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"Straight" Friend Treats Me Weirdly

Discussion in 'Family, Friends, and Relationships' started by invisiblecities, Aug 18, 2015.

  1. invisiblecities

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    I guess my big fear is that he throws me under the bus out of cowardice and spins it as, "The openly gay guy has an unrequited crush on me." There's this whole trope of the predatory gay man with unreturned feelings from the straight guy. When I think of what he has at stake--straight privilege, a marriage, someone providing room and board for him--it seems easy that he would do whatever he can to protect the image he's made for himself. But it's like you're the one staring at me during class, you're the one following me around, you're the one who gets physical, you're the one initiating every communication between us. Maybe that's just my paranoia talking. Maybe he wouldn't do that. I feel like I've been pretty good about keeping my cards hidden. But who knows.
     
    #41 invisiblecities, Sep 23, 2015
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  2. Carryonmyfriend

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    I think you should talk to him about his behavior towards you. You don't have to go into detail you just have to tell him that it's making you uncomfortable. If your fears are really stopping you from doing this then just ignore him. I was in a situation where I liked this guy and he would send mixed signals and it was affecting me as well. So I distanced myself from him. We had some classes together and we had mutual friends so I would have to talk to him once in a while, but I kept our interactions limited. You really have to put your well being above all. I'm really sorry you're going though this. Hope things get better.
     
  3. invisiblecities

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    I know I need to. And I should probably bring it up. But it's hard/scary. He made *one* small effort to ask me why I was distant and I agreed to have a conversation with him, but it seems like after he pried with my friend--and found out it was because he's giving off vibes--he's got his answer, so hearing it from me doesn't matter anymore, which hurts. It's like, "Dude, you've put me through ridiculousness for the last year. I deserve to have a voice and get this off my chest."

    I've caught him staring at me still occasionally during class, and the other day we had a meeting at the pub. He didn't sit by me, but across and down a few seats. A couple of times he glanced in my direction and jerked his head away, like he was at war with himself. I think the reason he's so confusing with me is that he himself is confused. He also came into my office wearing nothing but an undershirt once and was like, "Here, look at my laptop" and held it at crotch level. I'm just thinking to myself, "So a friend tells you I'm being distant because you seem like you're hitting on me and this is how you behave?" Wouldn't a normal straight guy be like, "Oh crap, I didn't mean to give that impression" and then back off?
     
  4. invisiblecities

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    P.S. Totally forgot to ask how your situation turned out and if you still have to deal with him. Hope all is well.
     
  5. Carryonmyfriend

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    Even though he might know he doesn't know the whole thing. Unless you and your friend are linked in a way that enables her to feel all that you feel and think what you think then this guy doesn't know everything, there is no way that she could have described everything to him. It is always better to hear it from the actual person to avoid confusion. I know it's scary and at the end of the day this is your life and no one can pressure you into doing anything you don't feel ready to do. Take your time or don't do anything at all. It's all up to you. If you really want to know what this guy is thinking when he acts this way then the best solution is to talk to him. And no, I don't think this is the way that a straight guy would act, but people can't just assume that a person is into another person unless they confess to it being true.

    Things could be worse on my end. We both go to different colleges, but I miss him. We knew each other seven years and I miss him as a friend, but I made my decision and I think I did the right thing. The situation was affecting me way too much and I needed to break free. Thanks for asking and I hope that I made some sense. Good luck1 :slight_smile:
     
  6. invisiblecities

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    I guess I don't trust that I'll know what he's thinking even if we do talk. I mean, if he says he doesn't/didn't have feelings for me, I won't really believe him. Not even my former boyfriends stared at me this much before we dated. It just seems like he'll be saying that to get off the hook for his behavior, or out of potential trouble with his wife, the same person who is paying his room and board while he's in this program with me. I mean, there are serious repercussions to admitting that, and I don't think accountability is this guy's strong suit.

    He's a walking, breathing facade. He is so insecure that he devotes so much of himself to constructing this image: the plaid, the cuffed jeans, the tattoos, etc. He spends every moment posturing. I guess all this to say my trust level with him is low, and I trust my gut more than anything that's ever come out of his mouth. But I still do think I need to talk to him. Part of me thinks the entire reason that he went to my friend instead of me was because he knows that I know.

