AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Not necessarily. If you value her as a person and a friend, whether or not she reciprocates those feelings, then of course you shouldn't feel guilty. However, if you're only her friend BECAUSE you want a relationship, that's disrespectful to her.

Look at it this way: The first mindset focuses on HER. Her interests, her personality, her habits, likes, dislikes, etc. You're genuinely interested in HER, as a person first and foremost, and a relationship founded around that is much better.

The second mindset focuses on YOU. YOU want to be her SO, and the friendship is a means to that end.

It sounds like its the expectation, then, that's so offensive, as though the final garunteed goal is a relationship. That makes sense as reciprocity is key is even simple friendships. It may have just been a little misleading reading the first comment as starting a relationship out as a simple friendship is supposed to be considered the responsible decision over simply jumping in from scratch. If I see a girl I'm vaguely interested in, I'm not thinking "I need to become apathetic about her before I become friends with her" because, honestly, those would be the only friendships I seek out on my own accord. Typically its from similar interests in the first place, as the difference is typically in the form of me either having fun in their company during the event, and spontaneously inviting them to similar social gatherings.

Its not "I expect a relationship" its "I know if I don't persue this myself, its almost garunteed not to happen at all.". And since the worst case scenario is "friendship" anyway, there's nothing to lose.

Unless, of course, society were to suddenly see that as rude and manipulative.

I feel like we're arguing very similar points, and I'm not really sure how to clarify my argument, so I'll just leave it here. I'm not even close to mad or anything, just not really sure how to continue.

I'm not all that mad at anyone in particular either. I realize I may sound miffed, or sarcastic in my point, but it's more the idea of "Society knows nothing about what it wants out of defining relationships, even to the point of contradiction" has been something that's annoyed for a good while.

Everyone's different. People have different preferences and expectations when it comes to relationships and interpersonal communication. Some people are completely comfortable with just being asked out, while others would find it uncomfortable. Some people don't need to know a person too personally to conceive a relationship with them, while others feel better if they've had a friendship with the other person first. This can be the case for both genders.

Really I think it's about taking it on a case by case basis. There are no absolutes in life, so there's no point in people trying to deal in them with something as personal as a relationship and dating. You kinda gotta get a feel for the other person, and pick up on cues (which I understand can be very hard for people.)

See I, for example, have only ever been interested in being in a relationship with someone who seems to think I'm funny. I know that sounds a little narcissistic, but that's me haha. I like making people laugh, and I like sharing humor with people. Hell it's also how I determine whether I wanna be a friend to someone. Of course looks come into it as well, but a lot of it for me is how our personalities play off each other. One of the conversational probes I like to use is sort of sarcastic ribbing. I like to joke around with people in a way that, if you didn't know me, could come across as being mean of making fun, but really I'm just joking around. 9 times out of 10, people won't react to it negatively. Sometimes people enjoy it, and sometimes people are just kinda neutral to it. Obviously if someone doesn't like it, or is offended, I apologize and tell em I was just joking. If someone reacts positively to my sense of humor, I can infer they like to be around me, and I like to be around them. If not, then oh well guess it wasn't meant to be.

Most importantly, I try to be myself. I'm honestly a pretty quiet person. I always used to keep to myself pretty exclusively, but more recently I've actually become sort of a flirt! Ok maybe not entirely, but I just go out of my way to be friendly and nice to people on a daily basis because that's just who I want to be. If people respond to it positively in turn then that's a plus. I guess my point, really, is just to put your best foot forward at all times, and it makes you more likely to vibe with people. You'll find that maybe people will actually seek YOU out! I don't mean best foot forward as in pretty yourself up and plaster on a smile. I guess I mean just present the version of yourself that you like the most. That could have to do with your style, or your mannerisms, or your humor, or whatever it is you like about yourself. Others are bound to like it too.

My lord this kicked off a discussion.

But yeah Marc, that was my general understanding. It's just that I'm not often interested in multiple people at a time, so im not sure how final the rejection is and if I should start making the effort to get over her yet.

Not a big enough deal for a page and a half of huge paragraphs...

Haha my bad Cobb. I reverted back to my old ways of posting essays to make up for the fact that I post so infrequently.

is it cheating if you have sex with person a while you have a crush on person b and person b likes you back but you're not officially dating??

person a only lives the next town over and person b lives on the other side of the country if that helps

What

It's not technically cheating but you should tell person b that you're more interested in or having sex with a, else you're being quite a dick.

What Syobon said, and if you're not officially dating, but you clearly have an interest to date and will most likely be official soon, then I would go far enough to say that yea, it's cheating.

Either way, it's a pretty dickish thing to do.

Think of it like this, if you slept with person a, would you be comfortable telling person b about it?

In your case though, since person b lives so far away, I'd say to forget about him completely and pursue a relationship or whatever with person a. I'm biased against long distance relationships though, so that's just my opinion.

boys r hard

No, they're really not.

I've found that a lot of "Is it cheating if..." hypotheticals are easily answered as "yes" if you need to ask "Is it cheating if..." in the first place, as it begs the question of why the question is needed to be asked in the first place. If guilt can't be equated (as in the individual performing the act never feels the need to ask the question), it's defined by the individual with the more strict definition of the word, just for the sake of preserving everyone's comfort (under the assumption that if "more strict" = "if you simply glance at other people, it's cheating!", the "more strict" individual is most likely obsessive, and you want to stay the hell away from them anyway).

If the two of you like each other, and know the two of you like each other, then the question shouldn't be what counts as cheating, it should be what's keeping the two of you from becoming exclusive. If it's distance, then it depends on your feelings on how distance effects relationships. If it means nothing, then you're pining for two people, in which case the clear answer is to just pick one and put the other out of his emotional misery before concerning yourself over whether or not you're cheating. If distance is a relationship killer for you, then that should answer your question for you.

my mom's banned me from seeing both guys so it doesn't matter anymore