My roommate found out I had feelings for her from a friend, and by the end of that night we were arguing over text. This was the person who had become my best friend. I had spent months wondering whether we might be more than that. She was now telling me she felt betrayed and humiliated.
We’re both 21, in our junior year of college, and we’ve been living together for roughly three months with another friend, who is 20. We met as freshmen and became closer during sophomore year. The friendship came first. My feelings changed last December, but I didn’t act on them.
I thought summer might make a difference. It came and went, we moved in, and I still liked her. Meanwhile, we were getting closer. To me, it began to seem possible that she felt something too. I asked other friends what they thought, and they seemed to agree. That made the possibility feel more believable, although none of them could actually answer for her.
One of those friends knew how much I was turning this over. I had told her about my feelings weeks earlier and asked how to handle them. She gave me advice I thought was good. Then, this week, she told my roommate that I liked her.
So the conversation I hadn’t worked out how to start happened without me. My roommate heard about my feelings, but she heard them from somebody else. I was left trying to explain myself after she had already heard.
She was upset. I spent the rest of that night in my room and overheard her talking about it with our other roommate and some friends. She felt confused and betrayed. I had been thinking about the risk of telling her and losing the friendship; I hadn’t pictured her finding out this way, with other people involved before we had spoken.
Later, when we argued by text, I tried to explain that I felt guilty for not being honest. It didn’t settle anything. She still felt that I didn’t care, and she told me how awful and humiliated she felt. I could tell her that she mattered to me, but saying it wasn’t making the situation feel any better to her.
The part I’m struggling with is that my affection for her wasn’t something I experienced as a betrayal. She was my best friend, and I had developed romantic feelings for her. But I can see that she was learning something important about our friendship after other people already knew. Those are two very different positions to be in.
Living together makes the uncertainty harder. This isn’t someone I can simply stop seeing while an awkward conversation fades. We share a home with a third friend, who was also part of the discussion that night. Whatever happens between us has somewhere to follow us back to.
The timing was especially bad. She had recently told me she was having a difficult time emotionally. Now I feel that I’ve added another problem when I wanted to be someone she could count on. I don’t know what she needs from me beyond the space I’m trying to give her.
It’s the morning after. I’m keeping my distance, and I expect to continue through the weekend. There hasn’t been a conversation that puts things right. For now, I’m giving her space through the weekend, without knowing what our next conversation will be.
