How do you tell the difference between deep emotional attachment and a friendship that’s become emotionally one-sided?
I need outside perspective on whether I should let go of a friendship that has become emotionally overwhelming for me.
I met “Andy” at work about 3 years ago. We were coworkers for the first 2.5 years, and what started as casual work banter slowly became an extremely deep daily connection. We have not gone a single day without contact in about 10 months. We text constantly throughout the day (often 12+ hours of ongoing conversation), game in parallel constantly (not necessarily together, but while talking the entire time), process life in real time, and have developed years of inside jokes/symbolic language. I probably initiate more conversations overall, but he is constantly contributing his own topics, thoughts, updates, memes, stories, etc. We challenge each other intellectually constantly and he has explicitly said I “make him better” mentally. He has also openly said I’ve basically passed every intellectual “test” he’s had for me over the years.
The confusing part is that he is deeply emotionally avoidant. Not socially avoidant — he has friends and hobbies and goes to car shows and things — but emotionally avoidant/intellectualized. He struggles badly with direct emotional conversations and tends to downplay any kindness or attachment he shows. He also does not date, does not really discuss his own romantic life at all, and as far as I know has been single for years. But his behavior toward me often feels far beyond normal friendship.
Examples:
- He reaches for me first whenever something medically significant happens in his life.
- During a surgery that could have left him blind, I was one of the primary people he emotionally leaned on throughout the process.
- He wore my favorite color intentionally to surgery.
- We’ve had long multi-hour lunches where he barely touched his phone and then immediately texted me after leaving.
- He took me for a ride in his heavily modified car that he never lets people ride in, taking me at random to his childhood neighborhood and showing me all the details and backstory/trauma.
- He increasingly allows casual physical touch that used to make him visibly tense (never more than a handshake kind of person).
- He gets strange/avoidant whenever other men show interest in me.
- He compliments me constantly, but indirectly (intelligence, capability, age/appearance teasing, etc.).
- He has said multiple times that we make each other better with the way we challenge each other mentally.
- Outside of our one major fight, he normally tries to repair tension quickly and hates prolonged conflict between us.
At the same time, there is almost no formal/social integration. I’ve never met his friends or family in any meaningful way. The closest was playing video games with his friends one night, but he didn’t invite me into discord, and kept messaging me to private - not even in a party setting where others could see. He is intensely private and compartmentalized.
A major factor in all this is a woman from his past I’ll call “Gena.” She was a very close female friend/coworker he eventually developed feelings for. Other people told him she had to have feelings for him too. He finally admitted feelings, she rejected him, and then blocked him almost everywhere. Even years later, he still talks about it sometimes and it very clearly hurt him deeply. During our recent fight, he randomly brought up forgetting a calendar reminder tied to her birthday and deleting it years later, which honestly made me realize he does not detach emotionally from important people easily.
Recently we had our first huge fight. I basically told him I thought I felt more for him than he did for me, and that I was hurt that he didn’t even ask if I was okay after a car accident. I also admitted I loved him. His response was extremely avoidant/intellectualized. He said things had become “too much,” that he “can’t keep up with hurt feelings and emotions,” and seemed overwhelmed by the emotional implications of our relationship. But he also said he understood my feelings, would help me “any way I needed in a bind,” and never actually pulled away. He also said that he talks to long time friends once a month, sees them every 6 months. Our fight also was about how dismissive he is about me dating, and how he acts like a “frat boy or jealous boyfriend” every time I tell him I’m going on a date.
In fact, after the fight he slowly became warmer again. He resumed the constant communication, became more emotionally responsive again, continued sharing vulnerable things with me, and still reaches for me constantly throughout the day.
The newest issue is that this Friday he told me he wants to handle invites going forward himself. That hit me hard because I already felt like I was carrying most of the emotional risk in the relationship. Now I feel trapped waiting to see if he actually chooses to see me in person on his own.
I genuinely cannot tell if:
- this is an emotionally intimate attachment between two people where one is deeply avoidant and terrified of vulnerability,
- OR
- I am emotionally overinvested in someone who cares about me deeply as a friend, but will never actually move toward me romantically or structurally.
At this point I don’t even know whether continuing the connection is healthy for me anymore because I love him deeply and don’t know how to emotionally “half love” someone.
*edit* I should say, he does let me lean back. He puts up with a lot of spam, and is always responsive. And when I’ve needed him, he’s been there in the capacity he can be. When I had to take my daughter from her dad’s because of DV, he may not have been responding with “are you okay?” “What do you need?” But was responding immediately with logistics, advice, points. And when I wasn’t okay because someone had hugged me I wasn’t okay with (I have deep seated trauma due to DV in my marriage) he was there with a joke. Immediately. And defense. Very much a protective vibe, even if he wasn’t physically there. He is always in my corner, always.
The only points he categorically refuses to respond on, or goes very cold on (“short date”, “good luck…”, “didn’t learn last time?”) has been dating or any meaningful males friends in my life.