Anita,

You wrote : “If your “best friend for 3 years” does not “cares that inside that pretty face is a heart in pain”- then he has not and is not a best friend, is he?”

To be fair, my best friend was pretty confused about his feelings towards me. He is the type to fall in love easily, and I was also at fault for keep asking advices regarding my relationship at that time. My ex warned me already, that he probably sees me as more than a friend. I refuted his claims because I trusted my best friend of 4 years. After the break up, he was a very good listener and gave me a lot of useful advices. My ex was my biggest fan and supporter but I guess my best friend became that person after the break up, without me realising. He actually did not get to asked me to be his girlfriend because I rejected before the official confession. He sent me the song “Lucky” and at that time…. I just knew and it was confirmed by a mutual friend too.

It took a while and now we are best friends again. I pretended like I did not know about his unofficial confession and ignore or avoid relationship topics with him. He became cold after that, and was distant but I wanted to keep the friendship going regardless of his feelings towards me. I admit that I am very selfish but I had already lost my boyfriend, I cannot lose my best friend in this period.

“…. then he has not and is not a best friend, is he?

It is complicated. The line gets blurry. The thing is, I never exactly tell everything that is going on regarding my break up. He knows 90 percent of it but the rest 10 percent – I wanted to keep it private. My best friend choose a really bad timing without knowing, because he unofficially confessed to me on my ex`s birthday. Anita, you know how meaningful that day is for me. I was already a nervous ship wreck on his birthday and when I got my reply – I actually almost fainted from crying. My best friend did not know that I was in contact with my ex boyfriend. He also does not know how serious I was with my ex, to the point of almost sleeping together with him. I did mentioned though after a while that I was actually considering engagement if we had stayed together during his military service and my best friend was very surprised to hear that. So I guess, you can say that he does not know the nature of my past relationship.

You asked : “do you mean that now he sees you as more than a pretty face?”

Well, you have to ask him for that. I am not sure either. We always have a lot of fun together and having fun together has nothing to with my face, right?

Our personality matches pretty well. I mean I knew him for 3-4 years – we never really clashed during that period.

I hope he really sees me as a person right now instead of a potential girlfriend.

-Mina

Anita,

Yes, correct. I will be going back very soon. On September 1st, classes will start again. I signed uo for a university club, and I am trying to focus on my studies completely. Last semester I was focusing everything on my ex and it destroyed me. I learnt my lesson.

It’s about time for me to figure out my dreams. I feel so nervous but I can feel the excitement of a new beginning. I am finally (for real) closing my old chapter that was messy and painful.

I am ready to move on. I want to. Life goes on. Hopefully I can still keep this positive attitude until the end of my semester too.

Thank you for checking up on me, Anita. So nice of you!

Anita,

I have a weird update regarding the situation.

Yesterday, a few of my friends including my best guy friend (the one that likes me) dropped off at the airport. To put it simply, he was the last person to leave out of all my friends even my family. I did not think about it much since his house is near the airport so I figured he can stay until the very last boarding moment.

It was time to board my plane and he asked for a hug. I was confused for a moment but decided to gave him a half hug (side by side not front to front kind of hug) and left after saying a quick bye. I did not have any problems with hugging or touching if he does not have other intentions but we all know that he does at this point. More than that, he uploaded a few Instagram posts that were just … off in my opinion. He posted on his way to the airport with the heart captions, and after I left, he posted a sad crying emoji. He was being too obvious.

A lot of my friends suggested me to tell him clearly that I do not like him that way, the thing is – I am not the type to say these kind of thing first. Since he hasn’t officially confessed to me yet… I cannot officially reject him either, you know? More than that, he was a really good friend of mine. I do not understand why he suddenly thinks that he can “replace” my ex boyfriend place in such a short period. It makes me mad.

I want to confess something really embarrassing, I have a private Instagram account that only has 27 followers (all of them are my super close friends) and inside that account, it was like all about my ex boyfriend. I wrote a lot of super depressing stories about my past relationship (for example, I posted a congrats post when he was accepted at his dream university, a farewell post when he enlisted for the air force, or a bittersweet post when our favourite Japanese restaurant closed. very personal unimportant stuff but still.. very personal)

My best friend must have read most of this. I am not over my ex boyfriend. There are some days or moment when I go out and had so much fun that I forgot about him but it does not make my feelings for him disappear. After yesterday`s incident, I feel really weird and confused. It was so shocking and real that it took the focus off from my ex boyfriend to my best friend (for the wrong reasons, unfortunately)

At that moment, I felt a shift. I do not feel a strong connection with my ex as I used to. It was quite scary to feel so disconnected from my ex boyfriend. During the break up, I always in a sense follow what my ex prefers me to do. It wasn’t a bad idea at all, since my ex was a very positive influential in my life. I became a lot more nicer, brave and accepting of people after the break up. I toughen up a bit.

Anita, I really do not know what I am supposed to do right now. I am feeling a bit jet lagged due to my flight and I cannot think logically about what is happening inside of my heart and my brain. I do not know how I can reject this bets friend of mine without being super forward.. and I would also like to keep our friendship. It might sounds selfish but I am so tired at dealing with these kind of problems. It has not even been a week since I truly found a satisfying closure from my past relationship yet guys always seems to pop out of nowhere and made my life so difficult.

