UNLESS you need to have 'THE TALK' with your non-boyfriend.
I had made up my mind while we were on break that I needed to have a heart to heart with Phil and put our 'relationship' back in it's place...as friends. But when I got back to school I was telling Lesley about the gift and Phil calling my parents. She said that she knew about the gift and encouraged him to send it and she also told me that SHE gave him my parents phone number and never thought to tell me!
With the understanding that Phil hadn't fully stalked me without Lesley's help, I wasn't AS fired up. But we needed to set things straight anyhow.
Having realized that he cared for me more than I did him, I finally understood that my contradicting words and actions had to stop. I couldn't say I wanted to be friends and then do things that looked and felt exactly like dates. I had been justifying it to myself that because I had been telling him the truth and I hadn't physically given him any validation that I was not doing anything wrong. But I was just trying to have my cake and eat it too.
Calling Phil up and asking him to lunch was the easy part. Then we went to Jimmy John's and talked very casually over lunch and I couldn't get the nerve to start the hard conversation. So we left lunch only to walk back to find a ticket on his car because I had drawn lunch out so long!
He drove me back to my house without really mentioning the ticket and before I lost the nerve I asked him inside so we could have a serious conversation.
I don't really think he knew what was coming. Later he told me he thought I was going to tell him I wanted to date exclusively, so he was really caught off guard.
We sat across my kitchen table from each other and I broke the news:
"It's really hard for me to tell you this, but I kind of see you like a brother and I just want to be friends. But we can still hang out."
Isn't that how it's supposed to go? Then the guy is supposed to say, "okay, I understand" but he keeps calling and they keep hanging out because deep down he thinks that he will still win her over.And deep down that is what she wants him to say too, because she isn't totally sure she wants to be just friends.
Except that isn't what Phil Van Gelder did. Because Phil Van Gelder is as honest as the day is long and as pure as the driven snow.
Phil said to me, "Morgan, if that is really how you feel, then I want to respect your wishes. I can't turn my feelings off for you that quickly, so we can't hang out for a long time. I am not sure that I can ever go back to being just friends."
WOW...GUT CHECK!
That maturity, that levelheadedness, and that character was unlike any I had ever experienced.
It might have been pride, it might have been uncertainty, it might have been that I realized in that moment that I wasn't mature enough for a guy like him, but whatever the reason, I let him leave that afternoon knowing that he wasn't going to contact me any longer and that I was letting him walk out of my life.
And we wouldn't be just friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment