Help getting over a crush on a straight guy.

April 12, 2009 7:21 PM

I'm a dude; he's a dude. I'm in love with him, and I need to get over him. But I can't. Please help me.

I'll save the longish story. I need to get over a guy whom I'm certain will never return my love for him, because he's straight and because I can never tell him.

But he's so attractive, and affectionate, and funny.

What are some logical ideas to ruminate that might help me get over him? I'd prefer to stay away from the "go sleep with someone" route, which strikes me as vaguely self-destructive and slightly peripheral to the real problem, which is in my head, and which every day is kind of eating me alive.

So far, he doesn't know, and I have no intention of telling him. He doesn't know I'm bi, but I know for certain he's straight. I have no fantasy of him changing his mind, but I'm genuinely attracted to him.

I worry that I might not be able to be his friend if I can't get over him, though; that's what scares me. He's a great friend, and I feel like a terrible one.

Perhaps the very reason for our friendship had always been my attraction towards him, which I've let slip into a full-blown obsession. How do you ever turn back on that? How do you turn that off?

It seems unlikely I'd be unable to fall out of love with someone whilst holding onto some modicum of friendship.

I don't want to give him up for the purposes of my stupid crush on him. He's great; I enjoy his company.

But he occupies my mind, and I need to get over him.

So: HELP.

posted by anonymous to human relations (22 comments total)

You need to give him up until you no longer have a stupid crush on him. This may be a month, it may be six months, it may be two years. It may take several tries. But right now you are not his friend, and he is not yours, and hanging around him is only delaying the eventual return of your mental stability.

As you might have guessed, I speak from experience.
posted by restless_nomad at 7:33 PM on April 12 [2 favorites has favorites]

First, if you are sure you have successfully hidden your sexuality from him, how sure can you be that he has not done the same from you? I'm not suggesting that he is actually secretly lusting after you, just that it can be really hard to be certain about someone else's sexuality, especially when there are such strong incentives to keep some aspects secret.

The point being, it's not about whether or not he's queer -- it's about the very universal situation of having an unrequited crush on someone. Everyone goes through this, some of us quite frequently.

You know those old cliches? "Time heals all wounds"? and "You get over a man by getting under another man"?

They are cliches because they contain a really solid germ of truth. I like to think of a crush not as as concrete "thing" -- but as a process, something that you have to ride out to be done with, and that takes time. And that time can be endless, if you don't move on and just keep mooning around, sort of treading water emotionally. Or it can be really short if you can refocus your romantic emotions on someone else. That doesn't have to be crude and sexual -- it can be an intense weekend alone with the Criterion Collection DVDs of your favorite hot actor and a freezer full of icecream. But until you can "move on" to the point of attraction to other people, you are going to stay stuck where you are.
posted by Forktine at 7:35 PM on April 12 [6 favorites has favorites]

It seems unlikely I'd be unable to fall out of love with someone whilst holding onto some modicum of friendship.

It may seem to you unlikely, but it's usually true. You need time and space away from him, and that means not spending time with him for a while.

Think about the way you'd get over a breakup; you'd stay away from the person until your feelings waned. The reason for this is that you need to give yourself time and space to mourn the loss. Even though you've never had a relationship with this person, you're mourning a similar loss: the loss of the relationship with him you've been imagining, of the possibility that you've dreamed about of love with this person. You need to give yourself the same time and space away from him that you'd give yourself if you'd been in a relationship, or else you'll just end up torturing yourself indefinitely.
posted by decathecting at 7:35 PM on April 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ack been there. I second restless_nomad all the way. Being around him isn't making you happy - it's torturing you. You yourself hit the nail on the head when you said, "It seems unlikely I'd be unable to fall out of love with someone whilst holding onto some modicum of friendship." You might not want to let go of or distance yourself from this friendship, but that's the only way to really get over it.

I know it might feel like you'll love him forever, but you won't, promise. Be strong, make new friends, work hard, distract yourself, play stupid flash games!

