Thank you Chevalier and Friendly Face for your kind words. Yes I do have a big heart, it can take me a while to completely open up and allow myself to be myself but this happened with Karen as I knew her for so long and there were signals (though i missed them) of her interest in me too.
That happens too. Sometimes there is a little interest but it isn’t sufficient to sway the decision. This can connect with one fact to mention about women: they have the chemistry or physiological sexuality more integrated with affection. So I suppose they’re likely to have somewhat more blurred lines between friendly affection and romantic affection.
Also, some people go back and forth, sometimes in dramatic swings. What drew first repels later and so on. Initial benevolent interest can turn in negative interest later on. This is perhaps similar to how people dislike those who’d helped them because the awareness of having been helped makes them feel less than self-sufficient, which basically means weak (to them at least). I’m not gonna try and play head doctor on your (former) friend, but something along these lines, by a wide analogy, may’ve been the case. While I’ve got to say there’s still possibility that you somewhat dramatically overreacted in the content or tone or frequency of some of those messages, which might be hard for you to notice or remember. Normal people have incidents like that, I’ve had a few myself too (stress is a large factor). It takes some sitting down and thinking in order to believe because we’re extremely reluctant to believe ourselves to be capable of something like that.
I have a lot of love to give but no one as yet to give it all too.
You must realise that you can’t force people to accept it. If you forced them to accept something positive, you would still be taking away or reducing their freedom (depriving them of the choice), which is a negative thing to do. Considering that God loves us infinitely (and perfectly, i.e. without selfishness, among other things) and still allows us to go to hell in not a few cases, the choice must be an important aspect of love. With big gifts and other such manifestations, you must be very vigilant lest you aren’t subconsciously trying to entrap someone, you know, guilt-trip that person into reciprocation, construct a situation in which that person looks bad for not reciprocating, or otherwise use the supposed gift or other expression of love as a weapon, not entirely unlike someone could use a club to make you jump out of your wallet or remove your cash from the ATM or otherwise force you to do something you don’t want to be doing. This is not an accusation, by the way. I’m partly talking from experience, I’ve had to review some of the aspects of my approach to relationships with people. Didn’t decide to cut the spending or effort but decided 1) to really not expect anything in return, as in just beat it out of my head, like constantly remind myself and making sure I’m not mounting any expectations here, 2) reserve for myself the freedom to decide that I don’t want a relationship with a woman (or perhaps friendship with a man) who isn’t putting effort in our meetings or conversations. I don’t have a right to expect anything back but I don’t have an obligation to be satisfied with what I get, either. I have a right to move on. Maybe this would work for you too.
I thought so much of karen that maybe i just gave her too much than she could cope with though I still would have appreciated her telling me face to face after the time we’d known each other. I know I have to avoid her now but I still think that it’s a shame that 21 years of friendship should come down to this. During a period of depression i suggested to her that we end the friendship and she pestered me at home, at work, by phone and by text saying ’ please don’t let it end like this’ until i gave in and talked to her because I felt sorry for her.
Well, in that context it really is shameful for her to act like she did. Perhaps it was a power game: ending the friendship on her terms, ending it so you can’t end it, while making you into an abuser and herself into a victim. Some people have patterns like that. She sounds like an unhappy person and it’s possible she doesn’t know what she’s doing. I’m mostly complaining here about modern attitudes by psychologists and feminists who validate women in acting like that and teach them those patterns as opposed to acting reasonably.
Why couldn’t the police see this?
I’m asking myself the same question. There are many possibilities. One of them is that you freaked out and you weren’t able to notice yourself acting anormally while they did. But in that case a warning should’ve been enough, I guess (if the law allows them to diffuse the situation with a warning instead of commencing proceedings). Perhaps they were taken for a ride or who knows. It’s impossible to guess really basing on the data I’ve got here from you.
Even a warning from them would have been enough but why couldn’t she ask me to stop if she wanted me too.
Didn’t she tell you at some point to stop contacting her, end the friendship, something along those lines? That would’ve been enough, she wouldn’t have needed to add the “or else” about bringing criminal proceedings against you.
