It irritates me to no end when people try to dictate someone else's relationships like this. I don't care if you ship fictional characters but REAL people should be left out of it because they have REAL feelings. Thanks for listening to me TED talk.
The shallow reasoning bothers me more than the attempt to dictate relationships.
"he liked her for a really long time."
So what? Is he "owed" her as a girlfriend/prospective wife just because he sat on his hands and didn't act for years? he had his chance and for whatever reasons he chose to do nothing. She obviously didn't feel the same if she didn't pine for him in the same way and she's now in a relationship that makes her happy. As I said last time, take the L and move on. The weird sort of deservedness talk is super cringey.
You don't "deserve" shit. Talk about deserving a girlfriend because a guy's nice and has pined over someone for a long time is desperate, disconnected from reality, and emotionally immature. It sort of comes across like abdicating responsibility for one's failure to launch.
and yes, I say this while recognizing that he never actually engaged in the conversation himself and it was all their friends. It's still cringey when it's done second-hand.