Did I do something wrong?

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I've been chatting with this girl online for a while & she kept complaining to me about how lonely she is & how she cant find anyone. I kind of liked her & told her I was interested in her last month. She turned me down claiming she didn't like me in "that way". She kept coming to me for support & whenever I mentioned being lonely; she started going on & on about how lonely she was. Earlier today I suggested that we get in a relationship again & she told me that she doesn't have those kinds of feelings for me & if she got in a relationship with me she would only be going through the motions & not feeling anything for me. I told her I understood that & I liked being her friend & I can accept that she is not interested in me but I also said that I did not want her to keep coming to me to complain about being lonely because I was lonely to & liked her & providing that kind of emotional support to her knowing I cant be anything more than her friend was painful to me. She got really upset & accused me of trying to guilt her which I was NOT & being mean which was NOT my intent & then she said thanx for making me cry & she blocked me. I do honestly NOT understand what I did wrong. Continuing to provide that kind of emotional support to her would of been painful to me & it also seems to me like she was taking advantage of me liking her & using me for support. I feel like I'm a humungous jerk rite now for not wanting to continue providing that kind of emotional support to her even thou it did hurt me. This is NOT an atypical experience for me either. Am I really mean person?

Assuming you had no intentions of hurting her emotionally, you can't be a mean person. Not exactly thoughtful, but definitely not mean. I don't even understand how she thought that was mean. I'm thinking she was probably overreacting, but this is from my limited experience with this sort of stuff.

You did nothing wrong.

You only told her the truth about your feelings when she only wanted to use you as a dumping ground for hers.

You're better off without her.

Post your grief and move on.

I didn't think it was thoughtful of her to keep coming to me to complain about being lonely when she knew I was lonely & liked her. The main time women want to talk to me is when they want emotional support which I usually want to give because there were lots of times in my life when I didn't have anyone there for me & I know having someone there would of been a major help. I do not want it to be one sided thou & the moment I decide to quit letting myself get used; I become the bad guy & it makes me feel horrible.

Welcome to the world of Personal Relationships.

It seems that in order to be friends with anybody, you have to let them use you now and then ... or buy them lots of presents.

Try this: The next time an attractive woman starts to dump on you, tell her "I'm really busy right now, so meet me at my place tonight and we'll tak about it." It's a win-win situation; if her need to unload her problems outweighs her fear of being alone with you, then she will be doing it in the privacy of your home; but if she is really not interested in you as anything other than a dumpsite, then she won't be bothering you much again - and as I said before, you're better off without such women; they're not worth your time.

Hello nick007.

Firstly, my own experience of personal relationships are limited in the extreme.

It may seem to her that your offering support was merely a pretext to starting a relationship.

I agree with SammichEater, that this does not necessarily make you a mean person, it would also be unhelpful to think of yourself as being so.

You were not mean. I think she was being very selfish and a taker. Bravo for you, standing up for yourself and trying to handle things in a mature way.

I will never have any women friends if I take your advice Fnord & I would really like some. I did not think about a relationship with her till after I had been providing support a while & I think I started liking her because I liked helping her & I thought she might of been interested in me because of the way she kept coming to me. I feel like I'm a clueless moron. This stuff is too complicated for me to understand.

I think you did the right thing, then again, I don't know what certain relationships entail aside from the very basic and obvious stuff.

She wanted you to be a friend, and for girls, that means someone to dump all their problems on.

Clearly you wanted more out of the relationship, so she felt guilty and found it difficult to be around you.

Conversely, you found it difficult to be around her, because she did not reciprocate your feelings.


I've had a guy latch on to me before, and express his love. I had no feelings for the guy, and it made things super awkward for me, so I ended the friendship totally. I don't do touchy feely emotional discussions.

Yes you did do something wrong, but it's complicated and obscure. I'll try to explain the best I can.

The sequence of events to put things in context.

1. You meet a girl, decide you like her, and determine she is a romantic interests.
2. Simultaneously, she meets you, likes you, and determines you are a friend.

*This is where potential problems stem from in co-ed relationships but it's not the least bit unusual and at this point you have done nothing wrong. When a lot of guys likes a girl in the sense that he gets along with her and enjoys interacting with her, he generally sees her as a potential romantic interest. But girls have more levels of affinity for a person and a girl can really like a guy as a friend, a crush, a boyfriend, a soulmate, a husband.....girls generally can like a guy in a lot more ways than a guy can...or tends to like a girl, as you have found out. The default is "friend".

So you think she might be a romantic interest and develop an affinity for her in this sense and you think she reciprocates to some degree. Meanwhile, she thinks you are a sweet guy who is being a really good friend.

3. She starts confiding in you like you're a really good friend, who is just a friend.
4. You go along with it thinking this will lead to something.

You are still both oblivious and innocent at this point.

5. You confide that you like her.
6. She explains she doesn't like you in that way.

Now at this point, the question is, Did you imply or state in any way that you were ok with this and she could still come to you as a friend? Since you did not end the relationship or lay down boundaries here, the answer is probably Yes

7. For some reason, you allow the relationship to continue as it was. Maybe in hopes that you still have a chance with her. Maybe because you figure at least you still have some (unhealthy) connection to her this way. Maybe because you think you can be just a friend. Only you can say.

