[Q&A] Girls/Relationships - Page 7

About five months ago, I broke up with my gf of 7 yrs with whom I was living in an apt in NYC. I then moved back to my hometown.

I didn't talk to anyone the first month I was home because I was very upset and wanted to meditate on what went wrong with my relationship. 7 years is tough. But after I found peace with it and came out of my shell, I reached out to my best friends. They were happy to hear from me and my social life revived.

One of these good friends--Let's call her Lana--was a funny, charming, and pretty girl I've known for exactly 7 years (I met her about the same time I started dating my ex-gf). She was 14 when I first met her and I was 19. Don't worry. It was nothing seedy. She's the cousin of my best friend (whom I've known since I was 5 years old).

We have been good friends throughout the past 7 years. We played WoW together, talked on MSN frequently, and I always considered her the funny, cute cousin of my best friend. I never really considered her as a possible girlfriend though because I was really committed to my gf at the time. But everyone around me commented on how hot she was and were like" wow, hook me up!" Especially once she got a little older...

Anyways, the first time I saw her after coming back from NY was lunch at a TGI Fridays. She came along with my best friend, her cousin who I'll call Danny, and Danny's girlfriend. So there were four of us in total. We hung out and had a good time. We got a douchy waiter who kept hitting on Lana as well, which pissed Danny off.

We also somehow ended up talking about Lana's current boyfriend, who Danny hates. Danny kept talking trash about the guy, and Lana didn't really defend him, she just asked me what my opinion was. I had a passing familiarity with the guy and simply said, "Sometimes you want to have a certain baseline standard and work from there. Otherwise you can end up with a lot of not so great guys."

She nodded her head and nothing more was said on the matter. About four days after that, she told me she broke up with her boyfriend. I asked her why and she said it was because my advice made a lot of sense. Two days after that she invited me out to lunch for sushi. I was wary at first because at this point in time I was adamant about not having a rebound. I was still a little broken up over the whole 7 yr thing. Also, my ex-gf had always said Lana had a thing for me, so I sort of got that vibe. But she sort of insisted and she'd gotten me to admit I was hungry in conversation about 5 min before asking me to lunch so it was hard to give her a good excuse no -_-.

We went. We exchanged lots of funny stories. We had a good time. One of the line cooks at the restaurant knew her and gave us lots of free food. But as soon as she went to the bathroom he tried to grill me about my relationship with her. (Lana is pretty well-known in the part of the city I live in and a lot of guys have a thing for her. This isn't the first time I've gotten accosted just for hanging out with her). I told him I was a family friend. He gave me a can of green tea and shook my hand. Lana came back from the bathroom and invited the line cook to her birthday pool party in 3 weeks. Then we left.

She asked me to go places with her about 3-4x after that. I turned her down each time because I got a sers dating vibe from her during that first lunch we had. I also started to worry what Danny would think.

Danny is my fucking boy. We've known each other 21 years and we've gotten in maybe ONE minor spat throughout that entire time. I love that guy to death. Def the best guy friend I got. Problem is that Danny's pretty tight-lipped about his thoughts. He doesn't tell people what he's thinking, which is both a good and bad thing. In this case, it was bad. I want to know what he thinks, but at the same time, it'd be really presumptuous of me to start talking to him about it when Lana hasn't said anything concrete about liking me. At this point, it could very well be platonic and I'm the only one catching vapors.

Anyhow, eventually she convinced me to go out again. Except this time it was a group activity. We had a "game night" at Danny's house. She invited 3 of her girl friends and we played Scattergories and Monopoly. Everyone had a LOT of fun, tons of laughs, goofing off, etc. Most of them drank. I abstained because I'm straight edge as hell. Everyone left around 4 am.

The next day she told me on FB her friends LOVED me. I said "haha, they r cool too," and told her I had a great time. She arranged for a second game night for the next weekend. I went to that too. A totally different set of her girlfriends but still a lot of fun. After that night, she informed me her second set of friends loved me too. I got the feeling she was running the classic friend filter on me.

At this point, I was still pretty sure I didn't want to date. First because I wanted to date a Taiwanese girl due to family pressure and she is not Taiwanese. I am. Second because she's Danny's cousin (they're super close though. practically brother and sister). Third because I wasn't sure I was ready to try again so soon after my big breakup. I was starting to really like hanging out with her though. She's a lot of fun. And everyone else seems to adore her. I told myself not to be a schmuck and let peer pressure influence me, but seriously, everyone seems to love her. She even has lesbos crushing on her. They come over and do her cousin's laundry just to get in good with her.

