By Yasmine Dawood
Love is confusing, beautiful, and sometimes unfair. Love can be anything but a decision. You cannot decide to love someone, no matter how much you want to. Actually, it’s pretty confusing to find someone you love dearly falling in love with you, and it will leave you clueless, eventually, making you react with one of the following ways.
First one is to try to control your feelings, telling yourself that the right thing to do is to be with someone who knows you best and loves you unconditionally even if you do not see them in the same way.
The second is mistaken your genuine love for them with a totally different type of love, and the reason behind that is probably your emotional need for a partner if you do not have one.
The third, and last, one is to face yourself with the fact that you do not and may not be able to love them the same way they do. So, you try to friendzone them, hoping that your friendship will not get lost in the process.
Here’s your guide to “friendzoning” them with the least damage possible:
Limit the special treatment.
Mixed signals are the worst thing ever created by us, humans. It manipulates their emotions and leads to infinite misunderstandings, which eventually result in both of you fighting.
It is okay to give someone a special treatment based on your friendship with them, but after knowing that they perceive it in a different way, you need to limit it for their own sake. This step is pretty tricky though, because you may find yourself automatically treating them in the way you’ve always been used to. So how could you do that, you may be wondering?
Well, the only way to master this is by thinking about how they are going to perceive every word you say when they are in love with you, and by trying to control their anger when you do so, knowing that you are only doing it for their own sake. Remember when your mom used to punish you for not doing your homework? You used to get so mad at her, but I bet you now know that it was for your own good.
Honesty, always.
Ever heard that honesty will only hurt them? That’s wrong; honesty is actually their right. However, that does not give you the excuse for being mean or intentionally hurt them by being honest. It only means that you can tell them how you feel, in a way they would accept.
For example, instead of saying “I do not love you the same way, but I do not want to lose you”, you can try out telling them “I love you so much as a friend, and I cannot stand losing you, and it hurts me the same way it does to you, but I cannot intentionally hurt you by misleading you.”
Can you see the difference? Truth is, when a person is close to your heart, you get hurt by seeing them in pain. Also, I need you to stop blaming yourself for it. Again, and again, you cannot control your feelings, but you can be honest about it to yourself and to them.
Keep it private.
Another thing that can ruin your friendship for life, is them hearing from another person that they confessed their love to you and you rejected it. It makes it seem like you meant to hurt them. It makes them feel vulnerable in front of everyone, building a barrier between you two forever, especially when you are around people.
No matter what happens between you both, even it resulted in you losing each other, do not let people interfere. People talking about it will only make it worse and impossible to maintain your friendship.