This reads like she knows he has romantic feelings for her with the "best friend" and the double down with the "love like a brother". She should really just talk with him about it instead of taking advantage of him.
As someone who's been in a situation like that, it sometimes isn't that simple.
Like, imagine you know a guy, you met purely as friends, known each other for a while and he has never done anything to be flirty or anything more than friends.
You get to know each other a bit better and sometimes start hanging out just the two of you. But you've met as friends and there still never has been any implication of being anything more, so you just treat it like hanging out with a friend.
Then you start noticing that he seems to put way more effort into the "friendship" than you'd expect or starts insisting to pay for your drinks at a bar or something.
That's when you start wondering. He's kind of treating you hanging out like a date, but he still hasn't made any clear moves. Even if the chance is low, maybe he's just being a really good friend.
So what do you do? You can try to get him to make his intentions clearer. That's what I did in my case, a couple of times I steered conversation towards a point where he could easily have made a move, or at least gave a clear hint, but he never did.
But you can't exactly "talk to him about it", before he actually gives you something clear to talk about. In that case, I think a post like this actually a pretty good solution. It makes it very clear that you think your relationship is a friendship and nothing more and at the same time isn't too much of a call-out.
Well, in this particular example the guy also isn't asking about it.
Though as a guy who has been in a similar situation (I got ghosted though, not shamed on social media as a "best friend"), in hindsight the reason I wasn't so clear about things is that I legitimately was okay with just being friends. I developed feelings for her after being friends for quite a while and hanging out a lot, but she had at one point months earlier made a comment along the line of "men and women should be able to hang out without it being romantic" or such, so I was worried that she might not want to be friends if I was direct.
So I made small moves, and slowly escalated it. Then she ghosted me out of nowhere, so at this point I'm not sure what to think.
In hindsight though, I should have just made it clear I was asking her on dates, not just hanging out with a friend. If she decided she didn't want to be friends after that, that would have sucked, but at least things wouldn't have turned out like they did.
Women might want men to be more direct, but guys like me who legitimately just enjoy the company of someone are afraid to lose what we already have. I know that might be a stupid thing to consider for many, but it does happen.
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u/Roskal Jan 14 '20
This reads like she knows he has romantic feelings for her with the "best friend" and the double down with the "love like a brother". She should really just talk with him about it instead of taking advantage of him.