[Sapphire]

My son’s friend from abroad stayed with us for a few weeks. He is currently travelling around and will stay with us again before going back home. After he left he sent me and my other son a friend request on facebook. I wasn’t sure how FB worked. I thought it was for messaging.

I sent him a message and he replied and over a few weeks we chatted a lot. 🙂 Sometimes I would tease him asking had he met a girl yet 😉 but he would say no and change the subject, eventually admitting that he had suffered from social anxiety when he was a child and had to drag himself out of it and was still very reserved and shy and couldn’t talk about this stuff. Then he panicked about telling me and revealing so much and admitted he was afraid of losing my friendship. When I reassured him that we were still friends he politely thanked me ❗ and admitted that he had never had deep conversations with his parents or close friends or anyone accept me but that he loved them.

In time my questions became more probing and he said he had already revealed more about himself to me than to anyone else and asked me to stop pushing as it was making him uncomfortable. 😳 He thought it better to talk when he sees me again because FB should be kept for very casual short interactions, funny messages etc. and that he would never send a message only respond. This was true. He initiated a conversation with me once only.

Sometimes though when I asked him a question we would then be messaging for 2 hours. We agreed to stop chatting on FB as he preferred real life conversations and he said he was afraid that FB could lead to misunderstandings and damage our friendship.

He is 22 going on 42 and I am 50. My son is 21 and a little immature. When he stayed with us if my son and I disagreed about something he would stay out of it unless my son asked his opinion and then he would always say I agree with your Mum. This was clever of him because it stopped my son involving him. 🙂

I know if he had a choice between socialising with me or with my son, he would always choose my son.

I would like to stay friends with this man and I hope we can but I’m worried he might feel something more for me than simple friendship. If he feels something more then we can’t be friends anymore and I would hate to lose his friendship. 🙁 He is a very kind and wise person even though he is so young. My son told me that he has lots of groups of friends in different parts of the country but he has only a small group of close friends and he has known them all his life.

So what does anyone think? Can we be friends or is there a danger he is falling for me? I would be grateful for any insight please as I need to know what’s going on in his head so I know whether I can be just friends with him if that’s what he wants or if I should distance myself from him so as to dampen any feelings he might have.

Please let me know your thoughts on this and if it’s bad news and I need to distance myself from him I’d rather do it now before he gets hurt. I hope you can all reassure me he just feels friendship.

Oh by the way, my son is happy that we’re friends. I thought that went without saying because I would not have accepted his friendship request on FB if it bothered my son.

[April Masini, your AskApril]

I’ve always said that men and women can’t really be friends because one person always feels more for the other at some point, and that clouds the relationship. When one person has a crush on the other, there’s an absence of the kind of honesty you see in friendship. Even now, you’re strategizing the relationship — and in a true friendship, there’s no strategizing. 😉

I think that for some reason you’re liking the attention you’re getting from this young man, and there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you’re honest with yourself about what you’re doing. And it sounds like either one of you, or both of you, or one or the other of you (either at the same time or different times), will develop feelings for each other. But there’s also your son in the mix. If one or both of you and the friend fall in love with each other, either one way or both ways, it could affect your relationships with your son.

So, the answer is that no, you can’t be friends. There’s more going on than an honest, natural friendship, here. I’m sure that’s why you wrote. You know it, you just wanted to confirm what your instincts are telling you and you’re trying to ignore because you enjoy the interaction. 😉

[Sapphire]

I know what you mean about the friendship thing but he has lots of female and male friends and never made a connection with them, so I think it is possible for HIM to have female friends. Friendship is obviously important to him or why would he have told me he was afraid of losing my friendship.

He said to me before that I’m like a second mum to him across the pond and to me it’s like I have gained another son. I don’t think he’s going to develop any sexual feelings towards me as he wouldn’t have said that I’m like a mum to him if that were the case.

He’ll be back here in a few weeks and my son told me they are heading off almost immediately because all he can think about is exploring as much of Europe as he can before going home for good. So I’m sure there will barely be time to pack. Then he’ll be gone for good and as he doesn’t like chatting online there won’t be any more contact.

So do you see what I mean? He’s not in any danger of developing any deeper feelings. The only reason he wants to stay friends is because he’s grateful to me for putting him up before.

He communicates like a mate with my son, slagging him off etc but he talks to me like a man. But I think that’s just because he was brought up to be very respectful of women.

I suppose I just want reassurance that he’s not in danger of developing any deeper feelings for me and he definitely doesn’t have those feelings now. I really don’t see how there would be time for him to develop them.

In fact one time I was upset about an argument with a female friend so when we were chatting I was looking for reassurance I suppose and I asked him if he liked me. He told me I was making him uncomfortable and he would prefer not to have that conversation again.

I apologised and said I was just looking for validation. I hadn’t meant to repulse and disgust him. He DIDN’T DENY he had been repulsed by me which is very telling when you think about it. He just said he’d been shocked and hurt. If there was any deeper feeling there or even attraction he wouldn’t have felt those things.

I said he should just unfriend me and we should keep the chats to face to face and he thought that would be best. Somehow or other though we’re still chatting on FB.

That’s when I started getting worried I was damaging him and now I rarely say anything to him. Weirdly enough though he seems more relaxed now. After a few days of not sending him a message, he told my son to tell me he had written the next instalment of his blog. I still didn’t message him and a couple of days later he sent me the link to his blog. He has even started a bit of gentle teasing in a message to me. Surely that proves he is relaxed. What do you think? I’m sorry for all the detail but he is like a second son to me and he said I’m like a second mother to him.

I’m not in any danger of falling for him and he knows besides that I’m happily married so because of that and because I’m sure he knows he wouldn’t have a chance with me he could never even acknowledge in his subconscious mind feeling an attraction.

I’m so sorry for going into all this detail but I just thought if you knew the whole story and that me even asking him if he liked me was taboo for him and also since I’ve stopped messaging him every day and now he’s so relaxed he’s even started teasing me a bit, well teased me once, but that still shows he’s relaxed around me now. So I thought if you knew all that you would hopefully change your opinion that there could be a danger of him feeling anything other than friendship.

There has been absolutely NO SIGN that he has deeper feelings. In fact there have been several signs that he will never have those feelings.

And yes I do enjoy the interaction but only because we have so many interests in common. Too many to mention but the main thing is we both write. He asked could he read a couple of chapters of my book and read it carefully, praised bits of it, asked questions about it and asked me to keep sending him chapters or the whole thing when it’s written if I preferred. Even my husband hasn’t shown as much interest as that. For someone to go to all that trouble is a really good friend and not someone who is chasing me. I know his friends love him and I’m sure it must be because he’s just as kind to them.

Thanks again for your patience in reading this!

[April Masini, your AskApril]

It sounds like you know what you to do. I think you were looking for me to agree — but in this case, we can agree to disagree! 😉

Let me know if you have any other questions. 🙂

[Member]

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