[Adam Ferguson]

Hello April, and thank you for taking the time to read my post today, or tonight, or whatever time it may be.

I’m a Junior in college living in a dorm, and upon moving into the building in September I began immediately making friends. However, one girl in the hall was continually left out of activities. I went out of my way to invite her to things and we ended up getting along very well. We very rapidly became the closest of friends and began spending almost all of our waking hours together. I shared secrets with her I’d shared with nobody else, and for the first time in years I was legitimately happy. She had an extra bed in her room, and I would often sleep in the room with her, but at the time I saw her as nothing more than a friend.

A few months down the road (this puts us into January) I was interested in a different girl that we both knew. I told Savannah, the first girl (my closest friend) how I felt about this new girl, and she didn’t react too much and sort of blew the discussion off. However, after that, whenever I’d attempt to spend time with this new girl, Savannah would attempt to get involved and come along to dinner or a movie or whatever it was that we were doing. At first I was a little bit frustrated at her behavior, but eventually I realized that she probably had feelings for me. Again, this annoyed me at first, but I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I realized that she cared about me more than most anybody ever had before, and I was treating her downright awful by trying to avoid her. It was at this point that I realized I had strong feelings for her, stronger than I’d felt in my short life beforehand. We began spending more and more time together, going so far as to meet one another’s parents and such. Everybody who knew us thought we were a couple, and I practically moved into her room with her. On February 17th, I made the single greatest mistake of my life. I mentioned to her how everybody thought we were a couple, which she agreed with. I asked her if she thought that us actually being a couple would be such a bad thing, and she took a moment to reply before saying that while she DID like me, she was trying to avoid a relationship due to her previous one failing (A year and a half beforehand), and that she was afraid she wouldn’t be the girlfriend I deserved. We agreed we still wanted to hang out, but things never recovered.

She began hanging out with the “cool” girls in the hall, who fed her false information about me on a daily basis. I was completely unaware of this for a month, and by the time I found out it was too late to salvage things. Savannah no longer trusted me and on numerous occasions flatout lied to my face. Spring break rolled around and I left her alone completely for two weeks, hoping to give her space to come back or think or whatever. When we returned to school, things seemed somewhat normal between us for two days, until her new “friends” arrived. After that, it went back to the same-old crap routine of her only talking to me when they weren’t around.

About a week and a half ago, I received a Facebook message from her stating that she no longer wanted to know me, to see me in class, to be my friend, to talk to me, etc. Furthermore, she stated, she was doing this on her own and not at the prompting of her friends (which later turned out to be an outright fabrication) and that finally she was blocking me on both Facebook and via cell phone. She ended with a threat that if I attempted to contact her again outside of my initial reply to her message, she would file harassment charges against me. I replied that, while I didn’t understand why things had suddenly gotten so bad, I respected her decisions and requests for me to leave her alone, and ended by telling her that I hoped someday she could look back on all the time we spent together and remember the good times, not the bad. My closing statement was to remind her that, no matter what, I would always be there for her.

I went home that night, as I felt I needed to be off campus. When I returned three days later, I was approached by public safety. Savannah had gone ahead and filed harassment alongside her friends against me. The school threw the charges out as there was absolutely no evidence and I wasn’t even in the county and then proceeded to counterfile against them as they had been harassing myself and my friends for a few weeks (Saying things to me like “you should just kill yourself so she can forget you” while I was experiencing suicidal thoughts for an outside issue). I have not attempted to contact her in any way, shape or form since then. Yesterday was my birthday and I had hoped she would at least wish me a happy birthday, but I didn’t even get that. It just hurts a lot. We’d planned our future together (We were going to get married because we both saw ourselves as broken) and we’d named our future kids, chosen our future house, etc. I just want to know what, if anything, I could possibly do to ever get that friend back. The whole breakdown has been extremely immature and middle school-ish. My current plan is to avoid making contact with her for the duration of the school term (unless she contacts me, in which case we would go from there) and then maybe a month into Summer vacation give her a call, ask if she wanted to go get coffee and just talk about the old days together. Is this the right idea? Or is this relationship completely done? Please help. Thank you for your time.

[April Masini, your AskApril]

I always advise people that men and women can’t be friends. Your situation is a perfect example. One person always wants more, and confusion and miscommunication ensue. 😳 My advice is not to contact her again. Especially because she’s filed harassment charges against you. I know you think this is bogus, but it’s a good idea to take it seriously and cease all contact, even if she does contact you first.

For future…. you should know that hanging out and sleeping in the same room as a woman who then introduces you to her parents is definitely going to lead her to think you’re interested in her. So when you innocently told her you like another girl, whether you realize it or not, she turned on you. You can conjure up the sayings about a woman scorned and apply them to this situation.

Dorm room romance is complicated because the boundaries are so easily broken, with everyone living int he same building, the same floor, and in your case — the same room…. but you can help yourself know the boundaries by keeping friends and dates separate. I know this is new territory to you, and some of the lessons are painful, but I have a lot of confidence that you’re going to rebound from this important lesson and your next relationship will be a better one for it. 😉

Please follow me @AskAprilcom on Twitter and on Facebook at this link: [url][/url].

[Member]

Posts