Is she interested, or is it wishful thinking?

[WWDD]

My first post here. It’s a really long one but I’ll try to condense it as much as possible. I just need an outside opinion as to where I might stand with this girl. I've typed the crux of it all in bold at the bottom, but if you have the patience to endure the whole thing, it'll probably give a better picture.

 

I’ll start with an outline of myself. I’m a guy in my early-mid 20’s, 5’8”, 145lbs, slightly on the muscular side and have been described as “7/10”.

I can play five different musical instruments well and specialise at singing, and I write, record and engineer my own original material as well as some covers, mostly on my own but occasionally with other musicians.

I’m fairly intelligent, I’ve been to University. I have a generous amount of good friends in different social circles and have little problem putting out a good impression in general.

However, I have absolutely no competence nor experience in romantic relationships of ANY kind. My male and female friends always say they have no idea why I don’t have a girlfriend, but I never have a good answer for them. I have had some mutual love interests before, but they have always fallen through before they began, either because I failed to read the signs, or they got tired of waiting for me to make a move.

I tend to blank off when I start to get close to someone in that way, and I’m now trying hard to break that habit.

 

Back to my situation. My bosses (multiple bosses because its a largish family-run business) had been telling me that one of the part-time girls has a crush on me, and that I should ask her out as we have a lot in common.

She’s four or five years younger than me, very intelligent, quite pretty and is a little on the shy side. After weeks of being frequently told that I should ask her out, I decide that as I do like her, I should buck up the courage and do it. So I waited until she was alone and asked her out for a drink. She exchanged numbers with me LIKE A SHOT and I contacted her later to arrange a day and time. She told me that she’d get back to me on Monday to let me know when she could do it.

 

On a side note, I was meeting a friend of both hers and mine at a mutual hobby, and she agreed to meet us and take part, but then cancelled because she wanted to visit her sister.

 

So about 10:40pm Monday evening she texted me, not with a day in mind, but asking if I wanted to go as friends as she didn’t want it to be awkward. Her exact wording left it impossible to figure out whether she was either asking me what my intentions were to avoid confusion, or whether she actually preferred to go as friends. I had no idea how to respond so I procrastinated and left it almost a whole day.

Early the next evening she texted my other number to make sure that I had got that text. So I carefully worded a response soon after that answered either of the meanings that her’s could have had. I said that I didn’t want her to feel awkward, and that although I didn’t ask her out as a friend, going as friends would be okay if she wanted. She responded with saying that “friends is great”.

 

So we meet up one evening at her choice of location. We checked movie showings and went to a bar to pass the hour we needed to wait for the next showing. We both got soft drinks as she drove over twenty miles in a car that “only starts 3/4 of the time” to meet me in the city, and I didn’t want to be the only one on alcohol even though I lived within walking distance. After the hour had gone, we were pretty deep in conversation and decided not to bother with the movie and to keep on talking. In total, we talked easily for a good three hours. It turned out that we have almost identical tastes in books, movies, tv shows, humour, ideals, and even video games. She even goes to the same uni that I went to.

 

Nearing the end of the night as the conversation started to edge that way, I mentioned that I was told she had a crush on me. She filled me in that they had done the exact same with her. It turned out they were just trying to matchmake. She stated that she had already figured they were probably lying about me having a crush on her as I hadn’t asked her out already. She essentially said that she wasn’t looking for a relationship at the moment, but that we had so much in common. SHE even asked ME if i wanted to do this again. So at the end of the night I hugged her goodnight, feeling a little confused and silly.

 

Afterwards I started to wonder if she thought that my interest in her was influenced, so the next morning at work I clarified that I asked her out only because I had wanted to and that if i wasn’t genuinely interested I wouldn’t have bothered regardless of my meddling bosses.

 

I let a few days pass before sending her a pun and asking when she was free. She wants to see me Sunday and we’ve yet to arrange details.

 

So that’s pretty much it. For all I know I could be either going on false hope, or missing positive signs but I’ve found her signals to be quite mixed.

On the one hand, she preferred to go as friends and said she wasn’t currently looking for a relationship. That alone is usually a killer.

