I (22M) am/was(?) a very close friend to a girl (22F) who is a classmate of mines. Both of us are first year MD students. Long story short, we linked up at a bar 2ish months ago before classes started because we happened to be in the city at the time (I initiated the meet up). We didn’t do anything else afterwards, but stayed in touch most of the summer, and when classes started up, we hung out and did things together a lot- sometimes just us and sometimes with others. We text each other all day and could tell each other basically everything. We planned to do trips and other stuff together. I really enjoyed her company, and I think she was very comfortable around me too.
A few weeks in, I start wondering if she likes me and is sending signals. She would do things like buy me cookies, put her head on my shoulder, hug me from behind, blow me kisses, and be very touchy sometimes. We would sometimes get flirty through texting as well. I would play along and reciprocate because I was starting to like her. Even though there were the signs, I wasn’t entirely sure if she liked me that way. She’s naturally an outgoing person so its probably easy for her to do things like that. The times I asked her to do stuff with me, she would tag others along, so I tempered my expectations.
But around mid/late September till now, our friendship has been on a slow but steady decline. I stop going to class in person and would watch lectures from home, so I see her less because she still goes in person. But she declines my invite to do things together outside class, on several occasions, to the point where I stopped asking altogether. Our texts become less and less frequent. Like it evolved from where both of us equally initiated a conversation/double texted to where I was always the one initiating/double texting. She doesn’t seem as excited to see me as she used to, say the first few days/couple weeks of class. Maybe part of this is just my paranoia. I know she’s spending time with some of her other friends (both M and F) and I can’t lie, it hurts lol. It’s still sad for me to reminisce because I could just feel ourselves start to drift apart after everything we had.
Around early October, I still wasn’t sure if she liked me or not, so one day when it was just the 2 of us I asked if she had any feelings for me. Her response was something along the lines of “I don’t think so, but it could happen. I’ve thought about it”. I tell her I was in the same boat and was borderline developing feelings. I know it’s not the best question to ask, but I thought she took it well and thanked me for being mature about it.
Nothing interesting really happens after that. Fast forward to today, our interactions are pretty much just transactional, we don’t text anymore. We might wave when we see each other, but we are far from the days when we would tell each other everything and have our little insides jokes and stuff. Obviously I’m biased, but its hard for me to say if asking if she had feelings for me pushed her away because it felt like we’d been on a decline before then. Maybe it accelerated the process. Both of us are busy so obviously we’re not gonna talk/hang out like we did when school started, but I know she finds time to be with her other close friends. We never had a fight/fallout, so I’m at a loss for what might’ve gone wrong that got us to today.
I know its impossible for any of you to know for sure what might’ve happened as this is a very short recap of the history between us, but I’d still want to know your thoughts on anything, really. I will say that I’ve never been in a romantic relationship before and never had a lot of close female friends, so I probably didn’t know what I was doing lol. Anyone have a similar experience/story? Should I not have asked if she had feelings? Did I self-sabotage a great friendship? Do you think she liked me? And is there a chance the friendship could be rekindled? (And if so should I)?
TLDR: Best female friendship dies out; potentially was sending signals