Met someone through friends and everything just clicked between us, someone new comes in the picture so I back off but she seems upset that I did?

[Anonymous]

I really don't think she's the type of girl that wants every guy after her, but I know she's known in the friend group as the "european girl everyone flirts with" as we're mostly streamers she brings a fun vibe to games she's part of, I met her through some American/ Canadian friends though she's UK based infact one train ride away from me, so naturally lately when we started to talk more we started to become rather close which as we're both autistic just made sense

We flirted a bit but joking around really, I got rather close to her to the point we added eachother as mod on our respective channels she even gave me the tag she gives her best friends. I noticed someone else in her community started to come around very often hanging out with us but, honestly would only ever talk to her if it's a 3-way call between me her and him as soon as she left the room I'd get one or two word answers often a "Uh huh" reply, but when she's there he'd often only ever speak to her

Few days ago we were playing a game where I could see he was following her around very much flirting a ton, she was crouched in the corner he came over made a kiss noise and she obviously flirted back etc which I won't lie bugged me a little, I made a flirty playful jab at her earlier in the night which I remember she didn't really respond to

I decided to just take a step back after that, I stopped trying to flirt as it was obvious it wasn't replicated, I'm in the process of moving houses so I kept mainly to myself after. She reached out to me earlier today to express she's worried adding "just know we are gonna miss you and your company mate <33" when I said I felt best to just take a step back as I'm feeling bit rubbish

I don't really know how I feel; I don't want her to think I'm off because of this as tbf I know it sounds childish she's her own person she can do what she wants, but I also can't help that I hitched feelings got jealous

What do i do?

[Anonymous]

Without centering yourself as much as you have been with your thought process, try putting yourself in her shoes for a moment. We both know how women in gaming are treated. We are always the minority and therefore almost always flirted with (yes I’m a gamer with my own community). I can’t tell you how many men will secretly step on each others toes to slide in my dms to flirt. How many times I’ve had guys fight over me or be mad with me. Meanwhile I’m just trying to have fun, make new friends. You don’t understand the pressure we face because if we want a male friend then we better be unattractive or at least have a voice that isn’t hot. Otherwise we get flirted with somehow, it starts to feel disingenuous from these male friends because they hide their motives then are weird if we don’t reciprocate, we don’t know how to freaking act.


Look at what you’re doing for example, it sounds like you haven’t communicated how you feel towards your friend whatsoever. You create this whole scenario of feelings and thoughts in York mind without a drop of input from her. She doesn’t know you like her. So when you mysteriously back off, obviously she is going to notice such a blunt and drastic change. She’s going to think your mad or that she did something wrong, so her feelings are probably a bit hurt. It does not necessarily have to do with romantic feelings, I can’t speak for how she feels. But judging the context of this situation it just reminds me of what I dealt with in the past and it’s soooo annoying having to carry guilt over something I inadvertently did.