I really want to honour my ex boyfriend and my past relationship with starting my life again and moving on, but it is so hard since he was so involved inside my life (and I was so involved inside his), and I cannot magically remove him in one day. It will take some time, maybe a month, maybe 3 months, maybe a year, who knows? I am trying to detached myself from him and the relationship but how can I do that with my current situation? I cannot detach from my ex boyfriend if someone is waiting for me to accept his feelings. It made me feel very guilty and disgusted at myself …. because I haven’t been able to grief properly and move on properly in my opinion. I need time to re-think the value of the kind of a  relationship that I want and whether I want to actually date seriously anytime soon or not.

Thinking about my ex boyfriend for 3 months, for 24/7 was very exhausting both mentally and physically – I hate the fact that my best friend made me “confuse” – I know that I do not like him like that, but he must have think that this is a vulnerable point in my life (which is true) so he is trying to take a chance. It must have worked at some point because there are times when he reminds me of my ex boyfriend (the way that he treated me)

Maybe IF it is not my best friend, if it is another guy that I truly like, maybe things will be different but right now I feel kind of trapped by own foolishness because I was desperate to be treated as much as my ex used to treat me by someone. Anyone, really.

I would like to hear your feedback and advices. I am sorry if I sound kind of all over the place, my head is hurting from the red eye flight.

-Mina

Anita,

You wrote : “When the relationship ended you felt that you were not the same person. Now, you are focused on this young man, the friend.”

What do you mean? I do not like this person as a guy …. he cannot even be compared to my ex boyfriend. My ex is so smart and nice and super tolerant. My best friend isn’t like that at all. He is not a guy that I want to date, ever. Not now and not in the future. Sorry If I sound kind of defensive, I am really sensitive when it comes to my ex boyfriend lately.

You wrote : “Focusing on your friend makes it seem like the problem with him is bigger than what it is, that it needs to be solved as soon as possible, for your peace of mind. In reality, it is not such a big or urgent problem.”

But I am not focusing on him now…? it just bothers me so much that he likes me and is showing it off to everyone.

You wrote : “Do you think you can do that or do you feel that you have to resolve the problem with your friend first?”

What do you mean by this?

Thanks for the feedback, Anita. sorry i sounded really rushed in this reply, I am really tired right now x

-Mina

Anita,

Sorry for coming off kind of rude on last reply to you… I have been having a hard time adjusting to my new university life without my ex boyfriend.

Things are a bit rough, especially on nights like these. I feel like life is not moving when I am here. I had fun and laughed with my friends and then I realise that I am actually for real alone. I saw my university after almost 2 months of not seeing it, I went to one of my favourite late night snack store and the lady there asked me where was my boyfriend. I used to went there often with him, due to his busy schedules- usually our date goes almost overnight.

Things are moving almost in the same pace as my old life – the only thing that is missing… it is him, Anita.

I talked with some of our mutual friends, and they are surprised to see how I was still very much in denial. I still talk about him like I used to, and I still adore him, thinking that he is the best person that has ever existed. My friends refuted this and basically calls me out for being on a denial phase. Like for me, my ex was is still very much my prince charming. Our love has only been stopped temporarily, I believe that he will come back to me and we will be together again if it is meant to be. Maybe I will date other person in between and maybe love some too but … he will be the one for me.

It is my first admitting this to anyone. I think my ex boyfriend is the one. There, I said it.

Right now – I am not in any condition to talk about my best friend. I do not care about him. I do not care about his feelings at all to the point that I do not even want to bother to give him closure or a clear rejection. Why should I do that? I am in so much pain because I haven’t been able to take the focus off my boyfriend, I am inside a jail that I made myself. I want to focus on myself but I struggle so hard… should I reach out to him, Anita?

To ask him about life in general… it gets too unbearable for me sometimes and it really hurts me. Maybe I should be honest with my ex boyfriend and instead of going on with the whole stupid sacrifice thing, I should just admit it to him that I am very much struggling and I get very sad very often too. Maybe he can say something that would help me a bit.. I do not know.

All I can say to him is…. help me. I was feeling pretty much similar to this before his birthday and it gets “relieved” when I congratulated him on his birthday and I felt like I was understood after holding on to so much pain and pretending that I am fine. I know that If I contact him every single time I felt like this, there would come a day that even his reply wouldn’t matter much and wouldn’t relieve my pain.

I am not a suicidal person at all, I am very bubbly but lately – I keep thinking that maybe there isn’t a way out for me. I am so scared and tired. Maybe If by some kind of a miracle, I died and go to heaven, maybe I will finally be free of this pain. There were a lot of times when I prayed to God very sincerely to give my life to someone else that needed it. Someone who is actually living. Why would God gave me this precious life to someone who isn’t really living like me? The only thing that beats is my heart, my soul is already dead. I confessed these kind of thoughts to my pastor and he told me that I shouldn’t lose my faith. That I should trust and believe God`s plan for me, that His plan is always the best. That I should wait.

And feedback and advices would be very appreciated x

-Mina

Anita,

I am seriously thinking reaching out to him and just be honest about my feelings and my struggles.

Of course, I would never include anything like my suicidal thoughts. I just want to let him know that the break up was very hard on me, and there were a lot of times after the break up that I did not showed my real feelings to him or to anyone, really. I am still very much struggling in the dark, and I just want to let him know that.

It is embarrassing but knowing my ex boyfriend all this time – I know he won’t judge me. He is the only person that would understand my feelings best, more than my family and my close friends ever did. I would just be honest and thank him for everything, something that I haven’t yet done after the break up.

I am hoping if he really is the person that I love, he will also express his struggles. and his honest feelings about me and the break up. I am currently choosing the timing and a start out topic… I do not know if this is a good idea or the worst idea ever but it is comforting thinking about how I can be honest with my ex boyfriend.

Thanks for the amazing feedback. and your support for me.

-Mina