Unfortunately, it is a bitch... but you can do it!
posted by Zephyrial at 7:40 PM on April 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

"It seems unlikely I'd be unable to fall out of love with someone whilst holding onto some modicum of friendship." Maybe I misunderstood that quote... regardless, the rest of my advice still stands. Good luck!
posted by Zephyrial at 7:41 PM on April 12

I don't know how old you are, but I lost count of the number of times this happened to me when I was young, at that's without the same sex complication. There ain't no cure but time.
posted by Neiltupper at 7:43 PM on April 12

It seems unlikely I'd be unable to fall out of love with someone whilst holding onto some modicum of friendship.I don't want to give him up for the purposes of my stupid crush on him. He's great; I enjoy his company.

You're going to probably give him up. You can't get over someone you are right next to. Furthermore, he is straight, because otherwise you wouldn't say that.

But there's something else you need to think about. My aunt the psychology professor once told me (as I pined over an emotionally unavailable love I was dating) that when we obsess about something we are trying to distract ourselves from thinking about something else. For me, back then, it was my Master's thesis.

So you have to find out what it is--certainly something big enough that requires an unsolvable dilemma. Once you figure out what that is, think of it everytime you start to obsess about the dude. It will cure you.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:06 PM on April 12 [6 favorites has favorites]

because he's straight and because I can never tell him.

never say never. Your dramatic scenario makes one want to shout I love you. Jesus, do it!
posted by longsleeves at 8:10 PM on April 12

Find another dude and sleep with him. Rinse and repeat. You'll get other the other fellow.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:17 PM on April 12

Nthing the give it time and space responses. I once had a similar situation but went the other route that involved unnecessary drama, emotional pain, general disruption and expense - as well as time to get over. A few years on, we're friends and it feels like a friendship rather than trying to be a besotted puppy/brother/lover/mother.

It's awkward to just disappear from a friendship so having a little heart to heart about why you can't be around him might save him from feeling just dropped. Don't know how honest you want to get with that though.

For yourself, also consider some kind of meditation / mindfulness practice - generally helps to pay attention to what you're thinking, and you do need to be thinking about other things (which at some point includes hooking up with others as part of moving on).
posted by dirm at 8:21 PM on April 12

You know how when you're in love with someone and together a long time, you do your best to ignore little things that bug you but that you can't really do anything about? Habits, little sounds they make, whatever.

Look for those things. Keep trying to find them. Does he dig around in his ears when he thinks no one's looking? Awesome! Does he act a little dickish when someone he likes is around, trying to impress her? Ding ding ding! Cultivate a little contempt, a little irritation. It may work to kill the crush.

And if not, I second the advice to avoid him for a while.
posted by palliser at 8:24 PM on April 12

I'd prefer to stay away from the "go sleep with someone" route, which strikes me as vaguely self-destructive and slightly peripheral to the real problem

I could be way off base here, but... have you been with any other guys before, either physically or in a relationship? Could you be using your friend as a crutch, without realizing it?

Think about it. You want your crush on this guy to lessen in intensity, but you don't want to lose him, and you don't want to look for someone else. To me, it seems like maybe you aren't actually interested in getting over him. You want the crush to be weaker so that it's not so painful to be around the guy, but you also want to hold on to it, because it's safer and, maybe, somehow more pure and special than a real relationship could be. You want to be able to have your unrequited love without the potential pain of liking a guy who could like you back.

I'm a heterosexual girl, and I spent two years in high school with an intense crush on a gay male friend of mine. I know now that I was too scared to get that close to a guy who might like me back- or reject me- so I wasted my time obsessing over my gay friend instead. It was painful, but it was also easy and risk-free.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:32 PM on April 12 [7 favorites has favorites]

Speaking from what seems to be highly analogous personal experience on this issue (bi-guy having difficulties with a potentially-straight dude), I completely support the repeated advice in this thread to minimize your contact with this guy. He may be, and probably is, a lovely individual, but your mind is going to be processing every interaction with him with the power of your deep affection for him. You will agonize over how wonderful he is, and how awful your life is because you cannot be with him, and it will be a thousand times worse because he will be there, in-person, breathing, living, etc. Limit your contact until you can be fair to both him and to yourself.

