What does 'having feelings for someone' actually mean?

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necroluciferia
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27 Apr 2011, 6:11 am

Sorry, this is a really strange question/scenario.

My best friend and I came clean and admitted we both have feelings for each other.

I care about him a hell of a lot, we speak to each other at least once or twice a day on the phone and share everything about each other - I feel I can tell him everything from the most mundane pointless crap to my deepest secrets that most people would be completely repulsed by. I feel like we are completely on the same wavelength and although we are just friends we both feel like we are in a relationship together which is kind of strange. I feel completely comfortable and relaxed around him, and like I can always be myself and no matter how low I am feeling, talking to him always manages to make me feel better somehow.

I have never felt this way before about anyone. Previously what I have considered having feelings for someone was more like a limerent rush of hormones, feeling dizzy and butterflies in the stomach that soon fades and left me feeling empty and didn't last at all. This is more meaningful but there are no physical, hormonal feelings like that, and I don't think about him constantly.

I am just trying to work out whether it is correct to say I have feelings for my friend, it's a very confusing terminology for someone who doesn't understand feelings very well.



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27 Apr 2011, 6:30 am

Short version what u describe is what love is really about. Far to often we toss it aside in search of the thrill of lust.

Now as far as "feelings"

Feelings are exactly that. Physical experinces. I could bore u to death explaining the respondant paradigm but the short version is that we have no more control over having feelings than we do over blinking when someone blows in your eye or your leg moving when the dr hits your knee with his mallet.

What we can control is how we redpond to them.

Enough of my rant.
Lets just say plenty of folks out there may spend thier lives looking for what u found. ( now go jump that mans bones u both will be glad u did)



RightGalaxy
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27 Apr 2011, 7:57 am

You think or have been told that you don't know much about feelings BUT you do indeed know quite a bit!! ! :D It is better to feel a feeling than to think a feeling. It is better to really love someone that to feel that you ought to love someoone. What you feel for your friend is what I personally call "normality in a relationship" and not a shallow illusion of what a relationship should be. It's not an addiction, obsession, or infatuation. It's not a chemical response to another human being. It is real. True friendships are things that develop over time. They are tested over time. "Having feelings" for someone means that you'd like a friendship to progress to a love affair involving sex and a committment that you both are more imprtant to each other than anybody else...what's next? Marriage is. Marriage makes your bond visible in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of everybody else as well. It becomes REALLY "official" that you two are TOGETHER. This goes for hetero as well as homosexual relationships. If you don't feel this, then it is a real deep friendship that will eventually lead to marriage or it simply won't. "Just a friend " or "Significant other" are two entirely differnt things. I hope this helps you sort it out. I've been married for over 20 years to someone who I knew for a long time as a friend only. I found out I had feelings for him when he announced that he was thinking of marrying someone he had been seeing. I got sick over it. I felt like I couldn't breath - that I was going to die - I passed out! When I was up and alert again - he told me that it was me who he wanted to marry. It was the happiest day of my life. Aspie love is love without all the drama and all the people.



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27 Apr 2011, 8:21 am

Having feelings for someone' usually means something pretty specific. Enjoying the ability to share one's thoughts and what have you isn't really what's meant by that expression.

If there's no 'physical, hormonal' feelings, then it would be fairer to say that you are enjoying a superb friendship rather than love.


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necroluciferia
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28 Apr 2011, 3:32 am

RightGalaxy wrote:
I've been married for over 20 years to someone who I knew for a long time as a friend only. I found out I had feelings for him when he announced that he was thinking of marrying someone he had been seeing. I got sick over it. I felt like I couldn't breath - that I was going to die - I passed out! When I was up and alert again - he told me that it was me who he wanted to marry. It was the happiest day of my life. Aspie love is love without all the drama and all the people.


That's interesting. When my friend told me he might start dating his ex, I tried my best to stay strong over it but the minute I got off the phone I was fighting back tears and felt a sense of impending doom that I was going to lose him and that things would change between us. I couldn't get on with my life or relax, all I could think about was that I was going to have missed my chance with him and was disturbed by thoughts of him and his ex being intimate together. I felt jealous every time he said her name, and became really scared that with another woman in his life I would let me feelings get the better of me and obsess over him, which I don't want to happen. Maybe I do have feelings but I just don't want my feelings to control me.



