I realized I might like my best friend's brother and am spiraling trying to figure out if he likes me back

[CritterFromMars]

Okay, I can't talk to any of my actual friends about this, so here is a ramble about this guy I recently had the realization I might kinda like a little more than just a friend which has sent me into a bit of a spiral because I’ve started thinking back on interactions and stuff looking at them differently. I’m not sure if I was actually kinda dumb all this time and he does actually maybe like me too and it’s obvious, or if I’m now reading into things because I want there to be something even though he’s only acting strictly friendly/brotherly.

 

To make this a bit easier I will make up fake names for everyone involved as I ramble on. Some backstory: The guy this is about is my best friends older brother by 2 years (making him 25 right now, and I am 24 btw), we will call him Josh. My best friend and josh’s little brother, we will call him Nick, is  23 and we have basically been best friends since I was like 10 and he was 9. He was in the grade below me, but I was really close with his cousin at the time so we met through that guy and kinda hit it off. So I’ve known Josh since back then too.

 

I remember he was fun to play with and fun to annoy. I remember that he was much nicer back then than my other friend’s older siblings, because he actually hung out with us once in a while and didn’t chase us away and the way he bullied us wasn’t actually mean and more teasing. He was always pretty laid back and quiet, but also really funny and sarcastic when it was just their family and me and his friends, people he felt comfy around.

 

Then I remember when he turned 16 he got a girlfriend and stopped ever hanging out with us really quick. She didn’t like it when he hung out with us, which I kinda got back then, but I remember Nick really disliking her because she also asked him all the time to stay home instead of going out with his own friends or hanging out with his family. Basically we saw him less and less until with 18, he moved out of his parents place and in with his girlfriend, and I basically didn’t hear from him or see him or even really hear about him from other people for a bit over a year. 

 

During that time there was a bit of a change happening in my and Nick’s friend group (until then it was mostly us and then sometimes a couple people we got along with and liked fine, but not actually close friends). Through stuff we were into like D&D and magic the gathering we found some people we clicked with and ended up with some more close friends those guys introduced us too. Eventually, we basically had a bigger friend group of 14 people, with a “inner circle” (that’s what they called it) of me, Nick, and three other guys I will call Dan, James and Jesse. 

 

With that friend group, we eventually got a bit into partying and drinking and smoking weed, but in what feels like the least cool way of just meeting up at one of our houses, having drinks or smoking, while playing ttrpg’s, listening to music, playing board games or watching movies. So while we drunk quite a bit (we are german after all lol), we usually partied in a very calm way. 

 

About a year to two years later, Nick informed me that Josh’s girlfriend broke up with him by admitting she cheated on him multiple times during the year they lived together with her ex and that she now wants to go back to him and also apparently, because she thought he had gotten a bit boring. Josh was 19 (almost 20) at the time and still doing his apprenticeship, so couldn’t afford to live on his own and moved back in with his parents and Nick.

 

At first when he came back, he was like a depressed ghost. Whenever we were at their house we barely saw him because he didn’t leave his room much except for work, wouldn’t even really eat with the rest of us. Eventually Nick started gently forcing him to hang out with us. After that, it happened pretty quickly over a couple of weeks that he actually came to hang with us without being dragged and I remember being really happy to see him back to behaving more like he did before moving in with his girlfriend and also about him seemingly getting along great with our friends. 

 

About half a year later, we hung out almost every single weekend as a group, usually drinking or smoking, sometimes just watching movies. I would see him throughout the week as well whenever I was hanging out with just Nick, because he started just tagging along on his own accord. 

 

Around that time he started “friendly bullying” me a lot, which I was excited about because it felt like he was doing better and also that’s how all of my friends and me mostly show affection tbh, and I thought it meant he actually saw me as a friend and not just his brother’s friend. 

 

One of the things he started doing around then and still does to this day that drives me up the f***ing wall is that he can make really realistic bird noises. I hate the noises and I hate the face he makes while doing them. He does it all the time, like I will be somewhere in the room talking to one of my friends and suddenly I start hearing the noises and I turn around and he’s on the other side of the room making that stupid face at me. 

 

We also became really competitive with each other. I used to think he didn’t really enjoy any games (other than single player video games which he plays a lot), because he would never join in when we played D&D or board games or group drinking games. But one time I challenged him to beerpong (but we play with wine because I hate beer, I know, less german of me), and he agreed and I wiped the floor with him. From then on, every single time we were drinking anywhere, he and I played at least one round of “winepong” and got more and more competitive over it, and until recently, he had never won a round against me and never played against anyone else, at least not when I was around to witness it. 