    A lot easier to avoid accountability with someone who wasn't present for all this ridiculousness.
     
  7. Carryonmyfriend

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    Will it make a difference if he were to say that he does have feelings for you? He has a wife, but what if he says he'll leave her for you, will that make you see him differently? You are in a tough situation, but if you want some sort end to this I think that if he does say he doesn't like you, maybe you should try to take it as his real answer so you can move on. What are your options if he denies it all? Yes, you do need to talk to him and the faster you get it done the faster you'll be able to move on. Again this is your life and I can only see this through my point of view, but I know it would be way more difficult if I was living through it.
     
  8. invisiblecities

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    I guess it's one step to acknowledge those feelings, but I don't know that someone who's in such an emotionally immature stage of identity development is boyfriend material. I guess what sucks is that I have to accept his answer in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, just because he's dug his heels in and decided to keep projecting this image of himself because it's convenient. And it's possible it could be totally latent and he's in denial. I guess what I need him to recognize is that, regardless of what he says his feelings are, his actions can easily be construed as flirtatious and probably even more than that (and have been by more than just me). Do you think it's a valid point to acknowledge that others have pointed out his behavior to me? One of my fears is that he'll try to spin this or throw me under the bus by saying that "Oh, you just want me to be gay"--but perhaps noting that it's not just my interpretation of his behaviors, but others, that have helped me understand his actions as such. I guess what I'm saying is that it's easier to dismiss as irrelevant the opinion of a gay man but third parties noticing might help my case. In the end, the ultimate goal is for him to leave me alone. Not just keeping a distance, but not staring at me during class or providing any other sort of distraction. My fear is--if this is a latent homosexuality thing--even if he leaves me alone as a result of my distancing, he's just gonna get a crush on another guy in the future and make him super uncomfortable, too.
     
  9. Carryonmyfriend

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    No, you are totally right his actions can be construed as flirtatious if not more and that's something that you should keep in mind when and if you talk to him. Don't let his response intimidate you. You have all those people who can attest to the signals that his odd behavior is giving to you and to those around you. So even if he were to say, "You just want me to be gay" you just got to bring that up. Be confident. This might sound like the selfish thing to do, but I think you shouldn't worry about others. You have to think about yourself first. If he were to act like this around someone else I think it is up to that person to decide how they allow this man to make them feel and how they react to it. I hope that my advice is helping you (even if it just a little bit) and not making you feel more confused.
     
  10. Kaboom

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    My mind is blown.

    Have you talked to him yet?

    ---------- Post added 30th Oct 2015 at 11:28 AM ----------

    I do want to say that this has gone on for way too long.

    You talk about how the situation makes YOU feel. You talk about how confronting him and his reaction would make YOU feel. You're also trying to put him in a box and make sense of his actions. It's gone on for so long that you are making note of every little thing he does and reading into what it could mean. Not everyone has it figured out at 30, you know? What if he's really in a confusing place in his life?

    I mean, it does sound like he fancies you. What if he really needs a friend though? It sounds like you read into his conversation with your friend as calculating on his part. You need to talk to him. You should have done that already.
     
  11. IG88

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    Red flags. Red flags everywhere it's painful.

    His behavior is odd and creepy. Even if you two were together it would be him obsessing over you and you not able to return the love with the full amount of force that he does.

    If you express disgust towards him then why are you on some emotional roller coaster? If you don't like him then no bid deal, right?

    I would either call him out on his weirdness, or always bring up his wife in conversation (or both). He won't like either topic, and that may get him to stop hanging around you so much.
     
  12. invisiblecities

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    I finally did it. I finally confronted him. We met at a bar and beat around the bush a long time. I was explaining how isolated and "othered" I'd felt in our program and said that was why I'd stopped attending a lot of events. He said, "Have I done anything to upset you?" I said, "Yes." It took me a bit to get the ball rolling, but once I did, I didn't stop.

