So I have this really good friend, and he told me he liked, actually "loved" me...
He's a pretty good person, but the closest I can get to "love" is like how I love my sister. To me, he's a brother if not a friend. I've told him before, and he says he understands, but I don't think he's giving up. Maybe it's easier if I give some background..
I'm naturally a nice person, and when he first approached me and chatted, I, of course, gladly made friends with him to the point that we became quite close. A few months (I think) later, he told me he has a crush on someone and was asking me to guess it. I already had a feeling it was me considering he's been kinda clingy to me, but I didn't want to believe it so I mentioned names of other people.. A couple days after he told me it was me and that he loved me. I had it coming, but I really didn't want to put him down or anything not wanting to hurt him, so I told him I loved him, but not in the same way.. Which, I now realize, was a terrible mistake. After that, he started becoming all mushy, and, no offense to him, quite like how girls are often described to act around someone they like. He'd become all mushy with the I love you's, and he often talked about cuddling and hugging and holding hands and all that stuff.. I tried to tell him off saying I didn't want any of that, but he said he didn't either though he continued acting that way. After a while, I learned that he misinterpreted what I'd told him the first time he confessed to me and became all depressed, or at least something like that. He's had some other issues that caused him to be upset other than realizing that I didn't exactly reciprocate his feelings.
So after a while, I tried my best to explain and apologize, but things became different since then. At one point he would hurt himself, even to the point of attempting suicide multiple times, for different reasons (often times about feeling useless and left out of his family). Being his friend, I tried to help him get out of that situation, which I thought turned out successfully. He never got over me and what I'd done up to this day. To be honest, he can be like a girl always asking if I was still his best friend, asking my opinion on things and all, then getting quite obviously upset if the answer I give him isn't what he wanted to hear. We would often apologize to each other, me because of the terrible mistake I made, and him because he is how he is. Sometimes he would get upset over some things, or sometimes jealous when he sees me messing around with other guys. Sometimes it can get annoying how he sometimes acts overly attached and stuff wanting me to appreciate every little thing he does and getting upset if I say something he did is "Pretty cool" rather than "Cool." He probably just wants to impress me, but I can't always humor him.
I don't know what to do. I often tell him that I only like him as a friend or brother (he said he'd prefer to be looked at as a friend considering how he feels about me), but I really don't know what to do. He just continues what he does, and I'm terribly afraid to hurt or upset him. I really just don't like disappointing people. Plus the fact that he's attempted to commit suicide in the past worries me that if I hurt him anymore, he might just kill himself because of me.. I know I've probably taken this situation too far, but maybe there's something I can do? I don't want to fake loving him the way he does, because that'd just cause myself misery.. What can I do/say to him that could just clear things out and make him understand without hurting him so much? I don't want to lead him on unknowingly like I did in the past. As much as possible, I just want to bring things back to the way things were before he confessed to me, because I don't think we've gone a day talking without me having to apologize and explain myself to him. It's really getting tiring. Or maybe there's some way to make his feelings for me disappear? I'm really having trouble dealing with him at times..
