TL;DR I am having romantic feelings for a friend of fifteen years who basically got me through an extremely turbulent young adulthood. Is it appropriate for us to date?
I (26F) met my friend, Christopher (33M). I grew up with a single mother addicted to drugs and things were rough. I rarely had sufficient food or clothing. Evictions were common and constant but because of the moving around, I was never taken into state care.
I started going to a youth center. Had these after school arts programs and I got a snack and dinner out of it. It gave me something to do and kept me out of trouble.
I thought Chris and his friends’ dancing was more cool than my watercolors class and began to follow him and his friends around to watch.
From then on, Chris and his friends immediately took me under their collective wing.
Hand me downs that they or their siblings outgrew were passed down to me and on many occasions when things were bad at home, their parents opened their homes to lend me a floor to sleep on. As I got older, I even began to spend holidays at their homes.
Fast forward. Even though Chris and his friends graduated and went to college, they still kept an eye on me. Their families still let me crash as needed and fed me.
I genuinely don’t believe that I would’ve graduated high school without the support I received from them and their families. I rarely saw them but through my high school days to now I’ve remained in contact over the phone and email. I attribute my ability to go to college due to their influence.
After two years, I recently saw Chris again back from his deployment overseas. We’ve both been vaccinated so we saw no issue in grabbing coffees and taking a walk to catch up. As we’ve gotten older, we’ve gotten even closer as our interests have better aligned with age and life experience.
I think I have I small problem.
I like Chris.
I flirted a little. He flirted back I think? Now I’m conflicted though. I’m not particularly concerned about the seven year age gap. What I am concerned about is the fact that he’s always been an older brother figure to me and has been for fifteen years.
I’d like to clearly state that in the fifteen years we have been fake siblings/friends, nothing has ever happened between us. Now, I wouldn’t mind.
I am concerned about people questioning how appropriate our relationship is considering we met when I was still a minor and he was almost an adult.
I am feeling very conflicted. One one hand, I know he’s a good person, I really like him but on the other hand, he, his family, and his friends basically raised me.
In your opinion, what would you do? Do you see an issue or am I overthinking as I am prone to doing?
Submitted April 25, 2021 at 09:01PM by tosstoss7849 https://ift.tt/3dSpuwt
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