Search Results: kept our friendship

Over the past year I have gotten to know a guy at my sport's club very well. I get along better with him than any other guy I've ever known, his humor is identical to mine, he brings me out of my shell and makes me a better person when I with him. He inspires me a lot and I really love him, but not in a romantic way. I thought I liked him about a year ago because I was getting out of a really emotional relationship that took a really big toll on me at the time. In reality I didn't like him. I mean this with 100% certainty, that I like him simply as a good guy friend. Some of my friends seem to think otherwise and so they smirk at me when I'm with him, they keep referencing him in our conversations, etc. I'm worried he'll notice one of these days. Should I talk to him about it? I feel like I need to tell him the truth before a rumor gets out and negatively impacts our friendship, but there's also a risk in talking to him about it. I really don't wanna screw the friendship up, so at this point I'm open to advice on how you as a guy might react, or if any ladies out there might have had similar experiences. It's just annoying that nowadays people automatically assume that if a girls deeply cares about a guy, she has romantic feelings for him.

Me and 6 other girls have been very bestfriends for 3 years. Lately, one of these girls (J) has been hanging out a lot with different (popular) people, and started ditching us for them. Me and my friends don’t really like them because of the bad stories we’ve heard about them. It started last week last week, I had told my group of friends about a crush of mine. J started becoming friends with him and hanging out with him a lot, while I had a crush on him. Me and my friends all have each others instagram account and use them sometimes. A friend of mine in our group kept getting notifications from J’s account and saw that they were about us, so she read them. In the DM’s J was talking about us really bad and in one of them she told the guy I like that I have a crush on him. She also told the girls she hangs out with a lot that I hate them, which has caused a lot of drama since I have almost all my classes with them. We confronted J about this and she started crying and apologizing. Then the following days she started ignoring us and lying about whether she’d hang out with them or not. She told us she needed space and time, which kind of caught us off guard as she’s the one who hurt us and not the other way around. J told everyone bad things about us, which has led to a lot of people hating me and my friends. The guy I like told everyone I like him and basically everyone hates us. We talked with J again and she told us she was sorry about everything. To me our friendship seems really one-sided at the moment, and my friends kind of “begging” her to come back. My friends and J have decided to have a time out so J can have her “space and time” but I think my friends still want her back in our group. I don’t think I can ever trust her as much as I used to and if our friendship can be the same. Some people say it’s just a phase, and that J is trying to fit in. Does this justify it? If some time has passed, should I (we) forgive her and be best friends with her again?