Imagination or Reality?

I am really glad I found this website. I’ve had an ongoing issue now for about 5 months, maybe longer, and I’m hoping someone here can help me because I haven’t had the courage to ask any of my friends. This has been going on for so long that I think I will explode if I don’t get some advice soon.

V. and I are both in our early 20s and graduating from college this week. I’ve known her for about 1.5 years now, but we only got really close about 8 months ago. My last year of college was quite eventful, to say the least. At the beginning of the semester, I found out that my boyfriend of 10 months had been cheating on me for a really long time. He was, in all honesty, my first love, and I cared about him a lot. Long story short, I didn’t find out that he had been cheating on me until about a month after we’d broken up. While we were breaking up, he was extremely emotionally manipulative and lied about pretty much everything. He basically made me think that I was the cause of his emotional instability, and that was the reason we had to break up. But the entire time, he just wanted to break up so he could be with the other girl. Anyway, as you can imagine, this took a tremendous emotional and psychological toll on my life.  I became very distrustful and skeptical of all the guys I met, and I also beat myself up a lot for not realizing what he had been doing to me earlier. In other words, I was in really bad shape.

A few days after I’d found out about my ex-boyfriend’s infidelity, I received an online message from V., asking how my grad school exams went and if I’d wanted to grab a drink some time to catch up, since we hadn’t seen each other for a few months. I told her I would love to catch up with her, which we did, and had a great two-hour conversation. We’d always gotten along very well, ever since we met, because our senses of humor are really similar, and we’re both pretty spontaneous people. Given the emotional and psychological state I was in, I was more spontaneous than usual. I felt hurt and vulnerable after my ex-boyfriend, and I wanted to do everything I could to forget that it had ever happened, but even more, I wanted to show the world that I was strong enough to overcome the pain. Thus, when V. suggested a week later to hit the neighborhood bars, I was more than willing to go with her. I wanted to show the world, as well as myself, that I was emotionally strong enough to keep dating (which I, by far, was not). However, for the next two months, we hit the bars and flirted with guys together. We came home drunk every weekend, laughing the next morning about the crazy antics we had gotten ourselves into. It was a whirlwind adventure, and exactly what I needed to keep my mind off of the pain and anger from which I was still recovering.

During the week, when we weren’t out getting drunk, we would call, text, and talk to each other online several times a day. We would eat dinner and study together. We spent so much together that we often joked around that we were “married.”  However, I never felt anything more than friendship for her. I’ve been straight my whole life, and maybe occasionally I’ll think a girl is attractive, but I would never think of doing anything sexual with her. And for all I know, V. is straight as well, and comes from a conservative culture that would never condone homosexuality. Granted, I thought (and still think) that V. is extremely attractive, and she has a very strong personality, which attracts many people, including myself.  V., naturally, is a strong-minded, confident, and even obstinate person, but at the same time, she is insecure and unsure of herself when it comes to guys. Several times after we would come home from the bars (we live in the same building), we would talk about relationships and men, and it was clear that she was confused and even disappointed in herself for the flirting and kissing of random drunk men. But at the same time, she would say that she felt very empowered when she was kissing a guy or having sex with him. For her, she felt she was gaining power over a man when she could make him “vulnerable” in bed, and when she knew she could please him very well. It wasn’t something I agreed with, but I listened anyway.  Additionally, we would always laugh it off as our “embracing youth” and “empowering ourselves.” At this point, we had grown very close and saw each other pretty much everyday, but nothing ever led me to believe that what we had was more than friendship. Maybe joked around a lot about our “relationship,” but to my knowledge, nothing we said or did for one another constituted flirting or otherwise.