    I started off by talking about the staring. How others had noticed it during class and pointed it out to me. How it wasn't just absently locking on someone during class, but how it was intentional--how he'd regularly look back over his shoulder at me during events in which there was a speaker straight ahead of him, how my office mate had told me he was staring at me the entire time he was having a conversation with her, how I'd seen him jerk his head away like he's aware of it and trying to stop himself, how a friend had seen him eye me as I got on the train and said he looked like a "seventh grader with a crush." I told him how uncomfortable it is to be sitting there and have an arm snake around the back of my chair and have his legs go up underneath it. I told him how he talks so much about me to other friends that they've come and said things like "_____ doesn't shut up about you" or "What is your relationship with _____? It seems like he has feelings." I told him that he spent so much time outside my office he stopped bothering to put his bags in his own and would just sit outside mine.

    Of the staring, he said he wasn't aware. Then he tried to say, "I feel like [a classmate] stares at me sometimes but I don't think anything about it." I said, "No, this is watching and following like a hawk. This is different." Of the touching, he said, "Well, I don't want to avoid touching a dude just because he's gay so I'm probably just overcorrecting." Then he said we were making a lot of assumptions about him. I said if he were watching any other man behave this way, he'd have pegged him as gay. In fact, I called him out for insinuating a classmate's fiancé was gay and said, "If you don't want them making assumptions about you, why are you making assumptions about him? And you're just thinking of his mannerisms and voice. You're the one staring at dudes and putting your arms around them."

    I also told him that actions speak louder than words--or at least that people build their interpretation of you as a person out of the things they've heard you say and see you do. It seems like he wants to say and do anything and not have it reflect on his character--and that at the end of the day, we're just supposed to trust what he says about himself.

    I told him that his talk about divorce and alcohol consumption were troubling. He was quick to say, "I just talk about divorce because it's a reality, not that I'm planning on getting one" to which I said, "Everyone knows it's a reality--why consistently bring it up?" He also claimed that he knew alcoholics and he wasn't one and didn't drink too much. I told him that right after Thanksgiving he was talking about how wasted he'd gotten over the holiday and when I told him he sounded like a functional alcohol (he suggested that he gets rip-roaringly drunk a lot but that he copes or manages it well) and he "joked," "I'm functional." He said he was just interested in alcohol and cocktails.

    At one point he tried to say, "I feel like sometimes we project things like hopes onto other people, like if we want to feel attractive..." I quickly interjected and told him that turning the situation on me was the coward's way out. He replied, "Well, I guess the fact that other people have noticed sort of throws a wrench in that theory anyway."

    He claimed his comment about "curiosity" was about women, and I told him that word was loaded with queer meaning and that he was probably aware of it.

    He told me he promised to try to monitor his behavior for appropriateness, and I told him that he can't expect me to warm up to him after this conversation, especially given the number of justifications/explaining aways he did. He said, "I'm glad your being upset wasn't because I said something homophobic," and I said, "Have you learned nothing from this conversation? Being marginalized by your creepy behavior and isolated from a program I'm working twice as hard to put myself through is a far greater injustice. If you'd said something homophobic, I'd have called you out and spit out your bones after chewing you out."

    I don't know what to do with this turn of events. He at least knows now why I'm creeped out. i don't think I expected a coming out party, but it's hard to believe he actually came up with excuses for every single bit of weird behavior he's been throwing out at me. I told him that I was having to shrink inside myself because he transgresses his own boundaries so much because he's a straight white male, but if I even publicly allowed him to do any of these weird physical things to me, I'd get called out on it because I'm a gay male.

    The sense of injustice is great. Wrestling with this for so long and dude's just like, "This info is inconvenient for me--let me sweep it under the rug."
     
  13. Euler

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    Wow! What a story. Unfortunately, I fear that it is not over yet...

    From what I read it sounds like he isn't entirely stable. Besides this creepy stuff, does he come out as a weirdo to anyone else? I mean does he has other friends in the class and do they think he is normal?
     
  14. invisiblecities

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    Funny story about that. I had a student in the fall of last year who was his student the following spring semester. She came up to our office area looking for him one day and saw me in my office and came over to talk to me. She said she missed my class and asked if I knew her new professor (him). When I said I did, she said, "Is he... normal?" And I just vigorously shook my head.

