What happened

[hulud]

I have a good friend who lives in California, and I live in Texas. I met him when I lived with my dad in California my sophomore year of high school. We clicked immediately, started hanging out a lot, soon the friendship started drifting into relationship territory, though we never made it "official" because I was probably going to go back to Texas at the end of the year. Which I did.

We maintained a completely platonic friendship for 5 years after that.

Two months ago, I realized that I had been lying to myself and shoving my real feelings about this person deep down into the back of my mind. Sure, we remained good friends, but we never quite resolved what happened there. The only reason we cut off the relationship stuff was simply because I moved back to Texas, not because of any reason pertaining to our personalities or lifestyles. I realized the way I feel about him isn't much different at all from how I felt when I could see him on a daily basis.

I decided to go to California to visit my family and my good friend. I talked to him about all this stuff, and he told me that honestly, he didn't feel any different about me either. Reality came to the surface. If we lived within a reasonable proximity to each other, sure, we would probably be in a relationship; it was a mutual conclusion.

But we are not in a relationship. It's not possible. I live in Texas, he lives in California. But that put an interesting spin on things. Only emotion, no rules. We kissed for the first time in 5 years, and it felt amazing. We lost our virginity to each other on that trip. It was amazing, nothing awkward, nothing strange, just happiness, pleasure, fun. The whole thing felt so natural for us. It changed things between us, sure, but moreover it brought things out that were already there, but kept secret. It was quite freeing, really. We became okay with looking in each other's eyes and exchanging feelings of caring, with complimenting each other, subtle touches, exchanges of affection. We could be almost completely honest and open with each other in a way that had not been possible before.

But now I'm back in Texas, and all these feelings are making a mess in my brain.

I talked to my mom about all this. She has a crazy intuition for these sorts of things. She somehow already knew this was going to happen, way before I did. She started talking about my situation as though I am in a relationship with him, so I said to her, we aren't in a relationship. She said to me, "Are you sure about that?"

Her saying that triggered a memory. At one point during my trip, me and my friend decided to get busy in the back of his car. Stupidly, we got caught by a damn cop. Thankfully though the cop showed up before any clothing came off so it ended up being no biggie. But when the cop was questioning my friend, he asked, "So are you guys boyfriend and girlfriend?" My friend replied by saying, "something like that." I never quite figured out what to think or feel about that. I still don't know.

Now I'm just insanely confused. I feel like I don't know what is going on in this situation. I'm not sure about any of this. No rules, just emotion. I'm not sure how to operate that way. I want to make sense of this but I just can't figure it out.

[basilandthyme]

What part of all this is confusing you? You both have an interest in each other - so if you want to give it a go, pack up and move to California. Or he can move to Texas.

But if neither of you is willing to move, then it proves the love isn't really so strong after all.