u/ChipIntelligent9595

I need outside perspectives because I genuinely can’t tell if I’m overthinking this situation.

I’ve had the same close friend group since high school, and one of the guys in it (28M) became one of my closest friends over the years. He actually dated my best friend for a few years back in high school, but they broke up a long time ago and stayed close friends. Everyone is mature about it and there has genuinely never been drama.

Over time, he became one of my safest people. I genuinely used to describe him as “basically my brother.”

We were always extremely comfortable physically in a completely platonic way. We shared beds after parties or trips countless times because it was practical and comfortable, watched stupid reality TV or cartoons before sleeping, spent nights talking in the dark, etc. At parties I can also be pretty tactile with friends when I drink — holding hands, dragging people around, leaning on them, grabbing arms affectionately — and with him it never felt loaded or ambiguous.

People sometimes assumed we were dating if they didn’t know us well, but honestly people have made that assumption about me and other male friends before too.

Then last year I went through a really rough breakup and honestly drank too much for a while.

One night in October, we both got extremely drunk at a party, ended up making out in a club, and more or less slept together afterward. Neither of us remembers everything clearly.

The next morning was awkward, but we mutually agreed to basically forget it happened and move on.

And honestly, for a while, it seemed like we successfully had.

He still stayed at my place sometimes, we still occasionally shared a bed like before, no romantic discussion happened, and things felt mostly normal.

But there were also little moments that confused me.

For example, before leaving for a 3+ month trip in Asia, he spent New Year’s mostly with another girl instead of with our friend group and for some reason it upset me way more than I expected. I don’t even necessarily think it was jealousy — I think it mostly made me sad because he was leaving for months and I wanted to spend time with him.

Then he left for Asia and we barely talked during those months, but honestly that’s pretty normal in our friend group. At one point before that he had even told me:

“In our group we could disappear for two years and things would still feel the same when we meet again.”

Still, I found myself strangely anxious about seeing him again after the trip.

Recently I went to Paris and stayed one night at his apartment. We had dinner, talked for hours about his trip, everything seemed nice enough, but when we got back to his place I realized he had clearly prepared the couch for me to sleep on.

That completely threw me off.

He has never made me sleep on the couch before if there was space in the bed. I’ve stayed at his place multiple times over the years and always slept in the bed because it just felt natural between us.

The problem is I currently have a horrible neck injury, so sleeping on the couch genuinely would have hurt physically. I awkwardly asked if I could still sleep in the bed and he said yes, but after that I suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious and uncomfortable the whole night.

I barely slept. I felt hyper aware of every movement and it made me strangely sad because before all this, being around him used to feel so easy and safe.

The next morning wasn’t exactly awkward anymore, but I still left early because I suddenly felt like I was imposing, which is not how our friendship used to feel at all.

What confused me even more is that after I left, he texted me saying he was really happy I came and that it was nice seeing me. Which honestly surprised me because I had personally felt a lot of awkwardness during the evening.

And honestly, what hurts isn’t even the fact that we drunkenly hooked up once. It’s the feeling that our friendship lost some of its naturalness afterward.

Part of me wants to bring it up directly, but another part of me is scared that reopening the subject would just make everything worse.

Am I overthinking this? Or does it sound like he’s also trying to re-establish boundaries after what happened?