Feelings I had for my classmate were obviously one-sided (pretty sure of it), so I made a reasonable decision to never confess to not make things awkward. In a few years since we graduated I finally moved on, although I never loved anyone this much since.
Yet all this time I had a desire to tell her about them. I would definitely want to know if someone loved me this much ever. Would she? I don’t know. I don’t even know if she is in a relationship right now or not.
I would really want to cite some scientific study that “Over 80% of girls have their self-confidence lifted after being told they were secretly admired (p<0.05)”, but can’t find one.
I am pretty much sure my feelings fell under most common definitions of “love”. I wonder what makes you think otherwise.
Maybe that is a part of it, but I also want for her to be validated. I, for instance, would be if someone told me this.
From the tone of your post, I feel like you had a pretty bad day. I’m sorry for whatever happened to you, get better soon.
Life experience. You have lot of growing up to do.
Do you mean the only factor you considered is my then-age?
I can testify with great confidence that I wasn’t remarkably attracted to her in a sexual way. In that regard I found her moderately cute, somewhat pretty, and a few girls and boys of our age much more so. My feelings were primarily platonic. They developed over the years and consisted mostly of platonic affection, the romantic attraction was the consequence of it.
You’re self aware enough to ask the questions but lack the humility to accept the answers.
OP is def looking for bias-confirmation that if they do this it’s all going to magically be perfect and solve all their sadness.
typical internet nonsense
You provided no answer but “my experience tells me so”. No explanation, no proof, nothing. IDK, my experience tells me to reject bare appeals to authorutily, where even the level and source of your authority (age, sociological education maybe) wasn’t something you bothered to explain.
I provided you answers, you’re just not emotionally intelligent enough to recognize them.
Listen.
Don’t tell her.
For your sake.
Good luck. You, specifically, are gonna need it.
Other people do not know how you feel. It may well be love. But it may not be worth bringing up to her, she may get the wrong impression like others here. I wish society encouraged honesty, but I don’t know what’s best here.
K but I don’t need to telepathically know how they feel when by their own words I can see that they’re conflating attraction with love.
You seem to want to help OP. But you’re actually reenforcing a very unhealthy mindset. Given your admission that you don’t know what’s best here it is rather irresponsible of you to baselessly undermine the consensus.
Some of the people here are family men who actually do know what we’re talking about. To falsely equate your “I don’t know” with experience driven advice, is a disservice to OP.
Men need to be more honestly with themselves about when they’re just being horny.
In understand and agree with what you are saying all in all but you are being a little too harsh in your tone and maybe also in some assumptions about OP, I think. The best advice comes in a form that is digestible for the recipient… If giving advice is what you are doing and not telling OP off, that is. Anyways, as I said, I agree with you but I just felt your were being almost a little unfair 😌
Read back. I wasn’t harsh until OP responded disingenuously.
As far as this person. I specifically dislike when people play devils advocate while knowing they don’t actually know enough. Especially when they’re reenforcing toxic male behaviours towards women.
The person I’m replying to is genuinely doing harm to OP by feeding into their confirmation bias. Lets not forget I’m telling OP not to do something that could have life changing social consequences… especially if they go about it in the socially inept way they present themselves.
Kindly fuck off with your assumptions. When I was young, I chose not to have children because my parents were unable to raise me without traumatic fear and pain, and I never wanted anyone else to feel that.
I love someone, but we are not together and likely never will be.
Would you be upset if someone told you that you don’t love your wife?
Stop pretending to know things you cannot know. Your experience is not everyone’s.
You? No. My father? yes.
The fact that you think I’m assuming things about your life shows that you’re reacting defensively instead of maturely considering what’s being presented to you.
I am reacting defensively, you attacked OP by pretending to know their mind and confidently asserting you know they are wrong when you can’t possibly know that. It’s a pretty shitty thing to do and it’d be wrong of me not to point that out.
Here’s one for you: you don’t actually love your father, it’s stockholm syndrome. How do I know? It happened to me, therefore it must also be your experience.
