Search Results: waiting for the first time

I have two friends: both are 40, have chosen the single life for years. One is a guy, he was friends with a girl in her early 30’s for a year and dated her casually for a year before he finally decided she was the one and asked her to be his girlfriend. After one year of seriously dating, he proposed marriage at Christmas. They married two months later. He’s a guy, we’ll call him Ryan. Him taking his time is fine.

The other friend is a woman (we’ll call her Tara), she’s been “seeing” a guy (also 40) for at least 9 months. They haven’t labeled it yet, every time I ask her when she’s labeling the relationship she always says “we’re taking our time with it, keeping it casual and just being friends first”. I love Tara, but she’s out of her freakin mind. I demanded my boyfriend to define the relationship after 5 months. Tara does want this guy, but she just lives in her own little shell and won’t demand what she wants. She just sits back lets things happen and says she wants him to define it in his own time (I told her drop his ass if he doesn’t define it at the end of this month).

It’s fine that Ryan took his time. He’s a guy and it’s more socially accepted for him to put off relationships and marriage. For women I don’t understand it though. I feel like when we go that route, we get used, we get our time wasted and we get hurt. I think Tara is making a huge mistake, but my boyfriend says she’s not. What if she defines the relationship and then decides she doesn’t like him after all (that’s his logic). Maybe because I’m also dying to matchmake her and there’s a friend of my bf’s who I want her to meet (because he’s dying to date her and I think they’re perfect for each other).

So Im in my freshman year of college and I met this guy who i befriended with that we also hungout everyday whether alone or with friends. So, within the three months of fall semester, him and I got really close. Im not one who likes when people invade my space or touch me but I was comfortable with him. We always would talk in groups about how we're both not ready to date and how the timing for dating people is important. Basically during these we were ignoring how each of us felt or possibly felt. I often made the mistake of starting the conversation because that was how i truly felt at the time so i would forget that he could possibly like me and he would just agree.

So we were friends, he would hold my hand as a joke and laugh but eventually it stopped being like a joke and he just held it and he would often brush my hair back behind my ear and always like to be near and subtlety touch me or always felt the need to be in my space. There was a time where we were waiting for our friend since she had a late class in the evening so him and i sat on the bench and talked for a bit and when i looked over to him he was giving me these eyes and leaned in for a kiss and i was stunned but then my friend walked and saw us asking what we were doing.

A month later i saw on his snapchat story that a bee was flying around him and I replied to his story saying, "They love you." and then he proceeded to respond saying that he loved me. This is my first time ever being told I love you so i pretended i didn't see it and talked about something else. I was scared that he was just joking around again. The whole time this situationship was happening I was unsure of how I felt about him since he definitely didn't fit my boyfriend standards since he was quite selfish and immature which is the complete opposite of what I look for in a man. I dont talk to him anymore since we got into an argument, he told me he loved me but left when things got bad, is it possible he liked me that way?