** Click here for Episode 148 **
Happy birthday to you, Leah from Somerset! We have no further message for you, unlike some other birthday well-wishers of your acquaintance:
Answer me this; what the fuck do you say to your best friend when he gives you a three-page letter telling you he loves you in your 17th birthday card?!
Thing is sometimes I like him, for example he has good music taste (Rolling Stones and Black Keys rather than this JLS rubbish) but sometimes he can also be an annoying twat who is usually 3 hours late.
Please help, I start college tomorrow and I can’t sleep because of this veritable bombshell.
Well we can’t have you turning up sleepy to college, so let’s not delay in considering a vital but unknown component of this equation: your feelings towards this fellow. If you actually like him In That Way, what’s to stop you going for it? Bar the fact that, judging by your email, you don’t even seem particularly fond of him as a friend, since the bedrock of your relationship is the fact that he cares not for JLS.
Readers, go to the comments and decide for Leah, will you? She needs to get back to class.
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Answer Me This! Podcast 
September 12, 2010 at 9:46 am |
I’ve been there myself. I think that what my best friend was feeling at the time was less “undying love and more “fear of too many new things and an attempt to hold on to the comforting known”.
I wish you all well.
September 9, 2010 at 4:02 pm |
You are going off to college, embrace this change of life. Long distance friendship, yay, long distance relationship at its infancy, noo. You should be focusing on making seemingly well informed but poorly executed decisions about boys also in college with you. I went off to college and tried to hang on to my high school boyfriend, I ended up missing out on what could have potentially be a lot of great sex, or possibly just a few STDs, we’ll never know, because I had a boyfriend! I ended up breaking up with him anyway because there is a lot of change that happens at college and I grew into a new (better) person.
You don’t even have to hurt his feelings really, just explain that since you are going away to college, it isn’t the best time to start a romance. Don’t mention all the casual encounters you hope to have with people that are not him. These details are best left unshared.
September 8, 2010 at 10:42 pm |
Thanks for all the advice 🙂
Just to answer a few questions I guess, no I don’t think he listens to Answer Me This, and the basis of our relationship isn’t solely based on our mutual dislike of JLS.
Anyway my main concerns I guess were ruining our friendship (kinda obviously I think), the fact that I’m annoying independent and don’t particularly enjoys all that touchy-feely crap that most people seem to. Besides, I’ve known him since yr 7 or so, when he was all bespeckled and brace-d so it was a bit of a shock!
My conclusion in the end was a kind of ‘trial run’. I.e. if we decide it’s really bizarre and awkward after a few weeks or so then at least we gave it a try and it won’t always be ‘what if’?
Reckon this was a good solution? 🙂
September 8, 2010 at 6:47 pm |
Silly. If you really liked him, you’d be thrilled. Your indecisiveness says that you’re more worried about hurting his feelings than getting married and having tha babby with him. You’ll have to break his heart.
But don’t worry. If you’re both off to college, he’ll find someone new. He’ll probably pine for a bit, before finding someone who is just thrilled at his annoyingness and his lack of punctuality. And if he’s the good sort, he’ll forget all about you rather than grow bitter and remembers the high school girl who “friend zoned” him (good lord, what an annoying phrase), which is why he becomes such a douche to women five years from now.
But if he’s that sort, all the better that you turn him down now!
September 8, 2010 at 5:59 pm |
Write a pros and cons list. simples! *skeaky meercat noise*
September 8, 2010 at 3:30 pm |
Why not just break his heart in some way (like the poster above suggested, you could tell him you’re sleeping with his dad), you can judge your feeling towards him by your reaction when he, inevitably, gets upset:
a: if you’re laughing and clapping at his misery then there’s a good chance you’re not meant to be together.
b: If you share his tears, consider suicide and feel devastated to have ruined such a good friendship in such a brutal manner then getting into a relationship with him might work.
I can see absolutely no downsides to this……… 🙂
September 8, 2010 at 1:04 pm |
Tell him you’d love to, but you’re screwing his dad.
September 8, 2010 at 1:11 pm |
Well, don’t really because that would be horribly cruel.
But, first off, does he know about answermethis?
Because if he does, it negates any advice.
If he doesn’t, you’re incompatible.