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[ieuleron]

How would one be likely to respond to the following scenario: You realize someone you've known for years as a friend has a crush on you.
Part of what lets me get along with others as well as I do is that I spend a lot of time observing and thinking about how people react to things in their life. A corollary of this is that I spend time thinking

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[ieuleron]

Oh, I know not to limit myself for some vague possible future.

Part of what is leading to my current plans is that I've had this crush through the past two relationships I've been in (about 5 years time total in). Although there were significant problems in both unrelated to this topic, this crush probably didn't help.

Over that time I've attempted to manage the crush. At first I avoided her when I could because I felt the emotional responses I was having to her were not appropriate to my situation of being involved with someone else. The responses persisted. It occurred to me that I might emotionally have placed her on a pedestal... so I spent time actively trying to socialize with her, in order to get to know her better as a real human being. This helped at first, but not for long. I went back to avoiding her and much more consciously trying to focus on improving the relationship I was in. This helped for a time, but I wasn't happy and so that relationship ended. I entered into a relationship with a different girl when the opportunity arose, thinking that the crush could very well have been based on "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence" and that this other girl would fill the role. That didn't work out and I've spent six months pondering what the hell to do about this.

She, I, and a mutual friend were talking the other day about what the next career steps for her might be. The idea of looking for jobs in Germany and Amsterdam was suggested to her. I should have responded with the idea that it would suck that she would be gone and I would have missed my chance... Instead, my internal response was annoyance that if she did move that far away it would be harder to get to know her.

The idea of her moving to the other side of the planet didn't immediately strike me as an end-game scenario, even though I know it should. This rather startled me.

I've had enough crushes in my life to be able to describe the changes in my emotions over time. (Basically something like this.) This happens if I get the opportunity to get to know the person well or not, regardless if we're friends or not. The pattern of this crush has been entirely different.