 

It was last new year when he won the first round against me. I have to admit, we played out round later into the night than usual and I was a little more drunk already than I would have liked, so I played really bad. I pretended to be butthurt about losing because everyone else was having fun taking the piss on me about it, but I wasn’t really upset.

 

Lately we haven’t been hanging out to get drunk every weekend anymore like we used to (mostly because we can already feel our age and can’t drink like we used to and also we all have actual jobs and stuff), and it’s become more like once a month. So winepong has become less frequent. I think we played about 8 rounds this year since the one during new years, and he has won 3 of them, so I’m definitely losing my skills. 

 

During my birthday party in April was the second time he won against me, and I think that might have been the first little nudge I got to realizing that maybe I like him even if I didn’t fully get it then. During the game when it was my turn, he walked over to me around the table and said “let me make sure you see what you’re doing” or something like that, before reaching out and pushing my glasses up my nose. I remember this fully enraging me and for the rest of the game I was a bit distracted because the urge to hit him in the face with the balls became bigger than hitting the cups. He also mooned me during that game, fully showing me his ass, so full on cheating basically at that point as I see it.

 

Another thing I have been thinking about these last couples days though is also from that birthday. My birthday was on sunday, so I threw the party on saturday. By the point we were reaching midnight I had fully forgotten why I was even throwing a party and not thinking about my birthday. I didn’t even notice him getting up and walking around the table to my chair until he suddenly hugged me from behind saying happy birthday. And now I’m here thinking omg was he watching the time the whole night to be the first to say that? Probably not but my brain is working against me right now.

 

That birthday all of my other friends also got me really awesome gifts (like super personal and I could tell they thought so much about it and I cried the day after thinking about it). We weren’t really big gift exchangers on birthdays ever before so I was really surprised by it, as apparently, was Josh as he was the only one who didn’t get me an actual gift. 

 

Another quick thing to mention is that around a year after he started hanging out with us, he brought some of his former friends he reconnected with into the group and some of them got fully integrated into the “inner circle”. Around that time it became kind of tradition that Josh, me and one of the friends he brought in were always the last ones there. We would hang out just the three of us talking and listening to music for up to hours after everyone else had either gone home or fallen asleep. This also still is a thing every single time right now.

 

It was the same on my birthday and as it was just the three of us he told me he felt really bad about not giving me a gift. I told him that I really don’t mind and would actually prefer if no one spends any more money on me after everything I already got, and not to worry about it. The next day I had a gift waiting for me on my steam library that I had been waiting to buy when I had some extra spending money for months at that point and was really excited about, but don’t remember even telling anyone about. The game was from him and was almost 90€ which is an insane amount of money for a birthday gift from him I think.

 

Another thing I’ve noticed since thinking back over the last days is that while we always start the night out sitting on different ends of the table, as soon as people stop sitting and gathering in smaller groups and moving around the hangout/party, he will always end up sitting next to me at some point and even if we move around more after that, will still end up next to me again every single time. 

 

Also, he isn’t really someone who likes to go out, as are most of the guys in our friend group. But whenever there is a town festival or a movie I wanna watch and I invite the group along, he never says no. Just noticed whenever someone else proposes anything that’s not hanging out at one of our homes, he says no and if he agrees to go it’s only after I text him and say he should go. And I know for a fact I’m not the only one noticing this because whenever someone else is planning something that involves going in public, they specifically task me with asking him to come.

 

Another thing is, as much as he likes to bully me and make me angry, he is also someone I feel completely safe and protected around because he’s stood up for me so many times. A couple of my friends sometimes don’t realize when they go a little too far (they always apologize and I know they only say things sometimes when they’re drunk that they don’t intend to come across that way). 

 

One time that comes to mind is during a friend’s birthday party I wasn’t drinking so I was the driver for everyone needing to get home. One of my friends was already pretty f***ing drunk but kept asking for me to make one of my special mixes (which is more alkohol than mixer). I kept asking are you sure until he started raising his voice and then I was like you know what, if you puke you puke bro, and made him a drink (I made it really harmless though, like just coke with the tiniest sip of rum). He ended up taking one sip, almost puking and just started going off on me (to the point I was getting nervous because he didn’t sound joking at all), like yelling at me in front of the others and started insulting me. And none of my friends really said anything other than kinda quietly and nervously laughing and saying “calm down”, but Josh stood up, got between me and him and told him to shut up, stop being a b****, and get his ass to bed to calm down, and that he better not raise his voice at me again.