Then she invited me to go kayaking with her. At this point, her cousin, who had recently broken up with HIS long-term gf too, had paired up with one of Lana's friends. So it was very much double-date-ish. I agreed to go because kayaking sounded like a lot of fun. Of course, the kayaks were split Danny and his new girl, Lana and me. We had a competition to see who would make it to the end of the river first. Danny and his girl won. Lana wanted to sit in the back of the kayak, and I am quite a bit stronger than her, so our kayak kept fishtailing and she ran us into trees full of wasps a couple times. After I almost got stung, I just jumped out of the kayak and insisted we switch places. All in all though, it was a really fun day.

During the kayak trip, when it was just us two and we weren't crashing into trees, she asked me if I still had feelings for my ex. I said no. She asked me if I was interested in getting back into dating. I said no. I also said my family is really big on me dating a Taiwanese girl. We talked a bit about her ex as well and her other ex-bfs and she admitted that her bf had broken up with her during a heated argument, instead of the other way around. But that her bf then asked her back out half an hour later and she told him no. They'd apparently been having problems for a solid month before the breakup. In the end, I sort of confirmed to her that I wanted to stay single and she agreed that she too wanted to stay single and loved the single life.

Since then, I've started to thaw though. We go out alone a LOT. Like 2-3x a week. She works five days a week so she only gets two days off. We've hung out every one of those weekends except one. I didn't call her that weekend. I was working hard on my novel and wasn't sure where things were going. She wrote on my FB wall the next day how her weekend was dark without me.

We've also made plans to go to Chicago in Sept with Danny and his new girl. Lana and I will be sharing a room. Danny and his girl will share a room. She also wants to go to NY with me when I go to visit my brothers. Danny might go on that trip. No clue about arrangements.

By now though, I've def started to fall for her. I still have not talked to Danny about it. I know she's talked to him about me though, because she once mentioned that she had asked him what my preference was in women. He told her I liked short, skinny Asian girls that look like little boys. (Danny likes thick latino girls). Lana is tall, slender, dark hair and eyes, not Asian but very pretty. Danny also calls her now and again when we're out and she tells him that she's out with me alone. He's never asked me about it. And Danny and I hang out a lot. I'm still wondering wth he thinks. I kind of wish he'd give me some kind of sign although I suspect he doesn't think it's his place to have an opinion. He's a really decent guy. Problem is, my instincts tell me he's not exactly thrilled about it or else he would have said something encouraging. His silence feels like disapproval to me.

On Lana's end, she still hasn't explicitly said anything about liking me. We were talking the other day after coming back from the mall and I mentioned how I miss my brothers because they're all up in NY and I have no other fam here. I also mentioned how it's great that Danny has such a big fam to hang out with and they're all really cool. Her response was "yeah, but you're part of our fam too." That struck me as a very platonic thing to say, so maybe she sees me as a brother now? At the same time, that day at the mall she invited me into her dressing room several times to watch her try on clothes, and ran her fingers down my back a few times for no explicable reason as I was turned away from her browsing the racks. Those strike me as very not sisterly things to do.

So, I'm still leaning towards her liking me but not pushing it because of what I've previously said about wanting to stay single. I did tell her a few days ago that after I finish my novel, if I still haven't found a nice Taiwanese girl, I'm giving up on the idea. Her response was "hehe, yeah this city doesn't have a big pool for selection." She knows there aren't many hot Taiwanese girls here.

Anyhow, right now I'm sort of in limbo. Lana's on the West Coast visiting her mother for two weeks. She left 2 days ago. I'm going to see how much I miss her while she's gone and if I'm really feeling the hurt, I'm going to ask her out. If I do ask her out I'll give it a week after she gets back though, coz I don't like a girl thinking that I start fiending when she's not there. That opens the door to her using cold shoulder tactics later on.

But I'm still conflicted. I don't know how to breach the subject with Danny. Lana's still 21, and she parties pretty hard right now. No slutty action but she sure does like to stay out late. I'm a bit older and not so fast-paced anymore. From what I've seen the past 7 years though she's never cheated and she's never gotten a rebound. So bonus points for that. She's had 3 bf's total. She's not a V. I don't mind that.

Oh and our zodiac signs are really incompatible. That probably sounds retarded, but I'm pretty superstitious and so far in my life most people have matched up really well with their zodiac signs. Maybe some other people can throw in their opinions on that part because it's really weighing on me.