I shattered his heart by trying to help

[squiggs]

I am sorry for the ramble to come. Please bear with me.



Here we have an eighteen year-old girl who has never had so much as a date, let alone a boyfriend. There are a bunch of reasons for this, but one of them is that I've never had real romantic feelings for someone (only some short-lived crushes) that made me want to enter a relationship with them. This left me without any experience on how to handle emotionally intimate situations, especially the uncomfortable kind, but I didn't realize this until I found myself in one.

Last summer a new boy came into our youth group, and feeling nice and outgoing that day, I went up to him to chat a little. We soon found out we share a lot of interests. On that same evening, though, he also spilled his heart out to me, telling me about his girlfriend of four years leaving him and how he's been an emotional mess and afraid of girls ever since and how I'm somehow different and he feels more relaxed around me. This sudden closeness startled me a little and made me feel a bit uneasy, but I pushed that aside and decided I wanted to be a good friend and help him out of his miserable state.

Apparently I've been helping a little too much, because a short two months later we were taking a walk, talking about this and that, when he steered the conversation towards relationships. Began hinting at something. Before flat-out confessing being in love with me. I was nothing short of petrified in shock and confusion, because while I had been pretty certain he had a crush on me, I would've never believed he'd actually confess, because I have never done so when I had a crush and that's just what people do, swallow the feelings and wait for them to pass, right? Apparently not. All of this went rapidly through my head in this exact moment, and I only realized what was happening when he had already embraced me and was tilting his head - and I pulled away as quickly as I could. When I had walked a few steps away and looked at him again, I saw that he wasn't heartbroken anymore. He was shattered.

We spent the rest of the walk in silence, and back inside he broke down in the hallway, crying, saying he wanted to die. And he meant it, I could tell. He'd been talking about it before. It took all I could give to make him get up again before anyone came through and saw us, but I knew in this moment I was just making things worse, giving him false hope.

We tried solving this in the worst possible way. Via facebook messages. We couldn't stand facing each other, because we both believed we'd hurt the other too much (we probably have, but we both tried to make it look like we were okay and just sorry for the other). It took some messages until I dropped the act and admitted I'd felt pushed into a corner and confused and frightened. But I also clearly told him that while I did not want to be his girlfriend, I honestly wanted to be a friend and support him.

It's been getting better in the past few months, at least we're talking to each other again. Though I still won't hug him like I do all of my other friends, and I'm certain he knows I'm avoiding him on purpose. I'm still feeling guilty, for not reacting appropriately, for not handling our situation well, and for taking the cracked heart he gave to me and smashing it to pieces. But I'm also still afraid of him in some way. Though while we're still painfully awkward around each other and I can't stand seeing him for too long, I'm even more afraid of one day finding out that he fulfilled his death wish that was so real back then.

[Clark]

I wouldn't worry to much about his safety. He sounds like he's emotionally unstable which happens to the best of us after a bad breakup, but to commit suicide because a women didn't feel the same way, or in your case reacted somewhat unconventionally, is a little far fetched.

First off; Don't beat yourself up for being new to relationships. Facebook is a never a good way to resolve issues such as these but you're both young and it's not the end of the world. Is he aware that you haven't got much experience with relationships? It's something he should be aware of, it's also something you should be comfortable with. He may be "Shattered" right now, but this pain will fade as he meets another women and begins a new relationship with her. You should make it clear to him that you reacted poorly (sorry) and let know you care about him and you're always there to talk if he needs it, and don't feel guilty about the way you reacted; many women would have dome the same thing and felt good about it. You're a sweet person, and as long as you two can still talk then this incident will resolve itself; Just don't avoid each other, because that will make things worse.