Trapped in the Friend Zone...I think.

Seven years ago, I met a girl over internet. We live over 2,500 miles apart. We spent a lot of time instant messaging one another, and soon later, calling each other by phone. We'd talk daily, sometimes every few hours. I would feel empty if I didn't hear from her for even just one day. We'd also send text messages, e-mails, even the occasional post card or gift if one of us traveled somewhere.

Online, she would tell me she liked me. She would get jealous if I mentioned other girls. She would encourage me to break up with anyone I dated. She would ask me if I thought there was something wrong with her. I interpreted this as her being romantically interested in me. This excited me and I fell for her.

Our first meeting in person proved disastrous. We both felt uncomfortable. I was as awkward and stiff as I've probably ever been in my life. We didn't know what to say to each other. Without my even attempting to make an advance, she told me, "We're not making out." She conjured up an excuse to extricate herself early from the outing. "I have to feed my dog!" she told me.

I felt devastated. I could hardly sleep. I had no appetite. I felt completely dejected. When we resumed talking online about a week later (which seemed like an eternity to me), she bluntly explained that she did not find me physically attractive. She said, "You're a good guy, but I'm not interested, sorry. I was excited to meet you. It just didn't work out."

She became intimately involved with another guy at around this time and she would tell me every detail of their sexual escapades together. It hurt me very deeply to hear about everything she was doing to him. It incensed me all the more when I saw a picture of him. While I don't claim to be an adonis, I can confidently say I am more attractive than this guy. He didn't seem to treat her nearly as well as I did either. He clearly used her for booty calls. When she finally realized this and lost hope in salvaging him as a boyfriend, she ceased all contact with him.

Over time, we grew closer again, despite her stated desire to only be friends. I had tried a couple times to withdraw from her completely but the separation anxiety was too much for me to bear. If I stayed quiet for too long, she'd text me, call me, and find some way to cheer me up. We had frank discussions about my feelings, her feelings, friendship versus romance. These talks often resulted in her becoming argumentative, uncomfortable and distant. She would claim that sometimes she liked me romantically but only as a companion without anything physical.

At about this point, I made the conscious decision to treat her with indifference. I stopped initiating conversations with her. I stopped giving her compliments. I stopped asking questions about her life. If she talked to me, I'd be succinct in my responses. I'd talk about my interest in other girls to make it seem as though I didn't care about her anymore. I told her about a friend I had who lived near her who could set her up with a guy. She angrily replied, "Look, I get it, you don't want me. Whatever. Past is the past."

After several months of this behavior, she started to show the insecurities that I had once displayed. She asked me if I liked her anymore. She asked me if I found her attractive. She tried to make me compare her to other girls. She wanted me to rate her with a number. She sent me nude pictures of herself. She periodically asked if I wanted "another chance." She apologized for how she treated me when we met in person, claimed she didn't really mean everything she said, and told me she was over looks now anyway. She said chemistry would probably develop over time once we got more comfortable in one another's presence. When I asked her to pick a girl for me among the ones I had discussed with her, she said, "I'd recommend you go for me, but we both know you don't want that anymore." She frequently fished for some kind of validation from me that I harbored romantic interest. She would accuse me of considering her irrelevant. "Tell your friends not to talk about me. I'm irrelevant to you. I don't matter. But don't worry, I'll get over it." She seemed genuinely depressed. Sometimes when I would refuse to offer any kind of reassurance, she would close the conversation by saying, "Okay, well good luck with everything. Have a nice life." Then she'd sign on again a couple hours later or the next day and the same situation would repeat itself. Nude pictures aside, this paragraph described our situation for about a year.

Four months ago, my family moved to a town only 100 miles from where she lives. Encouraged by her renewed interest, I accepted her invitation to meet up for a movie. This encounter went much better than our first one of a couple years earlier. We talked normally, we didn't seem overly awkward with one another, there was a lot of mutual smiling, some friendly back and forth touching of the arms and hands. When the outing was over and we went our separate ways, she texted me almost immediately to see if I had a good time. Over the next two weeks, she arranged to see me three more times. Sometimes our conversations would hit lulls, but overall I thought we did fine. She'd send me a text message afterwards apologizing for being too boring. I would assure her that I did not find her boring and that I enjoyed myself.

