Navigating relationship with crush/friend after rejection

Post date: 2019-04-15 18:31:31

After telling my feelings to and being rejected by a crush / friend at the end of last year, I'm having trouble moving on from the situation while still seeing him every week. Looking for perspectives/wisdom. Details inside.

At the end of last year, I told a friend that I had feelings for him and was rejected. I am a woman in my senior year of college and I've know this guy since freshman year - he was two years older than me in a club I am very involved in. I liked him a bit sophomore year because I really appreciated his support when I was going through a rough time emotionally, but those feelings faded after a while until this past summer, when I saw him more often (though he's graduated, we still go to the same church every week) and started liking him again. After a few months of pining after him, I told him how I felt and he rejected me. While obviously disheartened, I was more upset when we had a follow-up convo in which he said things that caused me to feel like he did not value our friendship. I know I'm not one of his closest friends, and I wouldn't say that he is one of my closest friends, but I'm still grateful for his support through the years and admire a lot of his personal qualities.

We talked about it and he apologized, and I eventually was able to forgive him (this all happened in January). But even afterward, it was stressful to see him every week at church, not knowing if I should go to talk to him or not - mostly because of feeling insecure about our relationship (feeling like it was more important to me than to him), and also not being sure if he felt comfortable talking to someone who has had feelings for him. We've had a couple of convos about it since, and I think we were able to communicate relatively well / I understand his side of the situation more. I've been able to have a few more comfortable / "normal" / friend-type conversations with him since, and generally feel less stressed/anxious about interacting with him than before.

I've never been in a relationship that lasted more than a month, and I've never told someone I liked them, been rejected, and then had to continue seeing them regularly afterward. So a lot of this is pretty new to me (and to him).

I've been dealing with a few issues throughout this whole experience:
a) I am having trouble fully extinguishing the hope that he might someday like me. This hope has definitely been diminishing over time, as I get more and more convinced that that will not happen, as well as that we may not even necessarily be that compatible. I've recently been able to have a fleeting attraction to someone else, which was previously not possible. But even now, I know that if he were ever to say he were interested in me, it would still make me happy, at least momentarily. I feel like I would still feel pained if I learned he were dating someone.

b) It's hard to be okay with not being as good/close friends with him as I might like to be, and sometimes feeling like he might not be as interested in being friends with me as I am with him. He has told me in our convos that he is okay with/welcomes me talking to him, and he has interacted in caring ways with me recently, but a couple of times I find myself doubting how much he likes me as a friend/wants to be friends - for instance, I talked to him briefly today asking how he was, and his response felt kind of stilted/like he was not willing to be open. Even though it was such a small interaction, that actually made me feel pretty upset afterward/really dampened my mood, and it made me realize how much expectation/hope I still have for this friendship. He's said himself that he sometimes doesn't have that much to say in response to that question, so I do think it is likely that that may have been why he responded in that way, but my immediate reaction was still to feel disappointed at his lack of openness. I guess some questions are - how do I think about/approach this relationship in a healthy way? How do I not overthink every interaction we have and how do I let go of being overly insecure about whether or not he cares about me? How do I figure out whether or not this friendship is actually worth investing in, or whether it is more trouble than it's worth? And if it is not worth it, how do I become okay with that?

I imagine it may seem like I should just try to put some space between me and him, but seeing him at church makes that hard (and going to a different church is not something I really want to consider). I've tried not initiating convos with him for a time, but ultimately found that to be more upsetting than helpful, and more recently I've found it more helpful for moving past the situation to act like nothing has happened/like we're normal friends (in the sense of not fixating so much on what the right/wrong course of behavior is).

Thanks for reading, and any thoughts are appreciated.

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