From personal experience, this doesn't mean that your friendship has to end forever. I concluded my own bout of this with an awkward confession to said potentially-straight dude, and we were able to get through it eventually with the mutual understanding that I needed time apart from him to cool off my amour, and that in doing so I wasn't rejecting him, but was rather trying to get us to a more stable and realistic place. It's a little less than a year now, and we're paradoxically closer through the experience. Though I probably think, "Damn, you're hot" a little more often with him than I do my other friends, the time apart gave me the space to extinguish my burning ardor. (Even coached the bastard into his current relationship, which was one of the lulzier experiences of my life... that was pretty much my self-marker that things were going to be OK, that I could get through that.) Your mileage may vary depending on the individual in question's personality and exact history with you, but it isn't an absolute that your friendship has to end.

My oddest piece of advice: honestly make an effort to define him as a straight man in your mind. I know that you indicate that you're certain he's straight, but even after the failure of my own dramatic confession, I definitely played a game with myself where I tried to make him a deeply closeted gay rather than a straight man (after all, there was a reason I liked him, right?). This was the dumbest thing I did, and tremendously delayed my progress past shit. I'm not necessarily saying you will do as such or are doing as such, but in the off-chance you find yourself doing it, work through/purge those thoughts as quickly as possible so they don't haunt you. As I implicitly suggest before, it might even be good to talk with him about your feelings, so that he can say to you (if true, which you indicate it probably is), "Sorry, but I'm straight." It's going to hurt like hell, but it's probably going to either way. If you're building the kind of friendship that would be deserving enough of future-worry, I'd hope that he would be able to deal with your honest feelings in a mature, supportive fashion. He might be a little weirded out at first, but that will hopefully be more a story about the dynamics of crushes than the dynamics of sexuality.

You sound like a real sweetheart--and I say this with no condescension--and this sort of situation of unrequited love is so painful when it's tied into these troublesome issues of sexuality. Having been there myself, I sincerely wish you all the best.

(Also, mega-subtract to the "go fuck someone else" advice. If the OP is the kind of person to put this much care into one single relationship, my intuition is that he's probably not one for casual hookups.)
posted by Keter at 9:03 PM on April 12 [4 favorites has favorites]

First things first: It doesn't matter that you're "bi" and he's "straight." For this scenario it makes zero difference that you're "bi." What matters is that you're in love with this man. If he's such a great demonstrative affectionate guy he probably would have no issue at all with knowing that you're (so you claim) bisexual. He probably has lots of queer friends, right? The issue is that you're in love with him. Understand that.

What else matters is that you're holding out on the possibility that this obsession won't be unrequited. Admit this to yourself, first. You know that you're hoping that by some miracle he'll reciprocate your feelings for him and you'll be together. Your being dishonest with him- and you're being COMPLETELY dishonest- allows you to entertain this little fantasy.

So here's what you do. First, you let your dear close friend know this outrageously important and relevant fact of your personal life- that you're into men (saying you're bi is IMHO ridiculous and spurious because he already must assume that you like the ladies. It's the "I get hard for guys" part that needs announcing.) Then see how he responds. Only entering THAT conversation is going to show you once and for all either that (1) you REALLY have zero chance with him and you can grow up and grow out of this crush, or just maybe (2) he wants you too. If it's 1, then you lick your wounds and move on. By making this a private fantasy you're just being a selfish closet case who can't stop making your supposed friend an object of your secret desires, and that's a shitty, self-hating twisted sort of "friend."
posted by ethnomethodologist at 9:05 PM on April 12

You want to be able to have your unrequited love without the potential pain of liking a guy who could like you back.

Possible, but here's my broad, overly-generalizing differential diagnosis based more-or-less on my own feelings as a bisexual male: if you're unfortunate (?) enough to be a queer male who likes men who exude "straightness" (the affection for which can be detached from your hypothesized psychodrama), those men will, unfortunately, be much more likely to be straight rather than queer themselves. This is also a problem of detection, to be a bit blunt... Harvard gaydar studies aside, if you don't have active self-identification going on for one reason or another (be it through Facebook or a gay bar), it can be pretty damn hard to figure out who is potential sexuality-realistic crush material before you've, oops, developed the interest. Anecdotally, I find that this is moreso a problem for younger queer males, who are still dealing with a still-not-entirely-out dating pool, so it gets really, really confusing to pick out which seemingly "straight"-acting dudes are actually straight and which are queer men who simply don't fit well into our cultural stereotypes of queer men. No idea if the "straight male" is the OP's type, but given that his individual interest is "for certain" straight, I feel that it's a nonzero probability.

