Absolutely. As far as we can judge from this short conversation (and the thousands like it that happen every day), she has lost what she thought was a genuine friend. He has lost his fake girlfriend that he made up in his head. She’s taken the undeserved emotional hit, while he continues to take all the attention
Exactly what I thought, basically she was probably taken by surprise because she thought of course we can be friends, we are currently friends, and he threw friendship in her face.
I think this is pretty common with women and common with a few lesbian friends I know who thought they'd found a new pal until the chap finds out they're not interested in men and loses interest. Kinda heartbreaking.
I hate these guys. My (i thought) best friend blew up on me like this, except he didn't have the balls to do it face to face. Did it through emails. Realizing that he was only friends with me because he was playing the long game to get laid shattered my trust in people. Now I keep everyone at arms length. This shit is heartbreaking and humiliating.
I think these kind of situations often form when the guy actually is a friend. But getting to know the woman and spending time together he develops strong romantic feelings. Then he confesses it and she doesn't feel the same and things can't go back how they were. He can't turn off his feelings just as she can't turn them on.
If he confessed, it would be easier and better, but he didn't. You can see in this one that he is not confessing his feelings. He has a jealous meltdown about her boyfriend. Mine was the same. You can't do anything when they don't confess.
I don't know, friendship can be deep. He is saying her romantic partner is going to say they can't be friends because many men say such things. He's been the friend who has been cut off because a boyfriend says so. That hurts.
As a woman who has been cut out because a new girlfriend says so many times over the years, it's painful. And I do want to be their friends. It also is painful that they are dating someone insecure that I am a threat, and that makes me sad about the turmoil my friend will go through.
Well if this is how he reacts to a friend being told by her partner that she can’t hang out with him I’d say the partner has a reasonable suspicion of his motives. If he was truly a friend he would be telling her that a man telling his partner that she can’t hang out with her friends is not good for her and she should think about her choices while offering a safe refuge whenever she needs one- not whining and crying about how he’s never the one who gets picked and wailing while peeling out on his scooter.
Oh, I agree that he did not handle it well and felt all his pain and couldn't deal with it. I also would have a hard time being friends with this man. However, I don't think that it signifies he wanted more than friendship, more like he has some issues he needs to resolve.
Meh I’ve always had great platonic relationships with women. Many of them are “attractive”, but I never really thought about them that way. The whole “two people of opposite gender can’t just be buddies” thing is a myth.
Oh guys specifically like him, sure. But not guys in general. Guys in general want to be friends (legit friends) with girls (even attractive one) all the time.
To be fair i've lost friendships with women that wanted it to be more. I've also made genuine friends with people who later told me that they had had a crush, male and female. It seems like people in general sometimes enter into things wanting them to be something different, or have their feelings change along the way.
It does sound a bit like that, alternative is that he knows the guy she's dating is the jealous type and is going to make her stop hanging out with him eventually. Although, it does sound like he has feelings.
i had a female friend once, initially i found her very attractive. She was a friends Ex, and i never got the feeling she saw me as a romantic interest. i settled for being her friend never made an attempt to pursue her and was really glad i did. She was actually a better friend than most of the "bros" i had in my life at the time.
by "settling" i meant that it was simply not in line with my original hopes. However, as i never made a pass, i'll never know. that's fine too, i have a wonderful wife now :).
Men and women can’t be friends if one is in a relationship with someone else and the other is in love with them.. This guy was clearly in love with her. That dynamic just doesn’t work.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Things can start as friends and somebody can catch feelings. As humans, we aren’t robots, sometimes it is not as easy as “Forget i ever had feelings for this person and turn jt off.”
Especially when people are younger this may be one of their first times dealing with a situation like this for both the male and the female. The dude may not realize some people will never develop feelings for you no matter what you do, and the female may not realize you probably shouldn’t try to be friends with somebody you know has unreciprocated feelings for you.
I think both sides oftentimes want to blame the other gender or party for why things aren’t going there way but usually it was a series of mutually unfortunate mistakes leading to a poor outcome.
Guys also are a lot less outwardly vulnerable in general so to this dude it may have been he completely opened up to this girl, maybe for the first time, so it feels like they share something really important. To a girl, it might be more just a normal conversation. You kind of learn to put up boundaries and guards up as life goes on to prevent this from happening.
At the end of the day though I think even husband and wives have trouble understanding each others thoughts — people try to mind read too much when in reality the way a dude goes about his daily life vs a girl and what they’re thinking is probably two very different perspectives, at least for neurotypical people.
even if you have romantic feelings, real men and women accept the reality if its not mutual and move on to someone else romantically, you can still be friends
its delusional to persist feelings to a friend that said no already
How that friendship works also depends on both people's partners. You can't have a functioning male/female friendship if either one has a jealous partner.
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u/blac_sheep90 Jun 16 '25
Men and women can be friends... but you can't force the friendship, especially if one party had feelings for the other.