Estimated reading time: 16 minutes
Dear Doctor,
I’ve been reading your blog for quite a while, and I believe you can help me with my predicament
So I need some advice, I ((27/M) met a girl “Jane” (27/F) a month ago, we met at a place I frequently visit to social dance (I usually dance salsa, bachata and other Latin rhythms) I’ve been hanging out with this girl, she’s perfect in the way I want her to be, she’s so euphoric, optimistic, extroverted, she has such a warm energy and such a positive personality I just love, she’s also so smart and well versed in so many things I love, like music, movies, fashion, pop culture, history, etc. Of course, she’s beautiful in my eyes and we have such an enormous chemistry when we’re together, ever since we first met a month ago.
As I said, since we met, we had a strong chemistry and felt comfortable around each other, there’s always a lot of light touching, eye contact, smiling, hugging, and generally hanging around each other, like the first two weeks we went out almost daily, dancing, to have dinner, to see a movie, etc. She started sending me Instagram post about places to visit, memes or whatever constantly. She would make plans for the two of us, things like that. Like she was acting the way in my experience a girl acts when they’re interested, although once I asked about her dating life and she said it was a mess.
She dated a guy for 5 years and he left her to become a priest, and then like a year later she met a guy online and had a long-distance relationship with him for a couple of months and recently (like 2 months ago) broke up with him, and yes, she explicitly said the second night we went out “I need to learn how to be alone, I’m not looking for anything romantic”.
That same moment, she mentioned that she had to tell a friend that was into her, to stop and that she could only offer him her friendship (his name is ‘David’, remember him)
Despite that, I thought the feeling of romantic intentions was mutual, and there was once an opportunity where she asked me “Do you like me as a woman, or as more than just a friend?” To which I said “I like you as a woman, I don’t see you as just a friend, but I like to go slow and see how this develops” to which she only said “I understand”.
So, my having expressed my feelings towards her made me feel we were on the right track. She even invited me to her house a couple of days after that exchange to meet her mother, she made me dinner, and we hung out in her room. As I said, I believed things were going well, even a friend of mine (Chris) who she also knows, once hung out the 3 of us and told “she’s really into you, she won’t look away when you’re around.
Remember this is like two weeks of Jane and me knowing each other.
But all of a sudden, it crashed down, after I made her a compliment about her voice once while we were messaging, she told me that she wanted to be honest and she didn’t want it to get romantic, cause not only was she not ready for a relationship, but that she didn’t see me that way, and that she simply treated people he cared for like she treated me. At that moment I asked her “Why didn’t you say this when I told you I like you as more than a friend a couple of days ago,” to which she said “I thought I could manage it and still be friends, but I realize it’s not fair to keep it like that, you’re an excellent man and you got a lot of things in you that I would want in a man, but I just can’t.”
I just said “If you genuinely don’t have any feelings for me, then I understand, and we can be friends” and she even said something like “Please in the future don’t try to kiss me, cause its gonna make me feel very uncomfortable, David (her friend) has tried and it has made me feel too uncomfortable”.
After that conversation we basically didn’t hang out much for a week, so I thought that was the end of it, just another girl, whatever. But one day she texted me to hang out where we met (the dancing place), despite the conversation we had about each other, at the beginning of the night it was kinda awkward, like both didn’t know how to act, but we both started act normally towards each other, like you could feel we just needed to let the chemistry flow, and we did. And again, the amount of chemistry we have is simply too big to ignore, we talked for hours and it was not awkward at all.
We saw each other again that week on Thursday to see Hamnet, she cried a lot and was generally feeling kinda sad (according to her it was cause of her period). We saw each other again that week on Saturday, we went to a fragrance shop and then we had coffee and talked a lot, then we joined friends to social dancing, I started noticing she started acting a lot like she used to (light touching, grabbing my hand, touching my shoulders, tickling me, biting my shoulder, and letting me do all of that to her as well. Even while we danced (I usually try to be very respectful while dancing cause I think it can be very uncomfortable for a woman to have a guy squeezing her while dancing) she started squeezing me a lot and generally being very spicy with me that night, resting her head on my shoulder while sitting, letting me comb her hair with my fingers.
To be honest that night was kinda weird in a good way but I really didn’t think much of it. Next day we basically spent the entire day together (Sunday) we went to the mall on my car, we went shopping, then we went for some groceries, we had lunch and then ice cream, and went to buy a cake cause it was her mom’s birthday that day, again, she spent the day being very, very close to me, like while walking side by side she would put her arm under mine (like couples walk), touching me a lot, teasing me, letting me touch her, tickling me, etc. Then I took her home (it was around 4PM) and she asked me to stay to the small party she was having for her mom. There were a lot of her family members, and both she and I acted like waiters for the party, I offered myself to do the dishes, to serve food, etc.
