I would like to start off by saying that we both have pretty strict families, and we both study in a high pressure, highly competitive environment.
About an year and a half ago, my best friend mentioned in a conversation with me that she had feelings for me at one point and had gotten over it. I didn’t really acknowledge it as I had no romantic feelings for her. We remained good friends. Fast forward an year, there’s suddenly a bit of flirting in all our conversations and I realise that I have feelings for her, we have a conversation about it where she says that the feelings are mutual but we decide not to do anything about it because of the reasons mentioned above.
The slightly suggestive tone of our conversation continues as it until one day she tries to hold my hand and I am just unable to do so (still not sure about the reason, but I am just very uncomfortable with PDA). She suddenly stops talking to me, goes on for about a week then things go back to normal. As I mentioned above we have examinations almost constantly, whenever things get tough for me, I am not in a mood to talk to her and I push her away, at the same time, she has the same fight or flight response when she’s under pressure, and it’s just this destructive cycle where one of us cares about the other at a single point of time, but it just is never mutual.
**TL;DR;** : What do I do about this, I know it might seem like a petty issue as the people in this subreddit seem to be much older, but it’s a thing that has been bugging me in several aspects in my everyday life.