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28 Apr 2011, 8:46 am

necroluciferia wrote:
RightGalaxy wrote:
I've been married for over 20 years to someone who I knew for a long time as a friend only. I found out I had feelings for him when he announced that he was thinking of marrying someone he had been seeing. I got sick over it. I felt like I couldn't breath - that I was going to die - I passed out! When I was up and alert again - he told me that it was me who he wanted to marry. It was the happiest day of my life. Aspie love is love without all the drama and all the people.


That's interesting. When my friend told me he might start dating his ex, I tried my best to stay strong over it but the minute I got off the phone I was fighting back tears and felt a sense of impending doom that I was going to lose him and that things would change between us. I couldn't get on with my life or relax, all I could think about was that I was going to have missed my chance with him and was disturbed by thoughts of him and his ex being intimate together. I felt jealous every time he said her name, and became really scared that with another woman in his life I would let me feelings get the better of me and obsess over him, which I don't want to happen. Maybe I do have feelings but I just don't want my feelings to control me.


Necroluciferia!! ! :) Your feeling have already started controlling you. Maybe he said that he might start dating his ex because there is no where for him to go emotionally. Give him a refuge. Maybe he wanted to test you out to see if you have romantic feelings for him. Tell him how you feel. Maybe his ex contacted him because she is having a dating lull. Tell him he's being used "again". OPEN YOUR MOUTH or forever hold your peace!! (That's the last thing said at a marriage ceremony before it is made official) Don't guess! Start communicating with this man! ....if you really, truly want him. If you really think you will obsess over him, SURPRISE!! What you really are obssessing over was your inability to go after who you wanted and to claim them as your own. We aspies don't obssess over people, we obsess over the fact that we were UNABLE to muster up the courage to really live. To live means to feel hurt, to feel love, to feel rejection, to feel acceptance, JUST TO FEEL!! You must be strong enough not to run from what you feel but to face what you feel. Don't let him go back to that f****r. VERY important: Did she dump him before? If it's yes, she may have picked up on something that you two were getting closer - she can't stand that because that means she'll have no sucker to run to when the going gets tough. Every single one of my NT girlfriends had this sort of guy to run to when the exciting, bad-boys dumped them. They are all old now and married but NOT one of my NT friends married the guys-in-waiting. They got used not for 6 months but for say 16 years!! That's a LONG time to be strung along! CLAIM YOUR MAN, Necroluciferia!! or forever hold your peace and watch another woman ruin a perfectly good man. I was hoping that he was just pulling your leg about the ex but I got a sick feeling that he isn't.



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28 Apr 2011, 8:59 am

Moog wrote:
Having feelings for someone' usually means something pretty specific. Enjoying the ability to share one's thoughts and what have you isn't really what's meant by that expression.

If there's no 'physical, hormonal' feelings, then it would be fairer to say that you are enjoying a superb friendship rather than love.


Listen Moog-face!! ! You're wrong!! Real love that lasts starts as friendship!! Physical, hormonal feeling start to chill really fast after the first kid is born. Superb friends can understand when you're too tired to have sex. Physical, hormonal bastards cheat on you when you're too tired for sex. If a woman has a superb friend then he should be her husband as well unless he is a gay. How would you feel if your significant other had a superb friend that wasn't you?? Frankly, I'd feel like a third wheel or a friggin' concubine!! Here, ponder this: Your wife is at a party and in front of your mother, she introduces another man as her wonderful, fantastic best friend...but you're just her husband. (the daddy, the bill-payer, the begger for sex) OH C"MON!! ! Your mother would drink a lot of wine and then beat the s**t out of your wife and especially you for being a stupid idiot. The wine would just give her the courage.



