How hard can hard-to-get be vs. defenses vs. twist of fate

[Johnny80]

Cheers! Thank you in advance for welcoming me in... !

 

I do have a question and am very glad I found this forum, after reading some posts I feel quite at ease to share my situation here.

 

I'm a 30 year old guy, easygoing, interesting and fairly popular guy who just had the weirdest twist of fate happening. I have been single for about 8 months, after breaking up a 3-year-long relationship.

 

Well, I was using a social network where I add mostly my real friends or acquaintances, yet I've added this girl who had no pictures but we had a lot of common friends and we eventually started exchanging a few messages and comments.

We were extremely similar, in many aspects, so we always had nice and casual conversations about many common interests. Some weeks after, we were already "glued" on each others profiles leaving comments and other small things like superpokes and everything. Yes I know it sounds lame until here. Well we were exchanging a few messages when I sent her my IM contact, she answered she would add me as soon as she was a little less busy (she did seem to be working a lot - she's 33 years old and her job seemed to take quite some time), it was fine since we were communicating anyway. I even invited her to a coffee when I started noticing our common friends were really common - while not close friends of mine.

We've even had some embarassing situations of people who assumed we knew each other due to our friendly interchanges and invited us together for small dinner parties. I even suggested a coffee to her once, but she didn't reply to that part of the message.

 

Anyway some weeks ago I was at an event, late at night, lost from my friends, a couple beers too many, looking around near the dancefloor when a hand grabbed me and dragged me through the crowd. I instantly recognized one of our common (facebook) friends. I had never talked to that girl but I had seen her. Well, I was left right in the middle of her girlfriends! She wasn't there, anyway it was really strange. I talked with them (only actually knew one personally) casually, helped finding a lost ring, well, friendly stuff. Still, it left me thinking "why me"? Girls talk maybe?

 

About a week after, I was at some other event, a quiet one, with about 10 of my friends (men and women), I actually noticed someone who walked in...

 

(Well, back when I was 18, there was this older girl I never talked to but noticed her since ever. Since she was always with her boyfriend (I believe they may have dated for at least 8 years, can't be sure), and we didn't have friends in common, we never met.)

 

I was talking to some girls the first time she got close, and to some other girls when she got back to our room (it had many rooms). Anyway, for some reason I grabbed my glass and walked into some other room. I was alone for the first time that night. She approaches me with a smile (about 10 seconds after I entered) me and asks if I'm the guy X, saying she easily recognized me form my pictures. For a second I was in shock, I had such an huge crush on that girl when I was a teenager! In any case I kept cool and answered "yes" and asked if she was the person I thought too!

 

Amazing. Well we talked for hours, we had a really good time and pretty much didn't get separated except for some small talk with our friends. I had a little to drink and so did she. We laughed a lot and really had a great time. I mentioned about grabbing a coffee and she was alright with it, while explaining me how her schedules were. Basically, only after dinner. I found out she lives 5 minutes away from me. Really nice. Anyway, I took the opportunity my friends were leaving to tag along and leave the conversation while it was good, so we said goodbye. During the conversation we both "dropped the line" that meant we were single (it's not on our profiles although I had deducted), making one brief reference to ex's (something really without importance, just in a "I'm single" way). I am also pretty sure she noticed me while I was still dating my ex (which is a strikingly beautiful girl) and the three of us were the last people standing on a dancefloor about two years ago for about half an hour. That was the last time I'd seen her until the other day (and the first in about 5 or so years). Maybe she didn't notice.. But her reaction was something like ".... Ex..?".

 

A couple of days after - with our usual social network non-verbal interactions in the middle - she messaged me asking me about something I was doing and I replied, and mentioned the coffee again. Well, we're still at our usual somewhat-above-friendly exchanges of comments and stuff, but in the only answer I had she totally avoided that part of the message - again. So we've been at it like that, like before.

 

From reading her blog I could tell she may have had some traumatic event on a relationship as close as in June 2008, and something else (can't say if it's the same) in mid-2007. Maybe it was her many-years-long boyfriend, I couldn't tell. I really hadn't seen her that much in the last few years.

 

Now to the heart of the question. Her activity does show (and did, before we met) some interest, and our night together showed that quite well too, people actually thought something was going on because we were really acting like we've met since forever. Still, besides the "small talk" it doesn't go very far past it. It's like we never met (which could have been considered a step forward since it went so well).

 

I wonder if she's just playing hard to get, very high defenses or maybe still hurt by a past relationship (in one of her posts she writes about not being afraid of being alone, rather than being with someone - in the way that it can't ever last forever and it just ends up hurting everyone), and something quite recent like a new year's resolution that is something like "give men your ears, but rarely give them your voice".

 

It's been about a week and things are the same way. To be honest she's by far (about 7 years) the oldest girl I've ever got an interest on and I DO notice the difference. Our age difference in itself isn't that big and we're very similar to a point it goes WAY beyond mere coincidence. I mean WAY beyond.

 

And of course, I like her. In a way, I've liked her since I ever saw her the first time many years ago. She's still cute, I'm still cute... Oh well! I actually think this could turn out to be something really really interesting!

 

I really don't want to push it, and at this point, while very slightly, I may have. I can't do much more since she never added me on IM, much less I even asked for her phone, so I feel a little tied up and facing an huge barrier. I can't keep talking about grabbing a coffee without making it seem too clingy (not to mention talking alone), so all I have is the small-but-steady cute and friendly interaction in our social network and the slight hope of actually bumping into her again by chance, which can happen, from what I reckon now, anywhere from once every two weeks to once per month. How slow can it get???

 

While I know this may take some time I do feel really impatient, and would really like to see her again, on a different setting and get to talk some more. Since our friends circles actually do cross quite well, it isn't like we're metting a stranger - not to mention she also probably remembers seeing me around for many years.)

 

Anyway, I'd appreciate any thoughts from you kind readers who made it through to the end.