Three days ago, I told him I had feelings for him. He had been feeling something beyond friendship too. That was the part I had wanted to hear. Then he explained that he needed time to work out what those feelings meant, and he couldn’t tell me how long.
I’m 28; he’s 36. We had been seeing each other for a while, sometimes as often as three times a week. We share hobbies and the same sense of humor, and our conversations stretch late into the night. There was enough between us for me to imagine a relationship. There was also enough ambiguity for me to keep wondering whether, for him, this was simply a very close friendship.
Telling him was supposed to clear that up. I wasn’t expecting a guarantee about our entire future. I wanted to know whether the closeness I felt was going somewhere romantic, or whether I was reading more into it than he was. Until I asked, I couldn’t be sure whether we understood our time together in the same way.
His answer changed the question. He said the romantic feelings had only developed over the past few weeks, and he was afraid they might change again. He didn’t want to go ahead now and hurt me more later. He also said that, in the past, he would have gone for it at this point. These days, he was more hesitant.
I don’t know what lies behind that change, and he hasn’t given me a timetable I can hold on to. What he did give me was an apology, more than once. He knew his answer would be unsatisfying. I appreciate that he understood how difficult it was to hear, even if being understood didn’t make the answer any easier.
There is something especially hard about hearing that the feelings are mutual without knowing whether they will become anything. Before I spoke, I could tell myself that I might have imagined the romantic part. Now I know he has felt it too. That gives me hope, but it also makes it harder to put the possibility of us aside.
I can see a future with him because of what is already good between us: the ease of talking, the shared interests, the time we keep finding for each other. I’m aware that seeing that future is my feeling, not a decision we have made together. Nothing in his answer lets me call this a relationship yet.
If I give him time, I may be giving something new a chance to settle. I may also be waiting for an answer that turns out to be no. Stepping back would spare me some of that waiting, but it would mean pulling away from someone I still want to be close to. Neither feels like a small thing after finally telling him the truth.
It has only been three days since that conversation. His feelings are still new to him; mine have already brought me to the point of saying them aloud. I’m left trying to decide how much time I can give him when he can’t tell me how much he needs.
