Hi abcdx
Welcome to the forum & sorry to hear about your heartache.
I agree with the others, to a certain extent, but it is possible that she did just see you as just a close friend and maybe was behaving accordingly ~ as she would with her girlfriends ~ and not
using you. This boy-girl-close-friendship thing seems to happen a lot nowadays, but didn't so much in the past. It is possible that this is how she read it.
She may have known that you really liked her, but may have thought that you fully realised that friendship is as far as it was going to go.
On the other hand, she may not have known. She may be telling her friends that there is a chap she has fancied for years, but he only wants to be friends. Have you considered that?
Consider:
You have never asked her out.
You have had a couple of meals with her.
You have 'spoken' long-distance via the Internet, on and off over a number of years.
You have met her 6 or 7 times in about 4 years.
Is this correct?
This hardly counts as a real relationship.
You don't really know her & she doesn't really know you. It sounds to me ~ forgive me for my bluntness ~ that you are in love with an idea ~ in love with love. It's like people being besotted with a pop star, who one sees on stage or back-stage and maybe meets in person a few times.
You sound like a very nice person; I don't think that we can know enough about this girl to judge, because I don't think that you really know her.
There are girls, though, who would really appreciate your caring attitude, together with the strength of will to start a business in another country. These are very positive traits.
Think about it. You must know deep down.
Is she using you?
Does she know that you like her?
Does she even relate to you as a real individual, rather than a 'cyber-friend'?
Is she genuinely nice?
If you know that she is not right for you & has just been using you, try to move on.
If you think that she is a good person, then give her a chance. If you want to pursue this, then you need to make the relationship real. Meet her properly; get to know each other properly. Tell her how you feel ~ otherwise you cannot be sure that she knows.
Otherwise, accept that you have been a shoulder to cry on ~ apparently people find it easier to do this with people they meet online ~ and get to know some real girls, with whom you can interact in the real world. You are too old now for teenage crushes on people you don't really know.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but you need to be objective ~ and that is difficult, when love and infatuation get in the way.
Good luck!!
