Can't stop thinking about it

[jsene]

I am a 20yr old female college student, faced with a small problem that I'm beginning to really stress about.

 

I am not an extremely shy individual, but I have a lot of trouble when a relationship gets any further than general acquaintance, and I am especially odd around guys.

 

Backstory to my problem is, I attend big city college fairly far away from my home town which is very small, and i go back to my hometown for the summer and holidays. I have very few friends and find it hard to make social connections in the city, but I have many friends that I've known for many years and a solid social circle in my hometown (they almost all went to university near my hometown instead of moving far away). This summer, I met some of my friends' new school friends, and one of them, a guy we'll call B, I got pretty much an instant crush on.

 

So as soon as I get a crush on anyone, I start acting very strangely: avoiding them, trying to make it seem like i don't like them. I don't know why, its some sort of gut reaction self-preservation since if I don't like people then I can't get hurt. Its something I really can't control and its just so instinctual for me. And especially in this specific case, I try to never get close to people when i'm home because I know I have to leave for most of the year and I won't be able to see them. So the whole summer I was pretty much doing this, acting nicely but very distantly towards B - I'd make sure he'd come out with us but always get other people to ask him out, etc.

 

So I spent a fair bit of time with him in groups, he'd come along with us to the bar or out to the movies or anything like that, he became a part of our group. I left at the end of the summer and went back to college. I was pretty upset going back to school, because even though B didn't know I liked him, I knew that if I had stayed in my hometown and went to university there I could have gotten to know him and something could have happened, I could have let myself get close to him.

 

I should probably say a few things here - I am 20 and have never had anything relationship-wise more than a few times fooling around with people or something. I've never told anyone I liked them and no ones ever told me. I'm beyond inexperienced with this stuff. Its me, psychologically, that's keeping me from having relationships (its not anything physical, I'm pretty confident that I'm not hideous). The problem is that I can't help but sabotage anything that gets close to a relationship.

 

The other thing I should say is that this guy is so perfect for me, I couldn't have dreamed him up. He is so nice, smart and funny, we have so much in common, he's at the top of many sports teams and is also an artist. He's so well rounded and such a wonderful person. I've never met a guy ever that I could see myself with as much as B.

 

So back to the story: I left my hometown after summer "lightly" upset, but I could pretty easily get it out of my head since we hadn't really gotten close and he didn't know I liked him and I could kid myself that I didn't like him and it didn't matter.

 

Now I went back to my hometown about a week ago for a long weekend, and B and I pretty much hung out every night. We are both pretty shy about being in relationships and neither of us had done it before. So little things happened that weekend that to anyone who's already had a bf/gf wouldn't even notice, but to us it was like a big step. He offered to buy me drinks, and I would sit next to him on purpose, and he would put his arm around me sometimes - like really mild stuff I know, but it really meant something to us.

 

Anyhow, I was talking to another friend (lets call him F) and he started asking about how things were going with me and B, because he knew i liked B. Then somehow he let loose that B had liked me for a while too and F had been trying to build up B's confidence enough to ask me out! B was really hesitant about doing anything and F had been reassuring B that I liked him, which B didn't believe because I had been acting like I didn't like him. So I was beyond shocked to find out that a guy like B thought I was attractive and liked me. He was so perfect it was like a dream come true to find out that he liked me too.

 

Another thing I found out that weekend was that B wasn't going to be around much anymore because his parents had moved from my hometown to a city about 4 hours away from my college city, so he would no longer be around when I got back home. We would just miss each other every time now since he'd be leaving when i'd be coming home.

 

So my last night home, I was hanging out with a female friend of mine and I invited him over. She wanted to leave about an hour after he came over, and I offered to drive her. I figured he would just go back home, but he said he wanted to come with us. So we dropped her off, and then it was just the two of us. We were driving back and he asked me to come over to his house, and we hung out for another few hours and had a very tame but great time together just talking (constantly skirting anything that had to do with relationships). So I left and we hugged and like hesitated a bit and were both really awkward, and I told him I wanted him to come visit me in the city, since his parents lived within a few hours drive and he'd be fairly close sometimes.

 

 

 

SO I left and flew back to college without any more communication with him or my friend F. Once I got back I was talking to F about how I felt about B, and I was really upset to be leaving this time and I never liked anyone as much as I liked B. Then F said I should just come clean and tell B straight how I feel. So it took me about a day to work up the courage to do it, but I finally msn-ed B and told him straight up that I had like him pretty much from the first time I met him, and I just wanted him to hear it from me. He said he was flattered, and that he was sad that it was such bad timing to come clean about feelings because we had lived so close over the whole summer and pretty much wasted all that time. He said he wanted to get to know me better but it was going to be hard now that I was gone.

 

We had about a half hour long conversation after that, some about my feelings, some about just random stuff.

 

There has not been any communication between us since then, about two days ago. He didn't once say anything concrete about what he was feeling or what he wanted, apart from very vague hints that he liked me too (he enjoyed our time together etc). This is the problem: I'm unsure about what he's feeling.

 

I'm pretty good with accepting things that are concrete - what I really can't handle is not knowing things and not being sure. I would be fine accepting whatever he wants or does not want to do, what I can't accept is not knowing.

 

So this has been really bothering me and I haven't been able to get him off my mind. I am not expecting anything from him, I think it would be a longshot to expect him to want to start long distance, and I'm suspicious that he didn't say he liked me. I just want him to say anything: "I don't really think it's worth long distance", or "I thought I liked you but I don't really anymore", or "I want to try a relationship", or anything as long as its concrete.

 

 

 

I guess my question is what should I do? I don't want to freak him about by getting serious about this if he never thought about it seriously, so I don't want to be like do you want to do this or what. And I don't know if he said he'd like to get to know me more because he actually wants to get to know me more or if that's just one of those things guys say when they don't want to give you the bad news, aka tell you they can't be bothered with you.

 

I don't have any answers, and I don't know how to go about getting them. Should I just completely try to stop thinking about him and put it all out of my head, or should I try talking to him again? I don't want to seem like a crazy obsessive, overreactive girl, and I really don't want him to think I expected him to start a relationship after I told him how I felt. I JUST WANT ANSWERS FOR GODS SAKE!! It's actually driving me crazy.

 

Any responses are greatly appreciated, whether you want to offer an opinion on all this or whether you want to commiserate! Tell me what you think!!!

[on edge]

In short:

 

You are shy. You like a guy. You build up the courage to tell him, and finally tell him after several months. He doesn't respond how you want, and now you are unsure about how to proceed.

 

Firstly, I really think you are in the wrong thread. This thread is for people with broken hearts. Your heart is not broken.

 

Secondly, if he really liked you, he would make it work.

 

Lastly, the next time you meet a guy and like him, don't wait for several months. If nothing has happened romantically by the third time that you hang out with him, nothing probably will.

[jsene]

thanks for the response, i agree with your views. the first thing i think when stuff like this happens is that the guy doesn't like me, but then i'm always worried about judging someone too quickly. I think I should stick with my gut on this one that he isn't interested, but does that mean i shouldn't bring it up? wouldn't it be better to get it all out?

 

ps I only put it under here because I was and still am having a very hard time coping with this situation, I really don't react well, which is probably why I try not to get involved in the first place...