 

Another time, which is longer ago (like two and a half years), I was kind of seeing/somewhat starting to date one of the guys Josh brought along (gonna call him Greg). Greg used to be Josh’s best friend. At that point we had been kinda going out for a couple weeks but weren’t officially a couple, but basically everyone knew it was happening, we weren’t hiding it. We were at one of my friend’s cousin’s birthdays (and she throws huge parties every year so there was a lot of drinking and a lot of people I don’t super know), and I was once again not drinking that night. 

 

The plan was that I would drive some people home and then eventually Greg and I were going to go home together either to his place or mine (my parents place more so, I still lived at home back then). The plan kinda changed when Greg got reaaaallllyyy drunk super fast and it got a bit weird. First he was the life of the party, then he sat down outside and I had to comfort him for like an hour because he was crying about no one ever really liking him, which somehow (and I still don’t remember how) changed into him ranting at me about this one girl that he works with, telling me she’s so pretty and basically exactly what he wants in a girlfriend but how she is dating a guy who doesn’t deserve her and how it’s not fair. I tried my best to get him to stop crying so I could get him home (kinda telling myself he’s just drunk and doesn’t know what he’s talking about right now). 

 

Eventually he suddenly stopped being sad and was happy again, ignoring me for a bit and drinking more and doing s*** with other people. I tried to convince him to just go home with me but he was then in a mindset of “being everyone’s leader” and that the mood would be ruined if he went home. So I just sat down by myself for a bit waiting and eventually Josh sat down with me and asked what’s going on with Greg and I told him I think it would be best if I took him home but he doesn’t want to go. 

 

He said we’ll talk to him together and we went over to where Greg was at that point half passed out on a bench. Josh tried to gently explain that it’s time to go, that he needs to get to bed and telling him almost everyone is about to leave anyways. Greg then started calling me a b**** for wanting to prevent him from having fun, saying I’ve been nagging him all night and how I’ve just been annoying the entire time we’ve been there and how nobody wants me there anyways and I should just go home by myself if I don’t know how to have fun.

 

All of that actually really hurt to hear but I decided I won’t even respond to it tonight and just do what he’s saying, going home. But Josh got really mad and told him he’s being disrespectful as f*** towards me and doesn’t even deserve me trying to take care of him right now. Then Josh called him a dick and said that he was the annoying one and how actually everyone he talked to was really put off by him all night (I later also learned someone overheard when I was comforting him outside and the things he said about his coworker have been making the rounds which I was super embarrassed about, but Josh also laid into him for that). In the end, Josh told him to leave and figure out how to get home. When Greg still didn’t leave he went to get Nick and the both of them took him outside and called him a cab, literally putting him in there and making sure he was leaving. 

 

Greg and I didn’t see each other again after that and a couple weeks later I learned Josh and Nick also completely stopped talking to him, which also surprised me, as until that night everyone really seemed to like him and I was under the impression Josh and him were still best friends.

 

Now, the thing that kinda made me realize that I think I do like him as more than a friend and is the reason I’ve been thinking about all those moments and dissecting them. Last weekend, the friend group went to a local music festival. It was really fun, but I was pretty aware Josh wasn’t super stoked about it, but he still came along and at this point I think once again it’s because I was the one to invite people. 

 

Nothing crazy even happened, but at one point I was complaining about not being able to see very well because we were all the way in the back and I’m somewhat challenged in the height department, and in the next moment Josh was kneeling down and I was on his shoulders before he got up again. And I swear to god something in me snapped or broke in that moment because I’ve been kind of a mess ever since.

[basil67]

TL/DR   Can you give us a summary?

[Alpacalia]

None of these things prove he likes you romantically, but there’s definitely enough there to make “wait… does he maybe like me?” a completely reasonable thought.

You don't need to solve the entire mystery immediately. You can let yourself like him and gather more evidence before doing anything scary. Like, asking him to hang out one-on-one. 

[ExpatInItaly]

8 hours ago, basil67 said:

TL/DR   Can you give us a summary?

I was about to post the same. 

OP, can you give a condensed version of this? 

[introverted1]

TL/DR Summary:  Guy she likes is part of a larger friend group which also includes her BFF who happens to be liked-guy's younger brother. They all hang out together regularly and there is lots of banter and interaction within the group. She is analyzing each breath, movement, and word of the guy she likes in an effort to ascertain whether he likes her, too. None of his actions are a clear indicator either way.