Does that feel good?
This person’s advice is comprehensive and correct. You need to accept it. What you’re feeling is not love. Love is something that is built up over years of being in a relationship. No relationship, no love. If what you’re feeling is as strong as you claim, then the correct word would be infatuation, or possibly obsession.
You’re going to come off as extremely creepy to her. Let it go.
Genuinely think you’re arguing about semantics with the love/attraction thing. Like, you can profess your love to someone despite no romantic relationship existing yet.
It’s honestly irrelevant what term OP uses to describe their feelings.
Though I do agree with the 2nd paragraph.
It’s not a matter of semantics, it’s a matter of drawing a distinction between 2 emotions that are often confused with each other. Call it whatever you want, but what OP calls love is clearly not what a regular person would consider to be love. This distinction, which has been made by several other people in this thread as well, is important because people will and often do justify being a creep as that they’re “in love.” See how already so much of OP’s argument hinges on the idea that he is in love? To be clear, he is very explicit that he is not just attracted to her - he is very clear that he believes he feels what a regular person would consider to be love.
Granted, in hindsight and given his responses so far, it seems unlikely that drawing this distinction would make a meaningful practical difference. But I fail to see how addressing one of the core parts of OP’s arguments can be considered as meaningless argument over semantics
What?
From the Encyclopædia Britannica:
Romeo and Juliet never got to live as a couple. Were they not in love?
We knew each other for 11 years, were bonded by various class activities. I believe that’s enough for the proper and pure feelings to form.
Whatever you say, brother. We’re only here to provide advice. And so far, everyone’s advice seems to be on the same page. It’s your decision whether to take it.
I will however point out that, in fact, the modern consensus is that Romeo and Juliet were not in love and that it was, at best, a hormone-driven highschool crush that lasted less than a week
tips hat
Ackchually milady, the eshiclopedia brihtannika says you’re wrong! Checkmate lib
laughs in incel
You’re… quoting an encyclopedia. On matters of romance and affection. You’re not coming across as “in love”; you’re coming across as infatuated. You’re in love with the idea of her, and the even more abstract idea of being in a relationship with her. I can just about guarantee you that reality is unlikely to fully match what you have in mind.
And… well, taken with your other replies and apparent reluctance to integrate and/or accept the rather consistent gist of the replies you’re getting, you’re starting to give off a wee bit of an incel vibe.
But anyways:
This isn’t a matter you can logically litigate. Human emotion is simply not a clean, cut-and-dried domain.
My further advice to you would be to focus on human connection first. Writ large, treat dating and romance as a side quest, not a primary quest. Focus on befriending people, and deepening interpersonal connection before anything else.
I don’t know what the nuance of the situation is, of course, but it sounds like you may have the opportunity to rekindle a friendship, and then see if it goes anywhere as things evolve. If you push really hard on the romance angle, especially if this is a very out-of-the-blue thing for her, you’re very likely to squick her out and nuke any chance of friendship, let alone anything more than that. Treat her as a human, and a friend, and then see where things go.
Well, someone was disagreeing with me on the definition of a word. What else was I supposed to quote? A dictionary?
Not sure what you mean. We knew each other quite closely.
I… Don’t understand. The only replies I argued with tried to redefine love as someone that may not happen outside of an established relationship, a definition seemingly not familiar nor to Wikipedia, nor Britannica, nor Shakespeare, nor Dostoevsky.
Could you quote the parts where I’m giving “incel vibes”, please?
What part of “one-sided” could you miss? I’m not looking into meeting her again. She now lives thousands of kilometres away and definitely never liked me. My question had no hidden meaning: the “confession” was simply a matter of curiosity satisfaction, a reassuring compliment, and a way to close unanswered questions, as every person has a right to know of everything related to them in the highest possible extent.
I’m not here to debate you. I am here to provide advice from my lived experience.
Take it or leave it - this isn’t my monkey, and it’s not my circus.