1st off, what Ija Mei said. It’s never easy, we women are not unbothered by it when it happens, and we struggle with relationships too. Very damaging trope, that women are just "naturally better" at relationships. Also complete and utter horseshit.
If that were true, then why do they all too often go so bad? Food for thought.
One thing I’ve learned about this dynamic though that may help you. Time. It’s okay to give yourself permission to step away from a relationship for a while until those romantic feelings subside. Lots of times they do in relatively short order, but not always. If you have to, THEN you can cut ties. When taking some time, it’s important to be honest and up front with the object of your affection for 2 reasons. First, they need to know to give you time and space and they need to know why so they can make whatever readjustments might be needed to keep the relationship viable. Honestly honors you both. Secondly, you need to know if they’re going to respect those boundaries for you to move on or if they’re going to use your attraction to string you along. If that’s who they are, you can walk away knowing you’ve not lost a friend, you ridded yourself of a manipulative, abusive, drain on your life. Women get a bad rep for this, but believe me, men play that card just as much and just as insidiously.
These aren’t strategies I, as a woman, was born with. They’re ones I learned by stumbling into them via the school of hard knocks. They have served me well.
Final note. On rare occasions, you may express interest in someone who says they aren’t interested in you. And they believe that, because they’ve never thought about it. For them, your relationship is already defined as friends. They’ve drawn hard mental barriers to think of you as a friend, inhibiting romantic feelings from developing because they believe you could never see them that way. They may also be interested in someone else at the time. When you suddenly (to them) announce that you’re interested, it throws them for a loop and they react accordingly because they’re shocked. Mental blinders we create for ourselves don’t come off easily.
In time, and with some thought, they may find that they’ve been attracted to you for some time too. They just didn’t realize it because they didn’t think it was a possibility.
Again, very rare. But, it happens.
It takes some time and nuance to determine whether someone has had a genuine change of heart or is just trying to jerk you around. Whether or not they respect boundaries, is a good way to tell. Someone who truly cares about you will accept and respect your boundaries to feel comfortable because they want what’s best for you. And they want you to be happy staying with them.
