Doubts with the attitudes of my friend

[leongar]

Hi, my name is Leon. I have some doubts about a close friend of mine. I will explain the situation as better as I can and I would like to know what you think about it.

I know my friend for almost ten years, since high school. Now we are 20. We are very close friends, we do many things together, we see each other a lot, I'm always in his house, he always told me all about his problems with his family, with his girlfriend (now he has broken up), etc., etc.

I always thought of him as completely heterosexual (he always had crushes with women, he had a formal girlfriend, he has sex with women, etc.). He never showed the slightest mark of a homosexual interest or desire or whatever. BUT some doubts appeared when I started to notice certain things:

- All goes well when we are the two alone, but in the last couple of years always when we are in a group (with his family, with more friends) he avoids speaking to me and he even avoids all possible eye contact in a way that is so evident that it scandalises me sometimes, because there are trivial situations, we are talking about trivial things and then he looks all around to each one of the group EXCEPT to me. He includes all of them with his glance to make them participate but not me. When, in these cases, I speak directly to him he either doesn't answer or he does it looking elsewhere. In some cases I have to say loudly to him: "I am speaking to you. Could you look at me, please?" Beliece me, I never saw him do that with anyone (he is a tremendously extrovert person), I certainly don't remember him doing it to me before and he has no problem to look at me when there are not other people around (even he looks me directly in the eyes when he tells me something really important, but not in a strange way, only in the way we all look when we want to be frank to other people).

- Although he always was the one who proposed more to do this or that thing, to go to this or that place, etc., in the last years he almost never asks me to do something if I don't talk to him first. I insist: he is a very extrovert person. It is not less true that he is now as happy as always about my going to his house and he always insists that I can go whenever I want, so there was no change in that,

- I saw him looking at me once when I was changing my clothes. It was for two seconds, of course, but I knew he was looking and I then looked at him on purpose and he retired. Obviously it is possible that he might be looking somewhere else (although I was in a corner the wall and the door), but at least that was not my own impression in the moment. Nonetheless, that never happend again.

 

So I am a little bit confused. Let's, if you want, put the third point aside, as I can be mistaken regarding to it, and let's focus in the first two, of which I am certain and they happen since more than a year. Do you think I have reasons to think that he has some feeling towards me (I think it could be something unconscious, I don't know) or should I just forget all these things?

(Sorry for the extension and also for my English).

Thanks in advance!

[kamani]

I'm completely straight and I'm not sure whether I could make a correct guess.

 

Your story reminded me of the conduct of myself and one of my co-workers, when we began to feel we were not just friends. Both of us were married and knew that a step further would be asking for trouble.

 

I feel your friend is fighting inside.

[Ashlaria]

This might be hard to hear but it sounds to me like he isn't much of a friend anymore. Talking to others and excluding you might suggest he is embarrassed you are his friend. You asking him to directly look at you might be seen as you being needy/clingy. As for going out, you say he doesn't suggest anything any more but is happy for you to go to his house. So as long as you are making the effort he is happy?

 

Have a think about your friendship, has it changed over the years? Did anything happen that you think might have caused him to be less friendly? I obviously don't know the truth but from what you've said it sounds like he has grown out of your friendship but hasn't moved on yet.

 

If it is bothering you, try not calling him and see how long before he phones you. That might be your answer.

 

Good luck