*and everyone rejoiced*
Hurray! : D

I will gladly take a happy truce with cookies. :3

Oi, you’re not an idiot. I resent that. Also, if you’re the 1%, then move over a tad – we can both share the bench. 😛

Sorry if I frustrated you – didn’t intend to do that. I do enjoy a good debate, but as you sed, we where getting into ‘argue’ territory for a while there and neither of us really intended to. 🙂

Can we have a happy truce instead of a normal one? I offer you cookies in the hopes of lessening a bad day. I know virtual cookies aren’t much, but my virtual fridge is lacking virtual milk. ^_^

I dunno, maybe I”m just the 1% of people who consistently say that I love everyone that I love and mean it. Maybe the bad day I’ve been having today has been affecting everything that I’m typing. Maybe the fact that I’m tired and I don’t like arguing is just making me an idiot.

Either way, I’m just getting more and more frustrated and I’d rather not keep debating so truce?

I’d beg to differ on ‘love is love’. Wanting to marry someone is different then wanting to be their girl/boyfriend – which would be a matter of how serious someone is about sed love. Consistency also varies from person to person – I’ve known people that can be totally and honestly in love one day, and not care about the person they loved within a month. I’d say that qualifies love for having different intensities… thou perhaps love itself isn’t the issue, but rather the seriousness and the consistency of those feelings – but for simplification people usually just refer to how strong a love is. That’s a fault of the vocabulary, but it’s hard to be accurate in cordial conversations without going too much into parenthesis every other sentence.

Um, how can you disagree with a statement that starts with ‘sometimes’? Unless you think it’s never the case that is.
What you are stating is your own viewpoint that doesn’t exclude mine (you even used ‘sometimes’ yourself, implying it’s not always the case). That sed, I think you’re missing the part where I implied it’s a phase (albeit long and sometimes permanent)… or perhaps I failed at pointing that out?
Personally, I agree both with “Sometimes being a friend simply isn’t enough” (statement ‘A’) and “Being in a strong, true friendship can sometimes be more worthwhile than being their lover.” (statement ‘B’); but at different points in the interpersonal relationship, where for me typically A is true until I work out the brunt of my emotions and then B proceeds to supersede A.

In my case one of my best friends started as my lover and best friend, then we split apart while still being friends (thou she has a very bad habit of not getting in touch for months at a time and I miss her >..<
Also, note I've never sed to walk away -forever-, just that it may end up where life alienates you from sed person (they change cities, get married, have no time etc) to the point where walking away for a time could mean never seeing them again. Just pointing out a risk that people should be aware of.

Oh, and am I alone when it comes to trying to reestablish contact and then just getting the cold shoulder? I have a feeling you'd say they where never my friends to begin with, but I'd rather think they moved on with life to the point where we're not too far off from being strangers.

Sorry but I don’t agree with “Intensity of feelings differ from person to person”.

Love is love, there is no measuring the intensity of it. It just is. Being in love with someone shouldn’t stop you from being friends with someone, regardless of how long you have been friends or how long you’ve been in love with them. The problem is that people have distilled the word so that way there is no difference between “love” and “attraction”.

Also, I don’t agree with your statement “Sometimes being a friend simply isn’t enough”. Being in a strong, true friendship can sometimes be more worthwhile than being their lover.

One of my best friends started out where we were friends, then we had a relationship, and now we’re back to being just friends. And now I’m dating someone else, but that doesn’t stop us from being great friends. He and I are just fine with everything that’s happened, and we wouldn’t trade our friendship for the world.

Same thing goes for all the other guys out there that I’ve confessed to, but nothing came from it. I still talk with them (not all the time mind you because we’ve all got lives), I still care for them. And they’ve all ranged from a few years to nearly half my life where I’ve been in love with them. All of them are still my friends.

Walking away because your feelings are hurt is totally fine. Time is always needed to heal any wound, and friends understand that, but to completely and totally cut someone off because they don’t love you the same way is just not the same thing.

PS: Damn, that was some fast replying on your part! I mean, I haven’t posted here in a pretty long while and minutes after I do, you reply. ^_^

Not everyone can drop it like a rock (especially if they’ve been in love for years, possibly since the start of the friendship). Intensity of feelings differ from person to person – there are those that can suppress their emotions and there are those that simply can’t. It comes down to brain chemistry, experience and personality type – all of which intermingle and have their say.

Sometimes being a friend simply isn’t enough – if you’ve always needed more, then ‘just friends’ can feel hollow, disappointing, unimportant. Of course you’ll want the others happiness, but if you can’t provide that for them then sometimes the best thing to do for both you and them is walk away for a long time.

That sed in my case it was a matter of we where never ‘just friends’ to begin with. The more I think about it the more it dons on me that it very much matters how you see yourself primarily in regards to someone. If you’ve been friends for a long while and develop feelings along the way, then it’s much easier to drop your romantic feelings then if say, you where always lovers and friends (I say that because I can’t not be friends with my partner – she’ll always be my best friend; it’s a requirement for love as far as I’m concerned).

It really comes down to interpersonal mechanics and how you view the respective person – do you see them as your spouse, as your best friend, or both at the same time? Sometimes you just can’t separate the two and it’s all or nothing. Sometimes you can. Life goes on either way.

I feel ya’. People don’t always agree on how serious they take their friendship responsibilities. And yes, there are and should be responsibilities, based on how close of a friend you are – I’m not going to ask a friend I don’t know too well to help me fix my car or talk about my life problems, but I would do so (and feel disappointed in if refused outright; possibly consider if that person should be ‘demoted’ if behavior continues) from a friend I have a strong connection with over several years. It’s a matter of how close people are on the friendship spectrum, and both sides don’t always agree on sed placing. It’s a dance and sometimes people step on each others toes by mistake or because they don’t care enough… it’s often difficult to know which one it is. Takes time.

More than once have I had people come up to me, tell me that they’re in love with me, and I’ve had to turn them down.

More than once have I in turn done the same.

If someone tells me that they don’t feel the same, I have the ability to drop it like a rock, because first and foremost I am their friend, and I’d really rather not jeopardize that fact with whatever feelings I’ve had.
Yes, if you need space, then that’s fine, but that’s different than “I don’t want to be your friend anymore because you don’t love me the same way.”

That puts unneeded stress on the person you fell in love with. It makes them feel like shit because they wanted were only telling the truth and they didn’t want to lie to a friend.

If you’re in a friendship and it turns into a “I need to tell you that I love you, regardless of how it might make you feel and you’re already in love with someone else”, that’s not being a friend, that’s being selfish.

It’s perfectly fine to not be near someone because it hurts you. But you don’t just stop calling someone a friend because they don’t feel the same way towards you. You still wish for their happiness, regardless if it’s with you or not.

A friend doesn’t have to be around all the time, nor do you have to talk with them every day. A friend is someone you cares about you, regardless of the situation either of you are in.