The Friend Zone

The Friend Zone is no place anyone wants to be, especially when one friend has a crush on the other. Trust me, I've been there. Which brings us to this blog (hence the name lol). Some people tend to believe that no man and woman can be friends or best friends or anything more than acquaintances for that matter. I didn't have belief in this at first, not until I experienced it first hand. I had plenty of male friends in high school and now in college. I believe that being friends with a male, a certain vibe has to exist where the both of you have already established in your minds (privately) that nothing will happen between the two of you. You have to have no feelings, flirtations, of any sort in your friendship for it to be a successful one. I now know there is no such thing as a friendship where flirting plays along, that just doesn't happen. And I know that sounds weird but trust me, I just learned a very voluble lesson.
I will do my best to keep this brief...
When I was in high school, I became friends with this guy. Our friendship started out a little flirtatious in my opinion. As the years came and went, we remained very good friends, and even became what I would call best friends who just happened to flirt... a lot with one another. I, at the time was blind to it; I didn't have feelings for him what so ever at that time (notice I said "at that time"). I literally looked at our situation as harmless flirting...until the situation became harmful. When I came home on my breaks from college, he would be one of the first people to call me, and to come over. We would chill, and well, continue to do other things people who are "just friends" shouldn't do. To clear the air, it wasn't anything to sexual. For instance, we cuddled, touched and saw things we shouldn't have. I guess that kind of is sexual, so lets just say no sexual activity occurred. Things like this continued until I was forced to believe that maybe, just maybe, I started to develop a crush on him. Of course I shared everything with my other two best friends, Daria and Keyona who knew him. They believed he liked me and told me long ago, but I didn't believe it, couldn't believe it.
Until the unexpected happened.
One night on the phone for hours, nothing unusual. We got to talking about someone who I did like back from high school who I've dealt with, but that's another story. And the only reason as to why he knew the other guy is because we all graduated high school together, and they became really good friends as well. I use to vent to friend zone guy about the other guy which I feel bad about now. But anyway, while on the phone I kind of forced him to tell me what he meant about something he had said. He ended up confessing that he liked me. The next day, I was still shocked and surprised but I ended up telling him about my feelings as well, which now I feel was a mistake. Because here I am, confessing these things to someone who still wanted to remain just friends. I've always had problems expressing my feelings to people, so to finally find someone I can confide in, share these things with him and get turned down, doesn't sit well, it put me in a weird position. Especially because we were friends first. I had given him the ultimatum to act on our feelings or remain friends and he had chosen the second option. I kind of hoped for the first, but reality has a habit of kicking me in the ass. His reason was because of the other guy I dealt with, his friend which I kind of understood.
The weird position I was left in, had me so confused as to what I wanted to do with this. Half of me knew I couldn't be friends with someone I still had feelings for, I would read into everything he said as more than what he would mean. I couldn't do that to myself. But still I couldn't just let a five year friendship go down the drain. In the beginning of the summer, I tried to be just friends with him, I tried really hard. I even told him we couldn't do the things we once did as "friends," and that we had to be just that. But did that work... hell no it didn't. The same ol' things continued to happen, my feelings began to grow because he, knowing what I said, still continued to do the things we couldn't do. We even started kissing. What friends do you know kiss? On the lips? More than once? Yeah exactly. I came to a tough conclusion that we were playing games with one another, but I'd be the loser in the end...as always. So one night I told him, I needed a break from him. He was literally causing me a heart break. I needed to get over him and that this wouldn't happen over night. August 10th made it two months since that night, since we spoke.
Does it hurt? Yeah. It hurts even more when you're explaining this situation to someone and they don't understand how you feel. I literally felt like this was going to happen for me. That I had finally saw the good man he could have been for me. He was perfect. A gentleman, my family loved him, my mom and aunt even saw how good he treated me when he came around. I thought he would have been the one. That after all these years, after all the guys I dealt with, all the assholes, all the time wasted, I felt like I was finally seeing what God had placed in front of me, but just kidding.

In life, I learn everything the hard way. I don't know why that is, but I do. Now I don't know what to do. I wanted to reach out to him, but why should I? I've been through enough. I miss him dearly, I miss our friendship but not the confusion it came with. Will we ever be friends again? I don't know because it was a toxic friendship from the moment he told me how he felt. But even before then, secrets were being kept. And I know this sounds bad but I question if we were even friends to begin with. If this situation has taught me one thing, it would be to understand the friend zone. Once you are in it, there's no safe way of coming out of it. The friend zone is no place to be with someone if you even have had the slightest crush, the slightest thought of seeing yourself with someone as more than friends with them.
So can someone be just friends with the opposite sex? I vote yes and no. It all depends on your situation. So be careful when it comes to putting someone in the friend zone.

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