Everything was going so well, and around 8:30 pm we noticed there was still a lot of food left and she said “we should call David and tell him to come eat some of the food” (Remember David is a friend of her, that she’s known for like 2 years and who had a huge crush on her, but she rejected him and stayed as just friends, but he supposedly even had to go to therapy to get over her and supposedly he did get over her) I said “yes of course, call him” (despite me not loving the idea).
This dude arrived like he was waiting for the call, like 5 minutes passed and he was at the door, although when he knocked on the door, I was the one who greeting him in (I bet I wasn’t the face he expected) I said hi and introduced myself to him, she said hi as well and he remained seated on a chair on a corner, while she was sitting next to me (basically directly in front of him at the other side of the living room) and next to him was her best friend Elizabeth. Again, Jane was very close to me, a lot of looking at me, light touching me, telling things like “oh ‘Chris’ remember when we did this” or “it’s like when ‘Chris’ said ___” or “‘Chris’ and I spent the day together and did ____” and the more I looked at David, the more I notice how uncomfortable he was.
He didn’t talk much at first, but then Jane started involving him more in the conversation and I felt like the dude had loosen up and started joining the conversation, but to my surprise, after the party was over, while I was saying goodbye, she hugged me very hard and said “thank you for today, you saved me” David was behind us watching. I went home feeling pretty damn good, but then when I got home, we texted each other and she told me: – “David left sad… what a shame.” to which I responded “Why?”
– “He was super jealous of you”
“I think he’s not going to talk to me anymore and that there won’t be any plans for us four to hang out”
I said, “I understand, but I don’t feel there was anything to be jealous of, right?”. She said: – “Because, ‘Chris’, I just feel too comfortable with you and I can let you tease me with the tickling and touching me because I never feel like you’ve invaded my space… but David put me in very uncomfortable situations in the past, so much so that I don’t let him touch me at all. Didn’t you see his face at first? It was only because I did everything possible to involve him with the conversation that he loosened up.”
“He left my house almost crying, because I think he believes life’s not gonna give him a woman” I said “Do you think he had different expectations when you called him and told him to come?” She said “More than that, it’s simply the fact of me being close to another man. And that with you I can be myself. Without worrying about this or that. But he told me after you left that it was better that he distance himself from me, because he simply can’t handle it anymore.”
We texted for hours after that and went dancing again yesterday and she still is acting all touchy with me. She even told me while we were texting “would you like to smoke pot with me someday?” (both of us used to smoke pot when teenagers) To which I said “yeah why not” and she said “We could have a road trip, somewhere where we can smoke pot without no worry and spend the night together”.
Look, the reason I’m telling you this is cause I really, really like this girl, I see myself building something with her, something that lasts, but it was her who said she didn’t see me that way, but all of a sudden, she starts acting all touchy touchy with me, acting like basically a couple, and of course I get confused cause what the hell man.
And this thing with David only fuels the idea that maybe just maybe, she likes me and she’s just lying to herself on not liking me, cause she has this idea that she has to learn to be alone, and that she doesn’t need a couple to be happy blah blah blah, and admitting to herself she likes me would be admitting to herself that this mantra she’s been repeating to herself about wanting to be alone just isn’t true, or at least that’s what I tell myself to not go insane.
So, I feel like Jim from The Office after he got rejected. Do you think I should move on and just see her as a friend, should I just go with the flow and see what happens and how this develops.
Thank you!
Do You Like Me (Y/N)?
I’m going to be blunt with you, my guy: I very rarely read a letter about mixed signals where the signals are well and truly mixed. Most of the time, the only reason why the signals are “mixed” at all is because the person who is having a difficult time reading them knows what the other person is actually saying. They just don’t want to accept it.
David is an example of this – David is still holding out hope that Jane’s going to change her mind. David’s still clinging to the idea that maybe Jane doesn’t know her own feelings and that there’s this chance that maybe she really will start to return his feelings. David had to have his nose rubbed in it in order to finally get the message – one that Jane had delivered very firmly and directly.
Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.
Here’s the thing, DYLM: Jane has told you what’s up. She’s been very blunt about it. She asked you what you were expecting and once she realized that you weren’t just taking things slowly, told you straight up what the deal was. She even told you, point blank, that the reason she’s telling you this now was because she wanted to stay friends, that the way she behaves with you is how she behaves with friends, and she even drew a firm line in the sand about behavior that you need to avoid.
Things felt awkward between the two of you in the immediate aftermath because there’s often an awkward time when you give the wave-off to a friend who clearly has a thing for you, and the two of you didn’t talk for a week. Then, when you hung out again at the dance class, you did what I tell friends to do when there’s that awkward “ok, so what happens now” feeling: you powered through it and acted like friends again.
