I've been having some pretty strong feelings for a few people in my life, and it's kinda making me realize that a lot of how I approach such things maybe isn't the greatest.
I talk pretty often about how I tend to form romantic feelings concurrent to or before I form simple friendships. I'm more likely to wind up forming a crush on someone and then have it later turn into friendship than the other way around. There are lots of reasons for this, but I think right now, I need to consider some of the more immediate effects.
In the past, I've wound up in some relationships that were pretty unhealthy because I've pursued those feelings immediately rather than considering them more carefully first. This usually plays out poorly, because holy crap we just met.
My general solution has been to train myself to just enjoy the feeling of having a crush and see if it simply calms down into friendship later or not. If it does, bonus. If it doesn't, maybe it's worth following up on. However, with my already complicated romantic situation, I've all but stopped pursuing relationships, even if it does linger.
Still, there have been a few that have just kinda dogged at my heels for months (or longer) now. In all cases, I've basically settled on the tactic of show-don't-tell. That is, rather than gush at a person, about how much I like them, risking pressuring them into more of a relationship than either of us want, I simply show them that I care for them. Dumb stuff, like talking with them every day, showinh interest in their lives... Basically just try to be the best friend I can be for them.
I feel the need for this to be a conscious effort because I'm so terrified of pushing someone for something they don't want that anything with even a risk of doing this is to be avoided at all costs.
Thing is, I think I've gone too far with this. Show-don't-tell turned into pathologically-be-nice-to-while-avoiding-meta-relationship-conversations. Suddenly, I find myself in a variety of situations where I'm struggling, and also risking hurting folks I care about along the way, all because I don't want to... struggle, and also risk hurting them.
Weirdly, for someone who prides herself on being open and communicative, I set myself up as the opposite in some weird attempt to protect grown-ass adults from me.
Needless to say, I think it's probably time to have some conversations with folks. There are three in particular that I'm thinking of, and each case is very different, so I imagine the conversations will all go in wildly different directions, but they should all probably start in a similar fashion: “hey, I want to tell you that I really like you, but I also want to do right by you.”
Edit To be clear, I'm not looking for these to turn into more of relationships than they already are. I guess I'm just looking to be honest with my friends.