Hey people, I will try to condense this and explain it best I can.
I am friends with a woman, I met her 3 years ago and I have no idea what my feelings for her are. It's something I need help with, I realise there's a good chance we're both just a couple of weirdos but any help or insight from an outside point would be appreciated.
Grab some popcorn, this is going to take a while, haha.
When I met her, she had a boyfriend, they never spent much time together as he worked away. I never knew she had a partner, we just got along and chatted, nothing happened. After I found out I was disappointed, as I liked her a lot, so I put my feelings to one side and we were getting on fine as mates. She had shown no interest in me other than as a friend, which was cool. Now I need to fast forward this as not much happened other than us texting a fair bit. A few months,maybe a year passes and she stops talking to me as much, I get almost no communication from her other than the odd text saying she is too busy.
After a while she told me she felt bad as she looked forward to seeing me more than her boyfriend, but as much as I was thrilled by this, I would never have acted on it as she felt really guilty over it. Time went on she stopped speaking to me, or would only give short replies, whenever I saw her in person she would walk past me or ignore my attempts to speak to her. Obviously this p*ssed me off, so I made a point of pointing it out to her as she kept saying she was too busy to speak, which I knew wasn't entirely the case. Being honest I knew messaging her and asking was annoying her, but I was being petty at the time as I knew the busy thing was to avoid me ( I understand also that me pestering her was making her more determined in this ).
After this I made a vow to myself to try forget about her and if she contacted me I would ignore her. A month or so passed and out of the blue she texts me. I ignored it, again she texts me, just a normal text as if we had been talking the whole time. I ignored that aswell. Then she called, I ignored it but on the second call I answered, we started chatting and it was as it always was. She started calling me at random times, just being my usual friend, I was the same. For the next year or so we chatted but she would never meet with me in person though after that. It basically went on like this then she broke up with her boyfriend, we started hanging out a bit but not all the time, started talking more, sending daft pictures and sharing music etc. It was cool, then I started to get feelings for her, (this is the important bit) I think. It's odd as I dismissed the feelings and on some occassions I actually pushed them aside as if they weren't there and met other women. Something I don;t think I could do if I had real feelings for her surely? Anyway, she met a dude and at this point again stopped talking to me much and stopped meeting up with me again, I went on with my life forgetting about her mostly (after a month or two). The pattern seems to be after a few weeks of barely nay contact I manage to distract myself til I forget about her.
This guy dumped her and she called me upset a couple of times, which is something she always hid, always prided herself on being a strong person. At this point again I had pushed aside all feelings I had that were more than friendly feelings, she said she wished she get into a relationshiop someone like me, but not me as she's too scared of losing me ( I know the old friend zone chat when I hear it, haha ) so I joked as I do and then told her to be cool. I also told her from my view point as a guy, why he may have broken up with her the way he did. Turns out I was right.
We started talking and meeting up again, she did most of the contacting as I was busy with other things. She would send daft pictures (slightly revealing or dressed for a night out) and silly messages, sometimes drunk ones. Then when I start making jokes back and sending her stuff first, she starts pulling away and barely replying again. I actually had to give her an ultimatum at one point, which maybe isn't fair on her but I could see it going the same way as before with her becoming distant and suddenly being ultra busy when I talked to her, but still having time to sit about bored and going on random trips with her other friends. I basically told her that I wasn't having that again, that she can;t just pick and choose when she wants to be my friend ( this probably makes me sound bad ) but things changed and we started talking and hanging out.
Anyway, as this is dragging on a bit I'll try to condense the last bit. I have had a couple of short term relationships since she met and got dumped by the last dude, and I find myself comparing them to her, which I don't want to do.. she definitely isn't my type looking at it logically, and as you can read here, she hasn't any interest in me that way. If I haven;t explained it properly it basically is this: The loop is us being friends, then me thinking I have feelings for her to her distancing herself then me "getting over it" then her appearing etc. In my mind I must show that I am becoming interested in her a bit and this is why she distances herself, the silly thing is, I don't even know if my feelings are real or I'm just focusing on her with them. Also I don't understand if she does sense these feelings, why she comes back from being distant, to messaging a lot, to being slightly flirty to vanishing again.
That was some story.. hopefully it made sense. I can imagine what some people are going to say and tbh I know what I would say to someone who wrote this, but it's different and you delude yourself when it's you in the situation and not someone else. I think if someone else points out the obvious here I will actually listen, haha.
Thank you for reading this.

Thank you, this story sounds very similar and it's as if you just switched a light on for me. The ending to your post makes a lot of sense.
Thank you once again, very much
