Feelings vs Logic: A crush dilemma

You're already doing long distance. Or, rather, you are. He's not. He's just living his oblivious life.

It has long been my experience that people don't know something unless you tell them. You, not a go-between, not an obscure, shared Instagram post, not a carrier pigeon.

You.

Over the course of two years, you have had countless opportunities to tell him something or other, to get to know him better, to ask him his relationship status, to invite him to something or other, etc. and on and on, ad infinitum.

Yet you have failed to do so.

Now that you're likely (but it doesn't sound certain from what I'm reading) to be moving countries, you are suddenly ready to act.

Now, maybe you didn't have this crush for the entire two years. I have no way of knowing this.

But even if the crush just bubbled up to the surface yesterday, the fact of a pretty significant period of time elapsing cannot be denied or explained away. It's been a long time since you actually saw each other. In the interim, you've been trading curated pieces of your lives.

Even if you both feel you've been 100% honest with each other (and you haven't, because you haven't told him how you feel and who the hell knows what he's been up to), it's still a curated experience. You don't see, hear, or smell him when he gets up in the morning, first thing, because texts don't convey stubble, halitosis, or the insalubrious effects of too many margaritas and tacos.

I would put it to you that this whole thing has been a ton of avoidance behavior. It's a two-year festival of not looking for a boyfriend in any other way, and using this guy as your own personal yardstick that no one you ever meet in person could ever hope to stack up to.

By never telling him how you feel or doing anything to advance the relationship, you've been able to tell yourself that, in a relationship, he'd be both shy and aggressive, depending on what you wanted at the time. He'd be inexperienced and worldly, smart and dumb, attentive and aloof, etc. He'd be all things to you, any time you wanted or needed him to be.

He'd be Schroedinger's boyfriend.

Do both of yourselves a favor and keep the crush to yourself. You've got as much as two years of doing this under your belt already, so what's a little additional time? In the meantime, go out and meet people, either in person or online with an in-person meeting scheduled for the near future (as in, less than 10 calendar days). Some will seem worse. Some will seem okay. Some will seem better.

But you won't know how any of them are as people unless you make an effort and step out of your comfort zone to try to get to know other folks.

And I think you'll find that the fact of whether or not this guy deigns to respond to you will start to matter less and less.