Everything seemed to be going relatively well until she abruptly canceled an all-day outing with me that she herself had arranged. She made all kinds of excuses for the cancellation, first complaining about the weather (it was fine), her dog, family issues, etc. I prodded her to just open up and tell me the real problem. She said an acquaintance of mine encouraged her to kiss me, as a way to solidify my interest before returning to where I live. She explained that she hadn't contemplated kissing me and that the thought of it made her feel awkward and pressured.

All those feelings of disappointment and sadness rushed back to me, and I lost my ability to feign indifference. I asked her if I'd really be that gross to kiss. I wanted to know why it would be such a big deal that she would cancel a fun outing over something I didn't even bring up. She replied that it wouldn't be gross, she just doesn't want to do it. She said she didn't want a relationship with anyone and that it would ruin our friendship, which she considered more important. I assured her it would not ruin anything from my perspective and that no one was talking about relationships. I reminded her of what she had repeatedly assured me about being over looks and wanting me to consider her as a girlfriend. She said that she no longer liked me and had stopped liking me a week earlier. She claimed to have been joking about asking me to consider her as a girlfriend.

I asked her what changed between someone else's mention of a kiss and a week earlier when she supposedly liked me. She said she didn't feel any chemistry and that we lacked spark. She said that as a general matter she doesn't even like being hugged. I told her it would be okay to admit if this was really about looks. She reiterated her claim that it had nothing to do with looks. I told her it was cruel to be leading me on for this long, especially after what had happened the first time we met. She denied leading me on, saying that anything I construed as flirtation was her kidding around. I told her I didn't want to hook up with her and that she should relax. She simply said "okay."

She offered to meet up with me later that day but just at the mall for a lunch. I accepted. We got along decently, engaging in some polite small talk, although there was definitely some underlying tension. She offered her straw for some sips of her drink, which I found a bit odd for someone apparently disgusted by the thought of sharing saliva, but I made no comment about it.

When we were about to leave, she brought up the relationship issue. "Are we good now?" she asked. "Do you want to be friends?" Still hurt by the exchange from earlier, I told her I wasn't sure and I inquired on some of the same questions as before. Even though I only asked about kissing, she kept repeating, "I don't want a relationship, get over it." I asked for clarification on whether it was a relationship with me she didn't want, or a relationship in general. She said both. I asked if she was saying she didn't want them now, or would never want them. She said it was unfair to me that she's a "yo-yo" with her emotions and therefore the answer is never. Then she asked me again if we're still friends. When I refused to give a straight answer, she stormed off.

A couple weeks went by and we didn't talk to each other. Unable to go so long without an update from her, I sent a voluminous e-mail, once again detailing my grievances with her, and seeking resolution of some kind. I foolishly tried to persuade her with logical arguments about our potential as a romantic couple, reminding her that she prompted some of those discussions with both her words and behavior. She quickly replied to my e-mail by asking me to call her.

On the phone, we got into yet another argument about the same issues. She said she doesn't like me because I annoy her. She said she doesn't want to kiss me, she doesn't want to hook up with me, she doesn't want a relationship with me, and that although she doesn't currently want those things with anyone else either, she'll never ever want them with me. She theorized that maybe she never liked me in the past either, and that when she thought she liked me romantically, she merely craved my attention. She asked me to leave her alone. I hung up without saying goodbye.

A couple weeks passed without any contact. One day she randomly instant messaged me, acting like nothing had happened. She asked me for advice on clothes to buy. She discussed her favorite TV show with me. We had a decent normal conversation. She talked about getting together again when I visit my family that lives near her. Then she asked if I'm satisfied about "you know what." I told her the truth that it still bothers me. She said, "You have plenty of girls anyway. You'll be fine." We started to get into yet another fight, but I defused it quickly because her dad recently passed away, and I didn't think it appropriate to argue about my comparatively petty insecurities when she's dealing with the tragic loss of a parent. She recently told me I'm doing a fine job of pushing her away.

