends to be, unrequited love is usually less emotionally intense than mutual love—probably because there’s a ceiling to what you can do with feelings that have nowhere to go. When love is returned, it has room to grow into something real.
It’s probably unsurprising, then, that these feelings so often grow out of platonic friendships. If you spend a lot of time with someone you think is genuinely wonderful, well—why wouldn’t you start to feel something more?
The question is, can a friendship survive unreturned feelings?
Image credits: Blake Silva (not the actual photo)
Of course, one of the hardest things about developing feelings for a friend is that there’s so much more to lose—not just the chance of something more, but the friendship itself.
In the story described here, things didn’t go well after the woman told the author she was interested in him. Though the admission itself wasn’t really the problem. It was what came after. She kept pursuing him even after he’d set his boundaries and grew increasingly possessive, which is what ultimately made things so uncomfortable.
Still, does it always have to go that way? According to research by Michael Motley, a professor of communication at the University of California, Davis, unrequited feelings don’t have to sink a friendship.
“When romantic attraction is disclosed and rejected within a friendship, the result is virtually always awkwardness and embarrassment for both partners, and usually this causes the friendship to end,” Motley said. “But certain behaviors and conditions allow some friends to handle the initial awkwardness, put the episode behind them, and reestablish a mutual friendship.”
After analyzing hundreds of interviews with college students, Motley found that friendships were more likely to survive when both people accepted the situation, made it clear they still valued the friendship, and stopped dwelling on the rejection.
It also helped when they returned to their usual way of talking and spending time together, instead of pulling away completely. Being open about new romantic interests and having a strong friendship before the confession also made a difference.
He also identified several important “don’ts.” The friend who does not return the feelings should not tell other people about the confession or invent a fake love interest to soften the rejection. The friend with romantic feelings, meanwhile, needs to ease up on the flirting.
In this case, the friendship did not seem to have much chance of recovering. The woman kept doing exactly the kinds of things that make these situations harder to move past. That is likely why the man eventually decided to cut ties.
Her disability and isolation do make the situation sadder. But those were not the reason the friendship ended. What pushed him away was her behavior and her refusal to respect the boundaries he set.
So yes, friendships can survive unrequited love. This one just could not.
In the comments, the author shared more details about the situation
Readers said it was sad he had to cut her off, but thought it was the healthiest choice he could make
