I have been great friends with this guy for a while; we just seem to understand each other and our friendship is almost effortless. Here is the problem, we made a mistake and ended up sleeping together. As you can imagine, this complicates our “effortless” friendship. I am not interested in a sexual relationship with him -to me, it was just something that happened one night. I think he feels differently because he has been acting really shady around me since then. Is there any graceful way to talk about what happened and work on rebuilding our friendship, without hurting his feelings?

From Friendship Ruined

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Dear Friendship Ruined,

First of all, I have always found it hard for a guy and girl to only be friends. I do believe a friendship is possible, but I feel that one person usually has feelings for the other and by being great friends the feelings just keep getting stronger.

Maybe you are right. Maybe this was just a one time thing for you, but completely different for him. Ask yourself if you ever got the feeling that he might have feelings for you? What made you sleep with him? How did he react directly afterwards? Asking yourself these sorts of questions can help you figure out if he really is acting shady because he actually likes you more than a friend or just feels weird like you do.

After you get to the bottom of it, you have to approach him with it. He is a guy, so if you come out saying that you don’t have feelings for him; he is going to get defensive right off the bat. Your goal is to stay best friends with this guy, so I suggest not going with the blunt honest approach (like I would normally advise).

Guys tend to not handle the brutal truth as well as one of your girlfriends might. My best advice to you would be to try your hardest to not sound like you are putting the blame on him.

Do not, and I repeat do not start off by asking him why he has been shady. He will definitely put his guard up, tense up and try his hardest to not become emotional, which will most likely just make him end up being rude Also, try you’re hardest to not say anything to detailed about the sex. Common sense proves that a guys is not going to handle any conversation well when someone is about to diss his ‘sex moves’. It’s something called the male ego.

Okay, so how should you go about this? Well, I would start off asking him to do something that you both normally do together. Put him in a non-threatening environment where he doesn’t think you are going to bring this situation up in conversation.

Then without being blunt or talking about the sex, ask him how he’s been lately. Tell him you feel a little disconnected from him and you think it might have something to do with the other night.

Hopefully that will bring up the conversation of him acting sort of acting weird as well. Then tell him how you feel. Tell him how much you value his friendship. How the other night was wonderful but you think that it shouldn’t happen again due to the great friendship you both have and don’t want to lose.

He might feel the same way and be very happy that you brought it up. He probably doesn’t want to lose you as a friend either. So handle it with grace and ease and I bet everything will be fine.