Dear Selina:

I want to summarize your story because it helps me process information when I do that: you’ve known your friend for 23 years, ever since you were 8. Ten years ago (you were 21), your friend experienced her first breakup and you “gave her emotional support by staying up all night on the phone with her“. At that time, you also “started developing romantic feelings for her“. Following that first breakup, she had a series of relationships with men who used her for sex, “going through cycles of getting hurt, used, and tossed away… degraded herself over and over again“.

During her first breakup, although she is a straight woman (and you are a lesbian), “she often would say things that indicated she was questioning her sexuality“, and a few years later, while in a toxic relationship with a guy, she started to gaslight, belittle and emotionally abuse you, and you lost your feelings for her.

Six years ago, in 2016, you moved west where she lives, spent time with her on a frequent basis, and your feelings for her returned: “I found beauty in things she never even noticed nor knew about herself. Like her confused face, the way she looks when she’s in deep thought… I fell for her core essence and her mind“.

After trying your best to hide your feelings for her, at one point, you told her, and her response indicated that “the feelings were one sided“. You ghosted her, reconnected later, and she told you in regard to your past romantic interest in her, that “she felt ‘violated’ and felt like her sister coming onto her“. You were upset that she felt violated by your feelings for her when you “never even once came onto her“, and while “her guy friends would talk to her in a degrading (misogynistic) and objectifying manner, and she would giggle about it“.

Following years of no contact, while you were back on the east coast, Nov 202o, you reconnected again. By that time, she was “suffering from long haul Covid…  She’s been suffering from the symptoms for 2 years now“. Sometimes it appears that she flirted with you, saying things like: “I have a feeling your soulmate is (in her location) … She would say these ambiguous things that implies more than friendship, and I don’t know if she’s doing this on purpose or confusion“. As a result, your feelings for her are back. But then, she “began reiterating and emphasizing that she’s straight and she could never be with a woman“.

Following your emotional turmoil of the last 2 years, you ended up in urgent care with “chest pains and heart palpitations” and found out that these symptoms were caused not by a heart attack, but by anxiety. Researching, you figure that your symptoms were a result of “a condition called ‘broken heart syndrome’“.  This past week, you began distancing from her.

“It’s crazy how at one point she felt like my safe place. I’m not sure where things are going at this point in time. I’m not really sure how to deal with any of this. I know the possible solution is maybe just get out and socialize, and get to know other people, but it’s not that simple for me… Any feedback, advice, or opinion on the situation is more than welcome“.

My input: first, I hope that your broken heart syndrome heals as much as possible, and sooner than later. Second, maybe your friend craves loving attention of the non-sexual type, but having very low self-esteem, she believes that no one will be interested in her unless she offers them sex, or the suggestion of sex (aka flirting), so she flirts with people, be it with heterosexual men or with homosexual women.

I was wondering, you wrote (at 31): “I never actually had an official girlfriend… I struggled to find anyone I have chemistry with” – does this mean that you feel romantic feelings for women (not for men), but you do not feel sexual attraction to either gender, aka being asexual (healthline: “someone who is asexual experiences little to no sexual attraction”)?

anita

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