Should I tell him?
October 30, 2008 7:37 AM Subscribe
Do I tell him how I feel even though the timing is bad? I mean, really bad?
S and I have been friends for about two years. We started off as real life friends who hung out and all that, but became much closer in the last 9 months or so, mainly via online chatting and email. We both travel a good bit for work and are rarely in the same time zone, much less the same city. But we manage to catch up usually every day, sometimes more. Recently, our conversations have become more meaningful - both of us finally getting to the point where we trust the other with pretty significant stuff. Our conversations are never scheduled and we've never made any type of "I'm going to make you a priority" statements. But there's something unspoken, I think. There's no expectation that we'll chat every day, but we both just show up. It's a daily choice, and I really like that. We both know we've got something good. And so in the midst of all this, I realized that he's become more than just a friend to me. He's become a really important person in my life.
I relaxed and enjoyed this new feeling for about a week.
And then (dun, dun, dun) he got offered a job. In many ways, his dream job. But also a job that would pretty much mean we wouldn't share the same time zone for a really, really long time. Right now, we see each other about once a month. But like I said, most of our contact is online these days. So if he took this job, that aspect of our friendship probably wouldn't change. But now I suddenly feel this urgency, that he needs to know how I feel. We haven't talked at all about if his job decision would impact our friendship. When we've talked about his thoughts with this job, our friendship has not entered the equation at all. We feel safe talking about our feelings, except when it pertains to feelings for each other. We literally have never gone there.
So here's my question: Would it just be really awful of me to dump my newly-realized feelings on him, especially in light of this possible job change for him? Is it better to let him focus just on the job decision and maybe bring up my feelings later? He's voiced some hesitation about the job offer but hasn't gone into detail. Even though we've never talked about dating, my hopeful heart wonders if the idea of moving further from me is one factor in his hesitation. But I also know the danger of presuming anything of the kind.
I'm especially interested in hearing from persons who have been in a similar circumstance and had either a positive or negative outcome. Also just general opinions are welcome - if you were contemplating a career move and a good friend dropped the "I like you" bomb on you, how would you react?
posted by anonymous to human relations (19 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
Jobs are important, but you can work around 'em. Let him make the choice: long distance relationship and good job or stick around and maybe have a real relationship. Holding back from telling him is just going to become harder and harder if you don't do it now. Besides, how dumb are you going to feel two years from now when it finally comes out and he says, "if I'd know, I would have stayed..."?
posted by paanta at 7:55 AM on October 30, 2008