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I need advice on this one guy at school
Hello, I'm 18 and I'm a guy. I just recently went to live with my dad. I changed schools 2 months ago and I am a senior. At this new school, one person has been treating me nicely. He’s in my first period and he’s given me quite a bit of attention. He’s said things to me a few times randomly. He said hi to me when he saw me in the hall last week. He woke me up one day in class when I fell asleep. Yesterday, he even gently rubbed my arm for a few seconds when he walked past my desk. And today, when he walked past my desk again and this time he (again gently) rubbed me on my right shoulder to my back to my left shoulder. After that, I started thinking if maybe he liked me. I already knew he saw me in a friendly way. I’m bisexual so I’m cool if he does like me. But I just don’t know about engaging in anything because I’ve been hurt before pretty badly and I’m scared of making past mistakes. What advice can anyone give me? I want to befriend him but like I said, I’ve been hurt and I just don’t want to repeat my past mistakes.
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I was pretty intelligent at your age and thought I was real mature and knew a lot. Looking back, I realize that plain old life experiences can teach a lot if we let them.
What you are doing is allowing your bad experiences to 'clip your wings' so to speak, so you can not take flight and enjoy your life. A person who allows bad experiences to keep them so cautious they are afraid to move on in life, he/she is a victim. And victims don't recover. A victim can be a victim their whole life.
Instead, be a survivor, and rise above your bad experiences. I know it sounds great but is hard to do in reality. Why? Because most of us have not looked at what went wrong, and learned from it. Don't think I don't know what I am talking about. I will give my example now. I had a past marriage where the ex was verbally abusive not just at home but in public, anger issue, high standards for everyone but himself. After a divorce, I could have hidden away and kept private, not out meeting people for fear of meeting another guy who would treat me like that. So what I did instead, and this is what I suggest for you to do as well, is I began a mental list of the signs I could see in him that showed he was unreasonable and would belittle me. Yes, there are signs but we often don't see them as signs until after we've been burnt, and sometimes we don't notice them at all. I knew I didn't want to be alone, I am too social. So I used this list and did not have tolerance of much. Example, met a guy whom seemed really nice. It was the 4th date and at his house for a home cooked dinner by him. The moment I walked into his spotless organized house, he began to say to please excuse the terrible mess and then began to blame his hispanic maid, using racial slurs and other demeaning descriptions. No, it wasn't directed at me, yet but would be in the future, my ex was like that. Nice to me but talking bad of everyone else until he decided attacking only me was the thing for him. So when I saw it in this new date, I finished dinner and went home and never went back to him.
I hope you see that I used the 'warning signs' in his behavior to shut him down before he began to attack me as my ex did. Maybe it is dishonesty and lying or cheating in your story, and there are warning signs there too. So if you want to share what in your past relationships has you afraid to take a chance now, let me know, maybe I can give some more advice. If you write me though, you need to start a new question by going to search advice columnists and writing to me dragonflymagic from there. I am glad to hear you don't want to repeat mistakes, so if you do brave meeting someone new, then be forewarned that you will be tested once or twice, I was twice, with bad character issues these people kept hidden from me at first, even though I was looking for them. It is not a failure or repeating of mistakes if someone is putting up a false persona to hook you in the beginning.Guys with something to hide could only keep up the charade for a short time, a handful of visits or a month or dating, somewhere in there. Eventually comes the day they slip up and show their true self. No, it is not an accident or one time mistake where they are normally great people. You first need to realize that whatever a person tries to keep under cover in order to catch your interest, is not an one time urge to do something bad but a whole mind set and character full of more of the same. And in some people, what they try to hide from you is like a pressure cooker, eventually that one incident you saw and thought that was all, is revealed as the total opposite when something sets them off and they explode all over you or you come across clues and call them on it and they baldly still lie even when the evidence to the contrary is staring you both in the face. I may sound pessimistic and that is not true at all. My logic is that if you start a job or you hire someone for a job, and it doesn't work out, it is much easier to start again with a new employer than it is to start again with a new relationship. So the way I thought of it was that guys I met would be applying for the available position of boyfriend. So to choose from among them, I had to have a list of criteria they had to be able to meet, just like a job applicant. I had that list. Having one helps make you feel more secure. And you are if you don't settle for less if someone applying, can't meet your criteria for a gf/bf.
Also, just because someone is interested in you, you don't have to like them back as more than friends. You mention stuff that has me thinking he is interested in you as more than friends, as a lover. Thats no problem as long as you feel the same feelings. Its the same rule as we go by in hetero relationships. If some girl was going gaga over you and really wanted you to be her boyfriend, but you felt no chemistry for her, can you see yourself going along with it, acting as boyfriend even though you didn't feel that kind of chemistry, the kind to be romantic and kiss, etc. Would you simply act and go through the motions, pretending just so she won't have her feelings hurt by being turned down? I don't think you would go along with this all with a female. So why do it with a male. Unless you have an attraction to him in the same way he has for you, you have no business giving him encouragement to be a lover. You can let him know that right now, you are hurting from a past relationship so not ready to start a romantic one. Let him know you are bi, because if he is not, he may be jealous of any girls you date, or feel you are pretending with him when you are actually hetero. I know with many people, it doesn't occur to them that it could be a liking of both sexes as far as sexual preferance goes, so being bi is the last thing most people think of. So you let him know that you would like to be friends but don't feel the chemistry with him. So you would not be doing anything romantic with him, just a male friend if he can be happy with that.
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