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28 Apr 2011, 9:03 pm

I never understood what "having feelings for someone" is and what it constitutes, and after a while, stopped trying to figure it out. Whenever my friends asked me "do you have feelings for her" in regards to a girl I was seeing, the only answer I could give is "I'm dating her, aren't I?" The process would always go like this: I'd find a girl who I think I have a good chance with, trying asking her out, and if she says yes, go on a date with her. Once I make sure beyond a shadow of doubt that she likes me (I usually used a French kiss to test for that), my feelings for her would "activate" automatically. Hence, my answer to my friends' questions. Conversely, if a girl lost interest in me and/or broke up with me, my feelings for her would "deactivate" just as quickly. I could always control them with machine-like precision, and as a result, I'm the only one in my group of friends who never had a broken heart. P*ssed off, yes, but still not a broken heart. After a break-up, I'd call my friends to vent a little, we'd go out for beers, and I'd fine in less than a week. And in my entire dating history, I never felt the urge to contact an ex.



necroluciferia
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10 May 2011, 9:52 am

Now I feel terrible. His ex fell pregnant and wanted an abortion and it was really screwing with his head, and I promised I'd be there for him as a friend because he was feeling very mixed up over it all and I tried my best to listen to his problems and support him. I then discovered that she was making plans to move back over to England with hopes of having a baby with him when the time was more convenient and I just found it too much to deal with. I was only just getting used to the prospect that he might start seeing her again when/if she moves back and trying to re-evaluate things in my head so that I could cope without breaking down and getting mega jealous but when babies enter the equation that is a totally different matter altogether. I was so mad about it all and I just flipped out, couldn't stand to hear him talking about her any more...even though he has made it clear to her that he doesn't want to have a child with her due to religious differences.

Now I feel like I've been an awful friend to him, I have been really selfish by telling him how I felt about the situation and that I wouldn't be able to sort my head out until she had left the country because all I can think of is that she is going to trap him with a kid and they will be settled down and married in a year at the speed things are moving at. I've just found it too much to cope with, and now I feel like I've made him feel worse by offloading my problems on him. I should have just kept quiet.

It is really complicated, as I am in a long term relationship living with someone and would be made homeless if I left him with nowhere to go and no money and I am not emotionally strong enough to cope with that, so even though the relationship has been dead for a while I feel trapped. My only shot at leaving is if I can secure a scholarship to do my PhD, which is looking highly unlikely and in which case there is very little I can do. I really don't want to be that person who has two relationships on the go, and although we did sleep together, we have both decided not to let it happen again until the time is right because he means too much to me to be my 'bit on the side' or whatever, and he feels the same. So I'm going to have to watch as she comes back into his life and they have an amazing life together and have lots of children, because she is rich and can leave her husband and fly half way across the world whenever she gets bored :cry: It's just such a messy situation and I feel completely helpless :(



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10 May 2011, 10:42 am

I had a best friend once. We broke up and she asked me to stay (1200 miles from my home)... i promised her I would, but I found what happened after we broke up too unbearable. Being around, and hearing things...

I apologized as I left for home and left her crying.

But after I left she went straight to a boy she had met and had him comfort her. :roll:

Being selfish isn't a bad thing, if it saves you the grief, because selfishness goes both ways. A true friend would tell you to go.



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10 May 2011, 10:52 am

RightGalaxy wrote:
Moog wrote:
Having feelings for someone' usually means something pretty specific. Enjoying the ability to share one's thoughts and what have you isn't really what's meant by that expression.

If there's no 'physical, hormonal' feelings, then it would be fairer to say that you are enjoying a superb friendship rather than love.


Listen Moog-face!! ! You're wrong!!


:lol: Moog-face!! !

Quote:
Real love that lasts starts as friendship!! Physical, hormonal feeling start to chill really fast after the first kid is born.


I know that. But having an interest in someone and having feelings for them are very different. One can lead to the other. I think the feelings are important. They jump start things. I don't know how anyone can be bothered to be in a relationship without them.

I fell in love with someone once (and that was real 'physical, hormonal' feelings).

Quote:
Superb friends can understand when you're too tired to have sex. Physical, hormonal bastards cheat on you when you're too tired for sex. If a woman has a superb friend then he should be her husband as well unless he is a gay. How would you feel if your significant other had a superb friend that wasn't you??


I'd hope I'd be big enough to let them have a superb friend who wasn't me.

Quote:
Frankly, I'd feel like a third wheel or a friggin' concubine!! Here, ponder this: Your wife is at a party and in front of your mother, she introduces another man as her wonderful, fantastic best friend...but you're just her husband. (the daddy, the bill-payer, the begger for sex) OH C"MON!! ! Your mother would drink a lot of wine and then beat the sh** out of your wife and especially you for being a stupid idiot. The wine would just give her the courage.


I hope I'd never be in the position of meaning so little to someone. And if I was, I'd say the relationship needs fixing or had run its course.


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