So, this dude has been sending me extremely mixed and just plain weird signals for awhile. I've decided to get to the bottom of this. Problem: I'm hella awkward. Help me start this conversation, MeFi!
For the past two and a half months or so, I’ve had an odd relationship with this one special dude. For various reasons, we see each other a lot (I’m a queer guy in college, for context), and our interactions with each other have been oscillating between blasé casual friendship and hyper-engagement with me for multiple hours. At times, I could swear he was flirting with me, which I had taken as a fairly probable signal for romantic-sexual interest, as I rarely think anyone is flirting with me, even if they in fact are. However, the disconcerting disconnect between the two sets of moods—combined with my own passive nature—led me to be really confused as to whether I should try to pursue anything further. (Obviously, I’m very interested, or else I wouldn’t be making this post!) One night when we’re up late working, though, he mentions that he “may as well” talk to a boy who he later identifies as his boyfriend, who is abroad far, far away. Weird, I think, for him not to mention a boyfriend when we see each other regularly, but my thought is that I must surely have been reading things incorrectly, as, duh, he’s taken and probably not actually interested in me. “Well, that sucks!” I think, and go back to my collegiate life.
The weirdness (or, at least, my perceived weirdness) doesn’t cease, though. At one party, he makes a big deal out of talking about his boyfriend in the past tense for about five minutes, then half-heartedly corrects himself into the present. At another recent party he invited me to, he did this strange thing where he would come up to me, start talking for a bit, retreat to the corner (talking to nobody), and then coming back up and talking to me again before restarting the cycle. This was apparently so noticeable that my friends there all noticed it as well, coming up to me to offer their own statements of confusion while I stood there, boggled with a drink in my hand. More importantly, at a party I invited him to in turn he takes me aside at the end, and pulls out some small cultural artifacts from his trip abroad this last semester, and hands them to me as a gift. (I had referenced them in a really, really passing verbal communication that I can’t even recall the context of now.) “These are my last [artifacts from my abroad trip.] I wanted you to have them,” he says before his friends drag him home. Today, he barely acknowledges my presence. lolwhut?
WTF WTF WTF. I’m stumped—my friends are stumped—it’s very possible that God himself is stumped. I’m still feeling like I’m getting mixed—and just kinda strange—signals. Most importantly, all this nonsense I've been putting myself through with regards to trying to analyze each individual unit of information, change of mood, gesture, et cetera has been driving me nuts, and I’ve decided it’s time to finally break out of my typical passivity and have a conversation with him directly addressing some of the questions I have. I wish I had just come out in one of these previous situations and just recognized the elephant in the room, but the best I can do at this stage is address it as soon as possible, probably as soon as we get back from the Thanksgiving holiday. It’ll suck if the answer isn’t what I want, but at least I’ll have an answer that I can process and move the hell on from, rather than keeping my psyche in this constant, vigilant holding pattern. I’m pessimistic, but want a consolidated reality rather than a gazillion possible realities.
The Question, Restated: However, this is so out of my comfort realm that I have near-literally no clue of how to go about this. How do you begin this sort of conversation? An e-mail message… what do I say, how do I preface it? All I can think of is, "Hi, we need to talk," and that just sounds awful and confrontational.
And, say, I get him down talking (in-person's the only way to go for the actual discussion, I realize)… what are some acceptable ways to go about this? Especially if this somehow all ends up being from my end and not from his, I don’t want to make things totally awkward and awful for him. In my mind, I’m thinking something like: “Hi, [dude,] so for awhile now I feel as though I've been receiving some messages that you may be attracted to me, but at other times I have not. I don't mean to accuse you of doing one or the other, but I just wanted to know how you actually feel, so I can figure out what's going on.” Does this sound OK? Could I say anything better? Is that laying it on too heavy, or sounding too accusatory? My main interest, after all, is just figuring things out in a way that can be best for everyone's emotions involved—I don't want to deal in any nonsense about him "leading me on" if that's the case, I just want to disambiguate the situation and move on from there. Does anyone have any experiences with this sort of thing that they could share?
It's a big step for me, personally, to even think about having this kind of awkward conversation with someone, and I'd really appreciate the advice on how to go about doing it, because I'm determined to do it. Thanks so much, MeFi!
posted by anonymous to human relations (11 comments total)
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What you wrote sounds pretty good, I'd mention the boyfriend too, and I'd describe your own feelings, eg: "I'm really attracted to you, and I'm confused because it seems like you're in a relationship you might not be that into. I want to talk this through because whatever happens I want things to be straightforward between us".
I do think you should be prepared for him to respond in an immature way though, he might just not have the emotional tools to talk something like this through. He's not treating the boyfriend in a way that's honest or respectful, remember.
posted by crabintheocean at 3:35 PM on November 24, 2009