Hi there
Thanks for getting in touch with me. Lots of young people talk to ChildLine about their relationships and the feelings that come with them. Relationships affect each person in their own way - some young people aren’t sure what to do when they fancy someone and others don’t have those sort of feelings at all yet, and that’s okay too. If you’re finding it difficult to cope with these emotions, you’re not on your own.
It sounds like the problem is that you have feelings for a few people and this is making it difficult to focus on your current relationship. You can’t always help having feelings about other people, but you do have a choice as to what you do next. That said, it’s important to remember that there are others involved who will make their own decisions too. You can only control what you say and do, not always what actually happens – you should think about this when making your decision.
In the end you need to decide what will be best for you, but it’s worth bearing in mind how your choice might affect others, and in return how you would feel about that. It sounds like you’re worried about hurting people so it’s important to consider this and decide what outcome you would be happiest with.
You say that you feel like it’s stopping you from concentrating on your school work and it sounds like being able to do that is really important to you at the moment. It can be difficult to focus on your school work and exams if there are other things going on in your life that you are finding tough. I’m wondering whether you’ve had a chance to check out the Beat exam stress page to see if any of the tips on there could be useful for you.
Have a think about what would make you feel better about the situation – it might be that making a decision would help or it might be that talking about things works too. ChildLine counsellors are ready to talk with you about this whenever you are ready. You can also talk with other young people about it on the message boards too.
I’m glad you’ve taken this first step and made contact as it sounds like you are having a tough time concentrating on anything else at the moment. Hopefully this reply has given you some idea of how to start working out what to do.
Take care
Sam