On the last day of classes last semester, V. and I decided to go to our favorite bar in the neighborhood to celebrate. It was just like any other night, until a guy approached us to do some stupid magic card trick. He wanted us to have him guess what card what we held, and he guessed wrong, V. and I would have to kiss one another. We were already kind of tipsy by then, and like I mentioned, we’re both spontaneous people, so we knew we were going to lose, but we agreed to it anyway. So, there we were kissing in front of a group of guys at the bar for a good 15 seconds. We immediately laughed it off and joked about what a good kisser the other person was. I didn’t think much of it, until we returned to our building at the end of the night. V. and I were on the phone in our respective apartments laughing about the guys we’d met at the bar earlier, like we always did. I laughed and joked about the 15-second kiss and said it was really fun and exciting, since I’d never kissed a girl before. To my surprise, V. said, “Well, why don’t you come up to my place and we can kiss again?” I hesitated a little, but was just really excited in general about the whole prospect, so I agreed. I went up to her place, and she took me into her room and on to her bed. At first it was really awkward, and we laughed a lot before we could actually begin kissing. We weren’t even drunk at this point, by the way. Finally, she told me to just pretend like I was “kissing a guy” and to just “go for it.” We would kiss for maybe 10 seconds at a time, and then I would get really uncomfortable and have to stop it. But she pushed on, and even told me to take my shirt off at one point, but I refused. She would want to touch my breasts or my legs, but I would tell her not to because it made me feel really uncomfortable, and I wouldn’t be able to continue. Occasionally, she would laugh at me and say, “You can’t even look me in the eyes! Come on, just pretend like I’m a guy. Try to get into it!” Eventually, I did get more comfortable, and really turned on, but I still wouldn’t touch her in any other way, and I also wouldn’t let her touch me besides my face or arms. As I said, she is a very strong-minded person and has a dominant personality, so she really took control when we were on her bed. At first I was on top of her, but gradually, as we were still kissing, she flipped me on to my back, and began to kiss my neck. It felt so good, and I told her this, as she was kissing my neck. She would laugh sensuously and say, “Yeah, I’m good, right?” It started to feel so good that I almost wanted to touch her elsewhere, but I stopped myself because I got scared. I was excited and scared at the same time, but I just couldn’t go through with it. It got really late into the night, and we parted on friendly terms. We laughed about it and said good night.

The next morning, she texted me, jokingly, “Good morning, girlfriend!” At this point, I still thought of V. as a friend and nothing more. But at the same time, I was really excited about this new thing we seemed to be trying, and in reality, I was eager for more. I called her back, and we talked like normal, but I mentioned how cool and fun the night before was, and casually asked if we could do it again. V. immediately said “No, that was a one time thing.” Part of me thought that she was joking (since we’d had so many borderline homosexual jokes), so I joked back, “Oh c’mon! It was fun!” But she said no, and I didn’t ask again. For the next week or so, her behavior changed a lot. It changed in such a drastic fashion that I really didn’t know how to interpret it at the time. We had finals that week, so we were both really busy, but when I would call or text her, she would ignore them, which she never did, even when we were busy during other times of the semester. As I mentioned, we would call and text each other several times a day, so when she wasn’t responding, I started to feel really weird, almost like a stalker. At one point, she called me suddenly, and yelled at me over the phone, saying she felt like she was “in a relationship” with me, since I was texting and calling so much. I was really shocked, so I backed off, but I didn’t think our friendship was over. I just figured that she was really stressed out with schoolwork.

However, from that night on, I could not get her out of my head. For some reason, I had gotten so attracted to her after that night, and all I wanted to do was be near her. I didn’t even want to do anything sexual with her.  I started to take a second look at all the comments she made jokingly about our “relationship” in the past.  Was she really joking? She was awful flirtatious when she left those messages on my Facebook wall about us sharing everything together like a couple. Before I thought her messages were witty and clever, but now I felt that they were witty and flirtatious. I started to think maybe she had been interested, but I wasn’t sure. In any case, I wasn’t looking to start a relationship or anything beyond friendship; I just wanted to keep exploring. It excited me to know that maybe there was a spark between us.

After finals, we had a month-long break from school. When we returned, I could tell that she was trying to distance herself from me, because she wasn’t returning my occasional texts or emails anymore even. In fact, she wasn’t even online anymore, which led me to believe that she had blocked me. When I confronted her to see if she was doing ok, she told me that she had been busy with family issues, and that she hadn’t really been hanging out with anyone really. But it was really hard for me believe since I could see from her Facebook profile that she’d had plenty of contact with other friends and had been going out pretty often with other people. Nonetheless, I tried to be supportive about it.  However, on two occasions, I got really drunk, and texted her to tell her that she was “really good at kissing my neck,” because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. She never texted back. But I started to obsess over her. I just wanted to be her friend again, and to hang out the way we did before. Every time I went into the neighborhood stores or restaurants, I would scan for her.  Even if we didn’t repeat that night, I really just wanted to be near her. But she completely distanced herself from me. Every time I saw her on the street or on campus, she would act really distant and awkward, like she didn’t know what to say to me. It was like we could not hold normal conversations anymore; everything was superficial and meaningless. I even asked her on two separate occasions, over Facebook message, if what happened that night had anything to do with her distancing herself from me, but she said it wasn’t and that it really was because she was having problems with her family. This explanation just never sat well with me, because it was clear to me that she wasn’t distancing herself from anybody else. In fact, wouldn’t you want to confide in your friend if you were having issues, rather than pulling away?

