We talk for hours on end, I never get tired of him, and I feel weird when I go a few days without seeing him. Are we just mates?
Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nz
Dear Hera,
I made a new best friend a few (seven) months ago, which feels like an almost weird thing to happen at 26 years old. He is a straight guy and I am a straight girl. I love him so much and have never had so much fun talking to someone. We talk for hours on end without ever getting bored. We find the same things interesting.
The biggest thing is I don’t get tired of him. After a three-day camping trip, our friend dropped us off and we walked home together (still talking nonstop) and we still wanted to keep hanging out even though we were exhausted. If I haven’t seen him in a few days I wonder why I feel weird, like something is missing. I somehow feel more normal when I’m with him than when I’m alone.
My question is: am I in love with him? I once had love at first sight, completely obsessive infatuation for someone I now realise I hardly knew. This feels like almost the opposite. No butterflies, no anxiety. He just makes me happy in the most natural way.
Thanks,
Head (Maybe) Over Heels
PS. Why do I want to be told I am in love with him?
Dear Heels,
Well, well, well.
This letter cheered me right up. I feel like this might finally be the question that gets me invited to a wedding.
“PS. Why do I want to be told I am in love with him?” is going straight on the advice column leaderboard of iconic and beautiful questions. It’s right up there with “why does my hand get all hot and red when I put it on the stovetop?” and “Is That You Santa Claus?”
Not only do you want to be told that you’re in love with this guy, and spend the whole letter talking about how obsessed you are with each other, but the subject of your email was LOVE LETTER. Come on now, pet.
I’m not saying you can’t have a strong platonic friendship where you never get sick of someone and want to see them every second of every day. But if you have a strong friendship with someone you never get sick of and want to see them every second of every day AND sort of kind of wish and hope you might be falling for them… I barely think you need to read my response. Your letter is all the smoking gun you need.
Usually when people write in with a variation of this question, they’re a little more agonised about the situation, and tend to say things like “I really want to spend all my time with this person, but I worry that the baseline attraction isn’t there,” or “I don’t want to fuck up a really close friendship.” Interestingly, you say neither of these things. In fact, the only part of your letter that hints at any kind of uncertainty is that this feeling of love doesn’t remind you of other feelings of love that you’ve had in the past, which were more recognisably romantic.
I hope I can at least put you at ease on this point. Falling in love doesn’t happen in the same way every time. It can wallop you over the head or sneak up on you. While some people might say a lack of butterflies could be an indication there’s something missing, I think it’s also true to say that sometimes the love that sneaks up on you can be a hundred times more fatal than instantaneous attraction. In fact, sometimes the cognitive dissonance that comes with falling for someone you wouldn’t usually fall for can make the person you’re falling for even more attractive.
It’s interesting that you don’t mention whether or not you’re attracted to this friend, or whether you get the feeling they’re into you. I can only assume this means:
- You are and can’t bring yourself to mention it (verdict: in love);
- You haven’t really allowed yourself to think about it as a possibility, because engaging in a romantic thought experiment regarding a close “platonic” friend feels a little icky.
I don’t mean to denigrate beautiful platonic friendships by implying that your relationship is crying out for some kind of upgrade. But I think if you’re already flirting with the idea that your feelings for this guy run a little deeper, you owe it to yourself to consider the question seriously. My advice would be to get a little more in touch with how you actually feel before doing anything permanent. Admittedly sometimes you don’t know if there will be a spark until you’re standing on the threshold. But if I were you, I’d do a little imaginative research. Allow yourself to mentally explore the possibility. Log into your private Holodeck, and test out a few scenarios. Put him in a black cowboy suit, on a swan paddle boat, in the middle of a lake, at twilight. Throw in a few violins for good measure. Imagine telling him how you feel. Does your body thrill, or revolt at the idea? How would you feel if he got a new girlfriend? What if you were both hired to work for the security service to stop a terrorist attack on a luxury train and the only way you could outwit the terrorist was to pretend you were a newlywed couple on your honeymoon? And so on.
I’m not suggesting you make any grand declarations. There’s always the possibility your friend doesn’t feel the same. But you don’t actually ask what you should do about the situation. You only ask how you feel.
Nobody else can tell you how you feel. I can only guess, based on your extremely suggestive letter. But in order to figure it out, you need to give yourself permission to go there, mentally. Sit with this feeling for a month. Pay attention. Permit yourself to dream.
It may be that you’re confusing a deep and platonic intimacy for romance. It may be that you love him, but he only thinks of you as a friend. It may be that one day someone will read your “Dear Hera” letter aloud at your wedding, and all the guests will hoot and holler.
Do a little research, and get back to me.