Tl;dr : guy I started out in love with but eventually got over is now in love with me. Different guy I started out friends with but I now have feelings for probably has no feelings for me. Should choose first guy, but it hurts to try to make up my mind while facing impending college graduation and temporarily moving away for work this summer. 


I’ve been hooking up with a guy I definitely have obvious feelings for for four months now. I’ve also been best friends with a guy I met on tinder for the last three years. Tinder guy and I started hooking up again last summer. Thus, I’ve been juggling these two guys (who know about each other because I care about honesty) and it’s very stressful. 

Tinder guy told me yesterday he has feelings for me. That he’s in love with me and wants to be with me. When we first met, all I wanted was to be with him but he led me on, kept me at arm’s length unless otherwise convenient for him, used me for sex, etc. We’ve both grown so much since then and I spent an entire year getting over my intense love for him/obsession with him. After that, we were good casual friends for a year before the aforementioned hooking up resumed last summer. Things with him have always, always, always been stupidly complicated. But I thought I could keep lying to myself that it was okay to hook up with a guy I was previously in love with since I was “over him.” But I’m not. 

The other guy, non-tinder, seems clueless about my feelings for him. It’s varied between an obsession and a crush in the four months we’ve been hooking up, but we’re still called just friends. Part of me thinks that I’m able to keep going through this because of what I went through when tinder guy was jerking me around three years ago. I think he (and, to be fair, many other huge jerks I’ve dated) broke me so badly that I decided to accept affection in any way I can get it. This guy and I started out as just being members of the same friend group when he asked if I wanted to have casual sex with him. I stupidly agreed, knowing full well that I would immediately become obsessed with him. Surprise, I was right and now it’s been going on for so long I can’t believe nothing has broken yet. Four months of hooking up, sleeping over, calling each other when we’re in need of anything, cuddling, talking all night, basically doing everything couples do except for actually dating. I’m obsessed and I don’t know how to stop, but I know for sure it isn’t going anywhere. I just care about him so much and don’t know if I can bear to lose him. 

I know for sure I can’t bear to lose tinder guy. He’s my best friend, my greatest support, he knows me so well and will drop everything to pick me up when I’m down. He knows how much he’s hurt me in the past and has spent every day since trying to make up for it and apologizing. He listens when I tell him problems I have with him, and he changes to make me more comfortable. We’ve seen each other at our absolute worst and best and stuck through it. It’s been insanely turbulent and I can definitely say I’ve never cried so much over anyone else in my entire life. Yesterday when he looked me in the eyes and told me he was in love with me, I felt the confusing, somewhat comfortable space I had carved out for him in my life completely shatter. I have no idea what to do. I’ve been so lost in my desperation for this other guy that I didn’t expect tinder guy to ever want to be with me. Being with him is all I wanted during the entire most vulnerable year of my life. I worked so hard to let go of that dream. I tried to put it to bed. Why would he drag it back up like this. I have so much going on and I’m barely a functioning person as it is. All of my friends constantly worry about me. I’m not fucking ready to enter a relationship that would immediately be so serious. I’m so fucking scared. 

I’m graduating from college in December. I have an internship lined up for this summer two hours away from everyone I know and I’m dead terrified because I decay when I spend too long away from support systems. I might not even get to keep the job because my offer is contingent on passing a drug test I just took this morning that I can’t stop thinking about. I was a frequent user for months before going cold turkey 10 days ago when I found out I would be tested. I’ve been sick with worry about this drug test and the move for all ten days that I’ve known about them and they’ve truly felt like much longer than that. Now to have this stupid-ass middle school love triangle bullshit proposed to me I’m really not handling it. I’m really not. I’m terrified.

And, to be fair, it’s not a love triangle. I have feelings for both guys. Only one has feelings for me. To give up the mutual one so that I can continue being a surrogate girlfriend to a dude who is definitely just also using me would be completely stupid. But I often am completely stupid. I don’t know what to do, but I also completely know what to do. I know what I have to do. I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.