Out of the Friendzone

Hey there Occulties,

I feel like everyone needs a little pick me up, so since I had a success story cross my desk today, I asked the client if I could share it (names changed to protect everyone's identity,) and she agreed.

So the background here is that my client (who I will call Sally,) had been broken up with her ex (who I'll call Jack,) and about 2 years had passed since they had dated. Sally really had never moved on entirely, and while she felt that Jack still harbored some romantic feelings for her, he did not flirt with her or in any way engage her in a romantic or sexual conversation in the 2 years that they had been friends after their break up.

Well, so when I read the situation – because she was so sure Jack was on the verge of making a second attempt, it did not look great. Basically, Jack showed up as someone who took issue with dating someone he had broken up with (he never "recycled" his exes,) AND he considered Sally his friend, with no sexual interest at all. He had clearly friendzoned her, and to make matters worse, he had best-friend-zoned her, which means they were really close, like best friends, so it was really easy for Sally to infer like he felt more for her. Nope, when Jack left Sally 2 years ago, he had not kept feeling sexy feelings for her…but he did really love being around her, just super platonically. 

Of course Sally was very deflated on hearing the news, but she said she wanted to think on what she wanted to do next. She told me a few days later that basically she had confirmed everything I said was correct. While she didn't directly confront Jack with "I spoke to a psychic and she said this about you," she artfully worked in some questions to their conversations which confirmed that Jack felt for her more like a sister than he did a lover, and that he was adamantly against dating people a second time. She swears he said "You're the sister I never had," to her during this conversation…and if you ever had unrequited love for another person, hearing they think of you like a sibling is horrid. 😦

She asked if I could make him change his mind, and honestly, there are people, to their own detriment, who will not date their ex a second time even if it would benefit them and make them feel 1000% happier, and so I am leery of working on people who show a pattern of never ever dating their ex again (because a lot of people say they won't but their history proves that false,) because…some people are just weird and would rather die from 10000 paper cuts than date an ex again, even if they love and want that ex back badly. 😛 I agreed but I was less than optimistic. 

I should have been more optimistic. ;) 

When I did the work, Jack and Sally were in constant contact – they texted each other multiple times a day. So I suggested she stop initiating contact with him, but replying to what he said. This wouldn't cut down on contact much, but even that little tiny change in her behavior would eventually make him worry that she was disinterested in him which I knew I needed for a trigger to get him to act (because if he is entirely comfortable, he isn't going to change). I also said NO SOCIAL MEDIA STALKING because I knew it would give a false negative at least once (Jack had a lot of female friends, and this was already causing Sally stress,) and she agreed.

For weeks 1-3 it was really really boring and absolutely nothing happened. More than one of us has been there before, ha ha. 

Then around the 24 or 25th day (so almost a month,) Sally noticed a distinct change in Jack. Except it didn't seem positive… He was getting sort of "cranky" with her, and she said it might have gone a bit longer because it was not too overbearing at first. So I tell her ask him if he's angry about something the next time he acts that way. She did as I said, and he said that it was nothing, and it was stupid. So she pressed him to elaborate, and he finally said that he just felt like she didn't have enough time for him or that she was ignoring him, and it was stupid he felt that way because they were just friends, and he should be happy if she'd found someone she liked who she was dating. She told him she wasn't seeing anyone, and then he just said "oh." And then silence. 

She of course came to me with this and I was like "wait him out for a day or so, because that sounds pretty emotional for a man of his age to say all he did and he probably scared himself by showing he has feelings." (For all of you confused by that, pretty much most men over 35 at this writing are not prone to talking about their emotions as society has conditioned them against that.)

So about a day passes and he starts texting her like nothing was said, and she just keeps replying like nothing is weird, and out of the blue he says "Have you ever dated one of your exes before? Doesn't it always fall apart?" She says no, sometimes the second time around is better, it is just a matter of if you have both healed from the break up and evolved past the behaviors that caused it… And yep, so this led them to discussing  have they healed and moved on from 2 years ago (yes and yes,) and while she was thinking he was just going to retreat (because I told her it was likely that it would happen 3 times that he would open up, and the third time would be when he made his move,) at any second, Jack made a bold move…and he asked if she was still attracted to him. She said she was, and very much so, but that she respected that he didn't date his exes, and he was like "Well, I might make an exception, because honestly, I can't stop thinking about you. I've been thinking about this for a couple weeks now. We broke up over something stupid so long ago, and I don't hold any of that against you. It would really be great to be with my best friend, and I realized how much I love you when I thought you were with someone else. I don't want you to be with someone else. I want you to be with me." 

Of course the rest went as you would think it did…such as people going to other people's homes and spending private time doing private things together. While I will not tell you those details, I will say the gentleman did ask her a few times if she had been dating someone for even a week or two, and she had not. He said that he just couldn't figure out why he felt like if he didn't make a move quickly, he'd lose her, because he'd looked all over her social media, and couldn't find any guy there, and it wasn't like she didn't talk to him every day, but he had this nagging feeling every single day that he had to make a move, and when he noticed she'd not been texting as much, he just figured the worst…that she'd started dating someone else. He was confused why else he suddenly would have been so interested in being with her and feeling like it had to happen fast or he'd lose his chance, and my client, being non-chalant as possible (ha,) said that he must have just noticed she was really busy in October with her job, but she hadn't married her job yet, so he could be sure she was 100% and free to be with him. 

This makes me VERY HAPPY. I am glad we did 2 weeks of work (rather than the regular one week,) because I was worried one week would not have enough pull to get the guy out of his "never date an ex again" mindset. I am super happy that it happened faster than expected, and well…I just like good news. 

Hopefully that brightens up some Mondays!

~Cat