Anyway, after about three months, I gave up on trying to be her friend again, and just decided to move on.  About a month later, I randomly received a text message from her at around midnight. She told me that she was downtown getting drunk and “trying to be sexy.” I texted back in a friendly manner, and told her to have lots of fun. It was clear in her message that she was not sober. A few minutes later, I received the text, “t7k, life is not fun without you.” I was surprised. I hadn’t expected her to say anything like that. She had worked so hard to distance herself from me for four months that the last thing I would think was that she actually missed me, as a friend or not. I texted back and told her to get home safely. I didn’t see her for a few weeks, and we never discussed anything, but that text reignited the fire inside of me. Again, I could not get her out of my mind, and all I wanted to do was see her and be near her. When I did finally see her, I thought maybe we could be friends again. Our interactions, however, were so awkward, and she seemed so uncomfortable even talking to me, that finally I decided to give up. In fact, I sent her an e-mail one day, telling her everything that I’d thought. I thanked her for being a good friend to me during a difficult time after my relationship, and I told her she was a good friend, and that she meant a lot to me. I told her I regretted that night so much, because if I’d known that it would’ve come to this, I would never have agreed to it. She replied the next day saying that maybe that night had something to do with the end of our friendship, but she sad it was not “the deciding factor.” She thanked me for my email and said maybe we could rebuild the friendship after graduation. I wrote her back, sadly, about how she was one of my closest friends in the city, and that I had considered her one of my family members, since my own family lived so far away, and I told her hopefully we could rebuild this friendship some day. I added that even though things ended so poorly between us, I would always be her friend if she needed me, even if it was 10 years from now.

I had expected her to write back making the same pledge, as a real friend, but she didn’t. I felt incredibly hurt and vulnerable, and it brought back the same emotions that I felt when I felt betrayed by my ex-boyfriend. Finally, I got really angry because this entire time, I felt like I hadn’t done anything wrong. She was the one who asked me to go up to her apartment that night. She was the one who wanted me to touch her and to take off our clothes. And she was the one who distanced herself from me, and pretty much ended our friendship. And yet, she had the nerve not to be a considerate person at the end to even offer a friendly ending. I wrote my last e-mail to her telling her that for someone who fucked up a friendship the way she did, she was ungrateful and inconsiderate, and that I never wanted to speak to her again. Looking back, I realize this was a drastic measure, but if I hadn’t cut off our communications like this, I don’t think I would ever be able to get over her. This was about 3 weeks ago, and we haven’t spoken since. Even when we’ve run into each other in the neighborhood, we just pretend like we don’t know one another.  Even now, I think about her almost everyday, and wish so badly that I could be her friend again and to be near her again.

I don’t know really know how to interpret everything that has happened in the last 8 months with V. I wonder if the reason why I am still so attached to her even though she has treated me so poorly is because I have a positive association with her friendship since I’d been going through a rough patch in my life after my previous relationship. At the same time, I feel more strongly for her even post-friendship than any of the other friendships I’ve had gone down the drain in the past. These reactions, evidently, do not fit my normal pattern. Maybe I do feel something for her that is more than friendship? But if so, why did it not evolve until after that night? And why so much more intense after she rejected me and started to avoid me? And if she really has never been interested, why does she try to avoid the topic whenever I would bring it up in the past? (The two separate times I asked, before our last email exchange, if she was avoiding me because of that night, she was hesitant to answer and even ignored that particular question.) Was she afraid to answer the question? And what about that text four months later about “life not being fun without me?” She never offered an explanation for it and continued to act distant and cold towards me. I just want to know if I had imagined everything. Did she realize something about herself that night, that now she is projecting it on to me by avoiding me and acting strangely towards me? Or did she really feel something for me all along?

Thanks in advance for reading, and I appreciate all the feedback I can get.