8. She thinks you understand that you two are just friends and are ok with this.
9. She proceeds as she had been.
10. You have a problem with her talking about how lonely she is because Why? Likely because she had the opportunity to be with you and turned it down, so in your mind somewhere, you think she has brought this loneliness upon herself. (What your mind did not figure out though, is that she would be lonely even if she were with you because you do not fulfill her that aspect that is causing the lonelyness)

11. You try to change the subject.
This was your first implicit attempt at setting boundaries in the relationship, but they are conditional boundaries. Would you listen to someone you weren't interested in romantically go on about being lonely?

If yes, then you are not affording her something you would afford to someone else as a friend, implying you are really not interested in being her friend.

If no, then you allowed her concept of your friendship to be shaped by false pretenses. In other words, you deceived her, though initially unintentionally, and due to what was stated in the paragraph with the *, you could not have known you were doing this at the time, much as she couldn't have known she was doing much the same to you at the time. She thought you were being a friend and the way you were acting was the way you act as a friend. You thought she was a romantic interest and the way the way she acts when she's interested in someone.

However at the point she rejected you the first time, and you continued the relationship, you became liable for this the deception was no longer fault less.

She was absolved of liability because she express her true perception of the relationship and only carried on with it after you told her you could be just a friend.

12. You eventually ask her to date you again.
At this point she should have ended the relationship but she did not have the insight or experience to do so, much as you did not have the insight or experience (or desire?) to do so after she rejected you the first time and you really couldn't be just a friend.

13. She re-iterates her stance that she is not interested in you that way.
14. You tell her you are ok being just a friend.
This is actually a lie. You are not ok being just a friend. You are clinging to the relationship because it's as close as you can get to being romantically involved with her. If she were to date someone else, trust me, you'd be very hurt and very jealous.

15. As you actually have no conscious intentions to lie to her, you are true to your AS self and decide to tell her the truth, (you think she will have no problem with it) that you don't want to hear about her being lonely because "I was lonely to & liked her & providing that kind of emotional support to her knowing I cant be anything more than her friend was painful to me."

But this what you really actually said....or what she heard anyway.
When I said I was ok being your friend I lied. I still liked you and hoped I had a chance
Since you are not dating me, I'm not interested in providing emotional support to you.
You are brining this lonelyness on yourself because you could have me and won't take me
Actually you can't provide the emotional support she needs because you are in no position to be her friend due to your feelings for her. Anyway, this all makes her feel like she was taken advantage of and deceived, and that is why she became upset.

The lesson here is if you really can't be someone's friend, don't hang around. Leave the relationship on a good note and go your separate ways.

Are you a jerk? No, you were just inexperienced, as was she. In the future, she will probably distance herself from guys who express a romantic interest in her that she does not reciprocate, and in the future, you should distance yourself from girls who you want a romantic relationship with, that they don't reciprocate.

I do not think you should feel guilty about it. For me its clear that girl was using you. She just wanted a shoulder to cry on... for FREE. What you did was right. She was hurting your feelings and you let her know. You were honest. You have the right to ask her to stop complaining about being lonely when you were offering your heart and she dismissed you like that. If she felt that lonely why declining your offering? I think she is one of those people who enjoy feeling misserable and spreading their missery around. You are better without her.

That makes sense to me Chronos. I really did want to be her friend thou after I was rejected but I guess I wasn't as OK about it as I thought I was then. I think I need to learn to accept that I will never be anything more than a friend with any women & if I can not handle only being friends with women; I should not be friends with women in the 1st place. I'm really tired of experiences like this. I really do care about em & I'd rather have friends than nothing at all but I guess it's impossible for me.

Does "Friend" really mean "Someone to hear all my whining without getting involved" to women?

Clearly, he wanted what guys call a "Friend" - someone to share good times with.

Or she would not shut her mouth long enough to realize that he had feelings too.

I used to think that when a woman says, "Let's just be friends" it meant "Let's smile and be nice to each other in a superficial way", but now I'm learning that it really means, "Shut up and listen while I dump this bucket of verbal manure into your lap and then leave it for you to clean up by yourself".

Seems to me that such women are not worth the time or the trouble to meet in the first place.

That's just how NT women tend to socialize.

Another important difference to note: guys/men and girls/women feel lonely in different ways. Guys' loneliness comes with desperation. When guys are lonely, they're lonely, period. They want female companionship, and in a bind, they'll settle for pretty much anyone who shows romantic interest. (Well, maybe at least 80% of people who show interest.)

Girls' loneliness does not come with desperation. When girls are lonely, they're lonely for a specific type of guy, the one they're attracted to; other types won't fit the bill. So when a girl is lonely for a jerk, a nice guy won't take away the loneliness. Hence, the complaining about being lonely to a guy who's just as lonely.

The biggest problem comes from misunderstanding the differences between guys's and girls' understandings of the word "lonely". In the OP's case, when his lady friend told him she was lonely, he might have thought she was lonely for any male romantic companionship. (Aspies' supposed lack of empathy coming into play here.) So he, essentially, offered his companionship, with good intentions. But the girl wasn't looking for a companionship with a nice guy like him; she was looking for companionship with a jerk! Dating him would keep her just as lonely, because she's not lonely for his type. So, being true to her feelings, she turned him down. Obviously, since he was feeling the guys' type of lonely (wanting companionship of any girl), and being true to his feelings, he felt used and upset. Hence, the rants like these, due to not understanding a difference in a definition of a word.