Author: Amit Schreiber

A few days ago I stated that I’m going to try and be more offline that usual, and indeed for a couple of days I didn’t connect to any IM service (I use MSN, Google Talk and occasionally Facebook.) Except for one friend at work it appears that no one missed me online (thanks, rom :) I didn’t miss it too much either and it made very little difference on my life.

So I decided to come back online. It’s still useful and fun to talk to friends here and there. Some of my friends I only talk to online. I should remember to do less of that and use more personal communication, like phone and actually meeting people, where possible.

Lately issues with girls have been troubling me, so I decided to write this post to get some of this off my mind.

In my past relationships with girls I’ve mostly been the best friend. Or, should I say, the “just friends” kind of a best friend. Being a pretty good listener I basically put myself in this position. It was my way of getting close to girls I was interested in and a natural choice, considering that I thought little of myself in terms of looks, sense of humor and general attractiveness in the eyes of members of the opposite sex.

Add to that the fact that, for me, a girl who can express her feelings is very attractive and bang!… years of suffering. I believe it to be at least 10 years. Different girls, of course, but some of those infatuations lasted quite a long time (longest, I believe, was 4 years.)

What does the life of the best friend look like? Full of ups and downs. If the girl has a boyfriend, you listen to how great he is and share the excitement, secretly broken hearted and never revealing (sometimes even denying) your true feelings about it. And if the girl is leaving a boyfriend you offer your empathy, secretly hoping that she will notice how good things are with you and choose you as her next boyfriend. Something which, obviously, never happens.

There’s a lot of ignoring the obvious when you’re the best friend. You think you see hints that the girl likes you but of course there are none. After all, if she really wanted you as a boyfriend she would have told you already – she tells you everything else so it’s not like she’s going to hide it. But you let your mind play tricks on you until some kind of realization hits you, usually with a lot of drama and heart ache.

These days things are a little different – I’m 32 and most girls I meet usually aren’t looking for a listener. And if it so happens that I like someone for more than just friendship but she’s not interested, I cut it off. That’s, basically, what happened with the last girl I wrote about – when she told me she’s not interested I said “that’s fine, but we can’t be friends.” It’s a shame that my way of dealing with it is avoidance, but it’s better than going into the friend zone again.

It’s not easy. I find myself fighting the urge to call her when I want to talk with someone. Knowing where conversations like this may lead, I think I’m making the right choice. I just wish I didn’t think about her as much.

I always said that, even though I’m available on my mobile phone and online most of the day, I don’t feel obligated to answer any calls or messages I get. But in effect I’ve always been online and available. Following some of the recent events in my life I’ve decided to be less online. It doesn’t mean that I’ll spend less time on the computer. It just means that I won’t be so available for IMs as much as I used to be.

I will still check my emails and be available on the phone. Considering that my online friends already were well-mannered, I don’t know how much effect this will have on my life. But it’s worth the experiment.

I tried to write about this last weekend, which was crappy, but gave up on it (basically, I’m tired of hearing myself complain.)

What I do want to write about is that during this weekend it occurred to me that I’m actually looking forward to going back to work and being busy. I realized that this may be one of the reasons I stayed at work so many hours before the trip. I’m determined not to let this happen now and plan fun weekends that will leave me craving for another day off, like a normal person.

I hate shopping. And I specifically dislike shopping for clothes. For an upcoming wedding I had to go shopping both for a new wedding shirt and wedding shoes. It was awful. The shirt I found pretty early on the shopping spree, but shoes are always hard for me to find, let alone shoes for the nice occasions which I don’t even like (I wear sports shoes daily.)

And my mind works in such a mysterious way… when I’m miserable, it really likes to taunt me even more. So of course while I was measuring shoes against my will, I really wanted that girl to be around and I was having conversations in my head with her.

I know. It’s pathetic. I’m sick of it myself.