But the problem is that you’ve ignored a very important detail in that “let’s just be friends” conversation: the way she behaves with you is the way she behaves with her friends. She told you this when she told you to please don’t try to kiss her. She gave you multiple pages of the “how to be friends with me” handbook and it still seems like you’re hoping that maybe this doesn’t apply to you.
Kinda like David.
Now it seems like Jane isn’t stupid and she’s pretty perceptive. When David came over, it became very clear that he wasn’t over her like he’d said, and… well, you saw what happened. I don’t know if she invited him over specifically to drive a stake in the heart of his dreams, or if she saw how he was behaving and had to pivot to make it clear. I don’t know if she was being over the top because the time for subtlety had long passed, or if this was just Jane being Jane, and you (and David) were reading more into it because motivated reasoning is a motherfucker. But David saw her being friendly and close with another guy and it finally made him say “I can’t do this, I need to step away”. And honestly, good for him. I’m being sincere when I say that I’m glad he’s prioritizing himself and his heart by finally taking the steps he needs to actually get over her. It sucks when someone has to do this, especially when the other person is genuinely trying to be friends. But if it hurt too much and that pain finally made him accept things, stepping away is the best choice he could have made for himself.
But the reason why I keep comparing you and David is that this is your future if you don’t pay attention. You have been given a gift: you were visited by the Spirit of Conversations Yet To Come, who gave you a sneak preview of the conversation you’re going to have with Jane if you don’t start taking her words at face value.
There really isn’t a mystery here. She has told you what sort of relationship you have. She has told you how that her behavior is how she acts with close friends. She has asked you, directly, not to make a move, because that makes things awkward and uncomfortable and she doesn’t want to have to deal with it again. I know you want to believe that maybe it’s different for you, but – not to put too fine a point on it – David thought the same thing.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not blaming you for getting your hopes up, especially when it feels to you like her behavior is going beyond the boundaries of a typical friendship. But again, you have already been given the heads up that this is how she behaves with the people she’s close with. If you don’t want to have a repeat of the scene you witnessed, with you in David’s role, you should take her at her word that this is all that’s going on. Accept that she’s telling you how things are and that she will tell you if things have changed.
But I want to make another point clear here, and something I don’t think you’ve considered. Jane drew a pretty firm boundary when she asked you not to try to kiss her; she told you that it makes things uncomfortable and hard to maintain the friendship after that. Well, you too can draw boundaries. If her behavior feels too much like flirting or too much like her treating you like a boyfriend, you can ask her to stop.
The thing that I would suggest that you say is “hey, I know that you said that this is how you act with your friends, but it always feels like it signals more than that and that leaves me feeling confused. I don’t want to feel confused with you or read things into our relationship that aren’t there, because I really value what we have together. I would appreciate it if you could not do $BEHAVIOR_THAT_FEELS_LIKE_FLIRTING with me if that’s not what you mean. I value our friendship and I don’t want to make things difficult because I read the wrong meaning into our dynamic.”
This doesn’t mean that you and she have to move to a “no touching, no physical affection” policy. If there are ways she could still be affectionate without making you feel like maybe she’s hitting on you, then give specifics about the ways that would be ok. The important thing is that you want to make it clear that the way she’s behaving feels like it sends a particular message, and you would prefer that she dial it back or change that behavior so it’s not so confusing or painful for you.
But doing this is going to require that you accept that she just wants to be friends. That part’s hard, I know. Trust me, I’ve been there and I’ve done that, and sometimes it just hasn’t worked. I’ve had to step away from friendships before because I couldn’t let go of how I felt for someone, and the pain of losing both the dream and my friend hurt like fire. Given the choice, I would’ve much rather given up the dream and kept the friendship, but by the time I reached that stage… it was too much. So, both had to go.
I don’t want you to have to go through that if you don’t have to. And right now, you don’t. But that is going to mean doing the hard thing of accepting that you and she are friends. Very close friends, but not potential lovers. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t care for you; she very clearly does. She wouldn’t have told you all of that if she didn’t, because she very clearly wants you in her life. And I know it stings when someone we care for doesn’t care for us in the way we wish they would… but that doesn’t mean that they don’t care for us, or care quite a lot.
And to be clear: you don’t have to stay friends, if you don’t think you can without serious hurt. In fact, I strongly advise that, if that’s the case, that you say that you have to step back until you’re in a different place emotionally. But if you want Jane in your life, this is the way she’ll be in it. I know it’s not what you hope for… but if you ask me, it’s pretty damn great.
For now, have that conversation with her and draw some boundaries, so that youdon’t keep confusing her friendship with signs of intent. This way, you’ll be able to keep your friend… without getting your heart broken in the process.
Good luck.
