As hard as waiting often is, it also, usually, helps to bring clarity.
Yesterday was particularly hard for me. Fortunately, though, my buddy Ron was available to talk with me for an hour while I was hiking on one of my favorite trails around sunset. Ron has an almost unrivaled capacity to balance deep emotional understanding with keen rational insights, so yesterday the chat with him, explaining to him the situation with my buddy Jack, answering Ron’s sharp (& judgement-free) questions was really what I needed, both to vent, on the one hand, and to solidify my own decisions, on the other.
In the past couple days, my own feelings and needs around the situation with my friend Jack have become clearer to me, as if they had come out of a mist or fog.
First of all, I have understood — or decided — that I’m not waiting. I am not waiting for Jack to resolve those two issues that for me are non-negotiable conditions for anything beyond-platonic with him. I am going to assume that the conversation between me & Jack is behind us, i.e., that we have each explained to the other how we feel and what we’d like but also what the obstacles are. So, since we are good friends and have had a deep, platonic friendship for over three & a half years now, I am simply going to assume that that’s what we’re going to keep having: a close platonic friendship. The only “waiting” I am doing now is holding off from texting him for a little while longer, just to give us both some space from the delicate conversation we had on Friday night, to let things “cool down”, before we resume our platonic friendship.
The reasons I’m making this decision for myself are twofold. The simpler one is that I don’t want to be involved in those two tricky issues that Jack needs to solve for himself, because it isn’t my place to do so (& it would be very unhealthy for me). The deeper reason is that I have realized, or admitted to myself, how risky this situation could get for me from the emotional viewpoint because of my own unmet relational needs and subsequent vulnerability.
On an emotional level, and to a certain extent also on a relational level, I am extremely vulnerable. I have an almost desperate need to be loved and held, even physically. The way my heart & body work, as long as my buddy keeps the friendship platonic, I sincerely view it as such and desire nothing more — I don’t know if it’s because I compartmentalize or because I’m aro-ace or recipro-sexual, or a mix of these, but I have no problem holding those clear, platonic boundaries — on the contrary, they feel natural and spontaneous to me. But if he crosses the platonic line, expressing his physical/sexual desire for me, then my own beyond-platonic needs get awakened and instinctively feel like they have a direction. This response of mine is due partly to my being recipro-sexual and partly to my deep need to be held, both physically and emotionally, that has gone unmet for so long and which has been particularly intense in the past few months.
This deep need to be held both physically and emotionally makes me extremely vulnerable to Jack’s sexual desire of me. Like a superficial hook-up, my libido would take over, initially. But unlike a superficial hook-up, given the long friendship and strong emotional connection between me & Jack, my deeper relational needs would make me seek tenderness from him. Until now, we’ve been able, as buddies or bros, to give each other emotional tenderness within platonic boundaries of close camaraderie. Compartmentalizing in a way that to me felt natural, almost obvious. But if we crossed the line of physical intimacy, I know it would be harder for me to understand where the “line of tenderness” between me & him ends…
During the past year, I have grown immensely in the area of clarifying my relational needs better and “pruning” my friendships or relationships accordingly. And this tricky situation with my buddy Jack now is, in its delicate complexity, a test: first of all, of my own capacity to admit my feelings and needs to myself; and then, to make those feelings and needs heard to the other person and, if necessary, to hold some steady lines.
The Little Prince and the Fox 