But on the other hand, she lives with her father and has an older sister, who both could have told her to take it easy (at least for now) since I’m a little older and I work with her.

She also drove (at her suggestion) a considerable distance in a relatively unreliable car to see me, knowing it would be late when she planned to drive it home again.

She also seemed really eager to exchange numbers when I first asked her, she chased up an answer when I didn’t respond to her to begin with, we hit it off for three hours and were so buried in conversation we didn’t even bother on ordering a second drink, she was interested with meeting with me again, and has replied almost instantly to the texts I’ve sent since.

Despite my annoyance at my bosses for misleading both of us, they were dead right that we’re perfect on paper, and I’ve really started to have feelings for her.

 

Sorry for the long post, but I just want some opinions on the situation that aren’t from supportive friends or family members.

 

Thanks in advance.

Edited July 31, 2014 by WWDD

[PegNosePete]

Welcome to the friendzone!!!

Please keep your tray table firmly stowed and your seat in the upright position.

Fasten your seatbelt because there will be a lot of emotional turbulence!

 

Dude she has made it perfectly clear to you that she is not interested in anything beyond friendship. You're clearly not comfortable with that. Friends will simply not work if you're into her. It will just be an extremely frustrating time.

[WWDD]

Thanks for your candor PegNosePete. I appreciate that you're talking me down from taking myself on what is definitely a possibly of a hiding to nowhere.

Thanks also to the other poster too, who's response disappeared for some reason.

 

It turns out that the situation is a little more complicated than I first thought.

 

I met up with her again. Like before, we just talked happily for a few hours, sat in the park, got some ice cream etc. When i needed to go she saw me off with a warm goodbye hug that she initiated (which wouldn't usually mean anything to me if i didn't know now that she's definitely not the type who gives hugs on tap).

 

Afterwards, I talked to a mutual friend at work that she's really close to about it all as I knew some feedback would've gotten back to her. It had, and she relayed to me that she has genuinely developed a particular liking to me, and that her reluctance to a relationship is in fact a general thing, as she's never had one before. I do however make her laugh, and our mutual friend thinks that because of that, if I'm persistent, I can probably develop more from it and, to quote, "crack her".

 

It's obvious that she has intimacy and trust issues having never been in a relationship, but I'm okay with that because it's just another thing we share in common, as I described about myself in my original post.

 

I trust our mutual friend as she genuinely cares about both of us, and would no doubt have talked me straight down from this if she thought that there wasn't something there. Since I'm trying to take myself out of my habitual hesitance towards a relationship, I figure she will have to eventually do the same.

 

I'm not going to give up here, as finding out a little more about her I think that to say all hope is lost is a little hasty, and that the possibility that she's being very cautious with an older guy that she has to work directly with at least one day in the week is seeming a little more likely than before. It's definitely going to take a lot of work anyway, but I think she's worth it.

 

But now I'm going to be more cautious too. I'm going to take it easy and endeavor not to invest too much and to account for all possibilities. I don't mind taking this slow, or even taking it slooooooooooow. This worked for me before with a girl I liked over a span of several years, but when she finally started to reciprocate the interest and make all the moves towards me, my neurotic aversion to intimacy füc<€d it up and I backed down. I'm not letting that last part happen again.

 

Feedback is very well appreciated.

[Toodaloo]

Sorry I am going against Peg Nose (he has given me good advice though so bear this in mind, and had the balls to tell me to shut up when I needed to).

 

From a womans perspective - she likes you - a lot.

 

Her problem is this. She hasn't dated much, hasn't a clue what she is doing and doesn't want to make a pillock out of herself, least of all in front of someone she likes this much.

 

You get on well. You enjoy the same things. Stop over thinking (that is hard - I know because I do it) and enjoy yourself, enjoy her company and let it come naturally.

[Assasda]

Dude, that girl is into you!!

The problem is that she doesnt want any "pressure" labels on the relationship, so she just wants to be "friends"

 

Just go out with the state of mind that she wants No Labels on the relationship and you'll be fine.

 

 

Dont think about it too much. Being "friends' is just her safety blanket to not being hurt in a dating relationship. When she gets more comfortable, she'll open up to you.

I am 100% sure of this