(Not to say that your comment isn't a fair alternative perspective, but, here's my alternative-to-the-alternative, nevertheless.)
posted by Keter at 9:18 PM on April 12

First of all: I bet it hurts, and I'm sorry. It's a sad feeling, like losing your tie to eternity or to your own life.

It's important to recognize that once you develop a serious crush on someone, that person is no longer a friend, and never will be again. Oh sure, you can sift through the experiences of hundreds of people and find a few borderline exceptions, but why play against the numbers? You fall in love with someone, the friendship is over for good. I suspect that the sooner you swallow this bit of hot coal the sooner you can continue with the rest of your life.
posted by argybarg at 9:40 PM on April 12

How to Break Your Addiction to a Person; How to Heal a Broken Heart in Thirty Days; Love and Limerence.
posted by Sidhedevil at 9:43 PM on April 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

I've been there (am there?); time & space are really some of the best cures.

Just to echo, you're not alone. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it sucks. But also, yes, you'll get through it and find someone who returns your affections.

It's okay to mourn the dream/fantasy, since you're close to this guy as a friend and not just as a random pretty face.
posted by polexa at 9:46 PM on April 12

This must be super challenging for you. Sorry you're going through it. I'm going to suggest something that might sound insane, and then suggest what everyone else already has suggested.

Why not just tell him? I know this sounds crazy, but it is (however remotely) possible that he might be interested back - even if he's genuinely never had a gay thought in his life (unlikely). One (remote) possibility, is that he will tell you he likes you back, and you'll walk off into the sunset together. The more likely scenario is that he will not be interested, things will be REALLY awkward, and you'll be forced to get out of his life, which, realistically, is the only way you'll be able to drop the obsession.

In my experience, there is no way to stop obsessing about someone except to get them out of your life at least temporarily. Or to have some awful experience with them that cures you of your attraction.

One other thing to consider: I've been obsessed on by people I wasn't interested in, and it actually really sucks. Especially if I like hanging out with the person. Eventually, I tend to feel that if I want to be comfortable, I have to get out of that person's life - because crushes and obsessions are usually much more obvious than intended and they leave the crush-ee in a really awkward position.

I don't say that to be harsh, but to help provide some more perspective. Good luck, I know this is rough.
posted by serazin at 11:27 PM on April 12

I've told this story before, and it's all hetero, but I confessed my love for my good friend well over a decade ago. He said he didn't think it would work and I was hurt.

Good friends are good friends, regardless of the passing crush. If it's a good enough friendship, the crushes pass. I still want to spend time with said friend, because I treasure his input, but I also love his wife and the happiness she brings him. Also, getting to interact with her and the happiness she brings me as a result is terrific. I get to see her through his eyes, and I appreciate her.

This friendship has now surpassed its 15-year mark. I didn't think I could get over him, either, but it's better now than I ever could imagine.

The only thing that would make it better is if he wasn't working and in grad school. He doesn't have any spare time for anything. His wife and I have similar concerns because he is so busy.
posted by lilywing13 at 12:42 AM on April 13

A lot of folks are advising you to distance yourself in order to get over this. And I agree with them, but i also think serazin has a point. Why not tell him? It will no doubt be confusing and hurtful to him if you suddenly pull away without explanation. If it were me, I'd want to know what was going on.
posted by hellboundforcheddar at 8:37 AM on April 13

Everybody has had an experience of unrequited love or a crush on somebody who might not even know they exist, and it's not restricted to your teen years, I'm in my mid thirties and just getting over a crush on a strait guy, who works on a stall in the local shopping center. His only crime was to smile at me, and stair at me a few times. Could not get him out of my head, convinced myself theirs only 2 reasons why one guy
stairs at another guy, he either wants to fight him or you guessed it. Only recently found out he;s got a girlfriend and a kid. Its just as well I never actually plucked up the courage to ask him out.
It just goes to show ya, sometimes we see want we want to see. My advise to anybody who finds themselves in a similar situation, just be careful, and don't beet yourself up about the way you feel,
it just means your human like the rest of us. If your not sure, the object of your affection bats for your team, do a little digging. As for remaining friends with some one you have a crush on, I can't
see that ever working, maybe, you can be friends, when you no longer have intense feelings for them, but until then, try and stay away, its the only way.
posted by Canefeld at 5:39 AM on June 10