The most complex love triangle.
I'm currently working abroad on a scheme with people from many countries around the world. Back home I have a girlfriend and we've been going steady for about two years. She loves me a lot more than I love her and, to be honest, I can't see it lasting very long.
Anyway, we're still together, although the distance is taking its toll. Over here, I have made some good friends. One of my better ones (perhaps my best friend in this country) is a very beautiful girl who lives nearly 1100 miles from me. Our friendship started early on, as we have a very similar sense of humour and make each other laugh a lot. I never saw her as an attraction, just as a friend, until someone pointed out that they thought she fancied me.
Of course, someone telling you this changes your relationship a bit, so I thought I'd investigate and find out. I realised that this guy had simply misread the signs and there was no attraction on that level. However, I realised that I was strongly attracted to her. More so than I've ever felt about anyone. It hit me very hard and I got scared.
So I cooled off from her. We still talked at work every day and socialised a bit outside, but I over-compensated and did everything *but* show her affection. This was some vain attempt to hide my feelings. She has a boyfriend, but for the first two months would never talk about him. In fact, he visited one time and she would only call him 'her friend' to me. I only found out from her housemate that it was her boyfriend. This was a blow to me and made me wonder why she was so coy about this fact.
Around November she came to me very upset. She was going to dump her boyfriend and wanted my advice on the matter. Now, my guts were saying "DUMP HIM!", but I knew I couldn't do that to such a lovely girl who was really homesick as it was, so I stuck by her and we got out of this situation together. I didn't advise her so much as listen and hear her story.
Effectively, she loves her boyfriend, but feels trapped. He's not very fun and she wanted a list of things I knew that I could give her. It took all my will to avoid talking about myself -- something I succeeded in doing.
She went back to her home country for a few weeks to work there and I back to mine. During this time, we spoke every day without fail. Often for several hours. It was honestly the highlight of my day, except it was also destroying my soul. Her ex-boyfriend had made it obvious he still loved and cared for her. This guy is someone she'd mentioned a few times as an example of who she wanted to be.
My new role was to mediate between her love for her ex and her current relationship. I was and still am the only person in the world that knows this intimate story with all the details. The level of trust was both a privilege and a curse. Every painful story she told me about her inability to get love from her ex-boyfriend (who by now has lost interest in her) echoed my desire to have her return my love. Sleepless nights wondering about her and being totally infatuated by her followed.
She is very hot and cold with me. Some days we will talk for hours on any topic and look deep in to each other's souls. Other times she won't talk to me for three days, or be so stressed that she simply offends me. I'm certain I'm not doing anything in-between to cause this and I try and give her the space she needs (not always successfully). This week, for example, I helped her through a difficult exam giving her tutoring and fetching her coffees etc at work. Hell, I even took on extra work (she doesn't entirely know this) so she would have an easier time.
My repayment? She doesn't return the SMS I sent her and avoids all contact with me for the whole weekend. She furthermore made a very incisive point of inviting everyone for dinner on Friday night except me. If it was purposeful or not, I don't know, but it hurt. Of course, Friday evening she calls me and asks if everything is OK and talks about her stressful week like I didn't know about it.
When we talk over the phone or messenger, she's usually lively and pleasant. In person, she mumbles when talking to me and never makes eye contact. I never know if she wants me there or not. If she's sad and I ask her if she's OK, I usually get "Yeah, fine.", before ten minutes pass and she'll tell me.
Does she dislike me? Is this some kind of sick way of handling someone who really cares for her? I don't know.
The real killer was New Years Eve. I messaged her, "Happy New Year" and she didn't reply. OK, I thought. Fine. I then messaged her a few days later, as she'd not spoken to me in a while just checking how everything was. No reply. So I didn't send anything else for a week and just let her be. She then calls me to complain that her ex only spoke to her on the phone for five minutes on New Year's eve. So I listen and advise her, all the while knowing that she didn't even respond to my text, sent as a friend more than anything.
How can I be this girl's friend? I'm pretty sure by now she's using me. Treating me like shit during the day and wiping her feet on me at the nights. But it's the glimpses of glory she offers me in our private, heart-felt chats that make me feel alive and cause me to forget everything that was bad.
I've tried talking to her about it. "Hey, just because you're in a bad mood, doesn't mean you have to put me in one too." This usually just makes her angry to start with and then a lame apology later. It doesn't change anything. She'll still pretend to me all the time that she has better friends in other people (although I know this isn't true, they talk about her a bit behind her back -- and I always stand up for her). But the truth is that she needs me. A lot more, in theory, than I need her. She was close to depression and I was there to pull her out. I guess she just sees me as "The guy to go to if I'm sad."
In spite of all these bad things, I'm still in love with this girl. I've accepted now that we'll never be together and approaching her to start dating is a waste of time. So I just love her as much as I can by giving her the attentions she needs, by backing off when she wants and being her shoulder to cry on if she needs it. I even put up with all her crap and moods. I'm doing everything I can and she's still a bad friend.
What can I do? If I lose her then I think we'll both get worse, but I can't let things stay the same or I'll slide in to depression while pulling her out.
That and I have to worry about my own girlfriend back home and the problems in my own life.
Sigh.