Expert: Julie - 8/3/2006

Question
All right, so I've been dating one of my best friends (male) for almost a week now, but he's going through a rough time and is somewhat confused about how he feels about me. Basically, he called me last night saying that he's not entirely sure if he likes me in *that* way or just as a friend.

To make matters even more confusing, he added that at times he feels like he really wants to be with me, but at other times he's not so sure. He acts like he likes me, but then this comes up and I don't know what to do...he also refuses to break up with me because he doesn't want to break my heart, but I've told him that if he's really unhappy, he has to be the one to do the breaking up.

So, what I'm wondering is if I should even try to convince him to stick with it, as it's only been, like, six days since we started going out, or if I should just leave him alone for a while and try the casual dating as friends thing, which is kind of what we were doing before we became serious about it.

Any/all advice would be greatly appreciated.

Answer
I would not try to convince him to stick with the relationship, he'll just end up getting more unhappy and you may end up losing him as a friend. What I would do is back off from him and go back to the way things were before, and if he ever  decides he wants to get serious again, then he'll let you know...

Good luck!