****

This brings me to the present. I don't know how to proceed. I don't even completely understand why I care so much about this girl and why I get so jealous whenever I worry that someone else will swoop in and get her. She's not physically attractive. She's not a nice person. She's not particularly intelligent or well-versed in any of my areas of interest. Yet I feel a rush of excitement when she contacts me, I love talking to her, I feel empty when she's absent from my life, and I can't get over the disappointment of not being good enough for her physically and/or romantically.

I don't want to kiss her because I'm attracted to her. I want to kiss her because I feel I deserve to after having invested so much time and effort (seven years and counting) into building whatever it is that we have together. I'm not sure I like what that says about me as a person, but it's the truth. I would feel like an utter failure if I couldn't even experience just one real kiss with her. Maybe if I got that out of the way, I'd no longer be as infatuated. Or perhaps the opposite would be true. I don't know. What I do know is I wish I could explore the possibilities of dating her. The status quo is unacceptable to me. I hate wondering about could have beens. And talking about this with her gets me nowhere. It makes things significantly worse. She liked me the most when I pretended not to care about her.

While I would normally be inclined to believe someone when she says she's not interested in me (and I've heard that more times than I care to remember from this girl), there are several reasons why I'm not completely convinced that she's telling me the truth:

1. The 1+ year of my feigned indifference where she flat out said she liked me romantically, where she asked me to go for her as a girlfriend, where she got depressed thinking I didn't like her, where she constantly sought out reassurance of my interest and attraction to her, where she got jealous of other girls I mentioned and invariably put them down, when she'd often say, "I know you don't like me, but whatever, that's my problem, past is the past," etc.

2. Our in-person chemistry the second and third times we went out together. She seemed genuinely giddy and excited for the next opportunity to see me.

3. Separation anxiety. No matter how much we fight, no matter how bad things get, no matter how much we hurt each other, one of us reaches out to the other within a couple weeks, and more often, within a couple days. Usually she'll be the one to send me a text message shortly after a fight asking, "So are we over?"

4. She admits to not being upfront about her feelings and not liking to communicate her innermost thoughts. She says she's a private person who doesn't like to confide in people.

5. She calls herself an emotional yo-yo. She said she falls for people easily and just as easily loses interest in them. She claims to be hypersensitive and to also have anger management problems.

6. She sometimes retracts her own statements, saying she uttered them only to get herself out of an uncomfortable situation not because she really meant them. It takes her months to admit this sometimes.

7. She confesses she's afraid of failure in relationships. She doesn't like to try something important to her if she thinks it's more likely than not to fail.

On the other hand, she's been painfully consistent about one thing: not wanting a physical relationship with me. She's occasionally said I'm good looking, but I've never gotten the sense that she lusted for me, or wanted anything sexual. Only in her head is a romantic relationship somehow compatible with zero physical intimacy. “I never thought about it,” she says. And though she claims not to be a sexual person with anyone and never seeks it out, she has had sexual encounters with others and says she loves kissing...just not with me, evidently. "We don't have that kind of relationship" she'll often say.

So I don't know what to think. The lack of physical interest points toward my permanently being in the friend zone, but she seems attached to me as more than a friend, and I can't figure out why she'd care so much about me liking her romantically if she didn't like me romantically. I'm really not exaggerating the depths of her depression during the time period in which she thought I had lost all romantic and physical interest in her.

Right now, I'm thinking I should return to acting as though I don't care about her. Interrogating one another about our feelings and debating their logical soundness never works. It always exacerbates the tension. Treating her as though she doesn't matter to me reels her back. It gives me the upperhand I never should have relinquished.

I appreciate all and any input, positive or negative, and apologize in advance for the length of this post. As you can tell, I'm stressed out.