Friends or lovers?

by Rudy Cheeks

Send me your problems in care of Dr. Lovemonkey at the Providence Phoenix, 150 Chestnut Street, Providence, RI 02903, or by e-mail to lovemonkey[a]phx.com.

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Dear Dr. Lovemonkey,
My friend introduced me to this guy, but I never thought of him as anything other than a friend. Then we decided to meet somewhere on a Friday night just to hang out. Well, he drove me back to my house and we just sat in the kitchen and talked. Then he kissed me, and we started making out. Since this happened (six weeks ago), he calls me, comes over to my house 24/seven and we go out on the weekends. I promised myself right from the start that it would be a no-strings attached kind of relationship, because of past experience. He's so sweet and considerate, like the other day when he came over and told me, `I know you want me to give you some loving before I leave.' Or the times when he called to ask me how I was feeling when I was sick. I feel like he understands me and I trust him.

But, to him we're "just friends." I've had boyfriends before and we never made out, or anything like that. Problem is, he's four years older than me and I'm considered jailbait, and I think I'm falling in love with him. I know I should tell him, but I'm too afraid that I'd lose what we have and that he'd think I'm obsessed with him or something stupid like that. What should I do?

-- J.D.

Dear J.D.,
Reading between the lines here, it sounds like you're under 16 and your new friend is closer to 20. Dr. Lovemonkey does not consider the fact that he shows up at your house to provide you with "some loving," or calls to inquire how you're feeling when you're ill, to be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, let alone the designations "sweet and considerate."

Have you thought of the possibility that your new friend wants to remain "just friends" to have regular sex with someone while avoiding any semblance of responsibility or commitment? This is known as "exploitation," especially when the guy is considerably older than you. Dr. Lovemonkey suspects this isn't a healthy relationship, that you will be hurt, and that this guy is leading you on. Even though you will feel sad initially, you should stop seeing him in a sexual sense. If you want to be "just friends," tell him you must both behave as "just friends," and not have a sexual component to your relationship without the element of responsibility that goes along with it.

Dear Dr. Lovemonkey,
I was seeing this guy, and then I dumped him, because I was interested in someone else. So, I started seeing the person I was interested in when, all of a sudden, I started crushing the guy I had just dumped. I broke up with the guy I was suppose to be interested in, to try to get back with the first guy I was seeing. When I thought my love life was going back to normal, with the first guy, I found out that he had moved on and was with another girl. I was so brokenhearted.

I talked to him about us getting back together, and he said he was planning to try to get me back, but he saw that I was with the other guy (after we broke up), so he left us alone. After a couple of weeks of feeling real sorrow, I met another guy and he is interested in me (this is what I've heard from his best friend), but there is one problem: HE IS A SENIOR! I like him a lot, and I've also heard that he flirts a lot, but now we are talking, and the first guy is planning to ask me back out, since he and the other girl broke up. I really like the senior, but I am so in love with the first guy - he's like my soul mate or something. We have so much in common and he is really sweet.

-- Jade

Dear Jade,
Much as I enjoyed your fascinating narrative, I am unsure as to the question. Perhaps there is no question, and you just wanted to get this tale of intertwining passions and perfidy on the record here at Dr. Lovemonkey Central. By the way, I had never heard the term, "started crushing this guy," used to describe having a crush on someone. Prior to this, Dr. Lovemonkey would have envisioned "crushing a guy" as something akin to Wile E. Coyote dropping an Acme-designed safe on the noggin' of the Road Runner. So I thank you for expanding my horizons in terms of modern linguistic usage.

I'm really unsure of what you should do to extricate yourself from this incredibly tangled web woven, it would seem, by a select few in your high school. For, you see, Jade, I am just a few years short of being ASENIOR myself. Not the kind that gets to captain the football team, but the kind that is starting to get surly about prescription drug prices.

I do have one suggestion. I feel that you should keep a very detailed diary of everything that's going on in your group, and consider packaging it as a soap opera script. Dr. Lovemonkey thinks that you have the raw material here to really score on daytime television.

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