Annoying, weird situation

[Guest]

I wasn't sure in which forum to post this. Maybe someone here can figure out what's going on in my situation. Alright, here goes. I seem to be having some kind of issue with this man who is in many of my college classes (we have the same major). We are a little older than the average college student, by the way. This all started earlier this year. I never spoke to this man in the beginning. You know how there are some people that you don't think you have anything in common with, so you two really don't speak to each other? Well that's what happened. One day I saw this man staring at me out of the corner of my eye.

 

I had never really paid any attention to him until this happened. I didn't even know his name. I turned to stare back at him to see what his problem was. When I stared back at him, he smiled. I was too startled to smile back and we just stared at each other for a little bit. I then turned away, probably looking dazed and confused. The smile caught me by surprise. Anyway, this man started to go out of his way to speak to me until I finally started to talk to him. He was actually very, very nice to me and did alot of sweet things for me in class. I have to say I enjoyed talking to him. As time went on, we began to joke around alot and get along really well, as we were placed in the same small group in class. Our classes are extremely long, so we spent alot of group time together. He can be pretty funny sometimes and is popular with the class.

 

We started to tease/flirt with each other. It was just harmless, fun stuff. I was kind of surprised that he was so insistent upon me getting to know him, as we just seem like complete opposites. I would see him staring at me at times when he thought I couldn't see him. However, most of the time I just pretended I couldn't see him. The staring didn't bother me, but I just never looked up. This went on for months until one day this man just started ignoring and acting cold towards me when I tried to talk to him. This seemed rude and weird to me. I just thought fine if he wants to act that way, that's his problem. I just avoided him and went about my own business. After all, we are just classmates and not outside friends.

 

Well, things got weirder after that. This man started talking to me again several weeks later. He again went out of his way to be nice to me. At first, I was somewhat po'd. I eventually started talking to him,though, because he was just so nice. He started up with the staring and teasing thing again too. I would tease him about the staring, while he would say that it was me who was staring at him. I don't know, maybe I embarrassed him by saying this. He's a confident and I guess you could say macho guy, and I don't think he realized I knew about the staring until that point. Well, guess what he did a few weeks later? He started being rude again and acted like he was annoyed or disgusted with me. We are now in the middle of the semester and he has been both nice and rude to me off and on. He'll be nice to me one day and then who knows how he'll be the next day.

 

The final straw came when I tried to joke with him one day in class, and he just acted like I was an idiot who was wasting his time by talking to him. I just ignored him after that. I really don't get this. If he doesn't like me as a person and doesn't want to associate with me in class, then why is he going out of his way to be nice to me only to later follow it up with rudeness? Why bother? I mean you don't have to talk to or get along with everyone. You wouldn't believe how many times he has done this. It just doesn't make any sense. Until he started being rude to me, I was nothing but nice to him. Instead of him doing this, I would just rather he didn't talk to me at all. I don't like being treated this way.

 

I don't want to tell him off or anything, just due to the fact that we are in our school group for so long several days a week, and that could make things even more awkward. I will just continue to ignore him and not spend any more time talking to him in class. My belief has always been that he was attracted to me but was maybe too embarrassed to admit it to himself. Like I said, we are two very different people. We are both attractive people, but different. It almost seems as if he's playing some kind of game. It's too bad, because he is a really nice man when he's not being a complete jerk. Thoughts anyone?