    I don't think other people feel like he's violated their boundaries the way he has mine. Our program is very small, so he's friends with all the same people I am. They have noticed his creepy behavior toward me. Beyond that, they've noticed a lot of the same things I've noticed about him. There is some weirdness with his wife and he that no one can place their finger on. He makes cryptic remarks about marriage all the time, i.e. "There's an amount of time you're with someone long enough that there's no returning." Also, about his wife; the warmest thing I've ever heard him say about her is "I like _____. She's nice." He'll make passing remarks about how drunk he gets, like "When my wife goes to bed, I get really drunk" or "All I did over winter break was get drunk" (was it because you two were stuck together the whole time?). Just a couple weeks ago he told me his wife was gone over Thanksgiving break and he said he got super drunk. I mentioned he does that a lot and he says, "I ride the waves" (meaning I drink so much but don't let it get the best of me). I said that was the slogan of a functional alcoholic and he joked, "Yeah, I'm functional." He seems overcome by insecurity. He's constantly be name-dropping and talking about things he's done to try to impress people. He'll try during class to make comments that sound super smart, but usually just come out sounding try-hard (i.e. he misuses the word "performativity" all the time).

    He says he's awkward a lot, and that much is true. But there seems to be a lot of deeper shit going on there, too.

    He talks frequently about feeling neglected by his parents. He touts himself as a stoic and for the most part he is (and a general a-hole), but twice I saw him suddenly come close to tears. Both times he was telling me about his dad.

    I often wonder if daddy issues have anything to do with potential closetedness.

    But we were at a Christmas party last weekend. His wife immediately went to another room after they arrived and I was trapped in the dining room with him, though I stayed in the corner. I saw him doing his weird tic: as if he was stealing glances, but then caught himself in the middle of it, and jerked his head away. Once it happened while he was talking to a friend and it almost looked like he was having a seizure the way his head was shaking. I thought, "File this away in your brain. No matter what he says to you, no matter what he denies, you've seen this weird stuff."

    It was so hard for me sitting across the table from him at our confrontation. The entire time I was thinking, "When you say you're unaware of this, are you saying it just to get out of responsibility for it because ignorance somehow forgives it? Is it really possible to be unaware of this behavior when it's been going on for a year and a half is so outwardly visible to everyone else? How am I supposed to read that other than some obsession/attraction you're fighting?"
     
  15. CapColors

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    Buddy, I'm sorry. You are his trigger crush and he's acting like an asshat.

    There are a lot of reasons that people stay in the closet, even today.

    But he is acting VERY inappropriately for a coworker AND for a friend!

    Confronting him might backfire because denial is a strong, potent force. But it seems like he's aware of something going on within himself.

    I would try a combination of the following two things:

    - Tell him frankly that you think he is hitting on you and that makes you uncomfortable because he is married. If he denies it, say "My misunderstanding, but please try and respect my perspective." If he doesn't deny it, tell him that it's not your duty to help him through what you realize is a tough process just because you're gay. He needs to find his own way.

    - Get a boyfriend. A different boyfriend. Then you won't be as worried about him and he will see you are off limits.
     
    #55 CapColors, Dec 19, 2015
    Last edited: Dec 19, 2015
  16. invisiblecities

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    I am doing my absolute best to find a boyfriend. I am an absolute failure with online dating. I'm a romantic at heart and something about streamlining the romantic process sucks the joy and excitement out of it for me. I need that in-person back-and-forth to see if I have a chemistry with the person. Online feels superficial and a lot of people take great pictures but you don't connect with, and a lot of people you connect with don't take great pictures. I need to take advantage more of my free time to get outside of my limited grad community. Not enough LGBTQ people around here.

    Well, I did confront him about it Thursday night, and he denied all of it and had a quick and easy explanation for everything, other than the weird staring, which he said he was unaware of and was unintentional (the fact that he jerks his head away as if he's trying not to makes me think he's more aware than he lets on--that can't all be subconscious, can it?). When he denied it, I said that other people had noticed it, too, and that I would have never had the courage to confront him if other people hadn't raised his questionable behavior as well. I told him that I'm not a dumping ground for unresolved issues and that I'd try to respect what he said about himself, but my trust level with him is low. And that actions speak louder than words.
     
  17. Euler

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    I think you may want to have someone to pretend to be your boy friend for any faculty functions where you can bring one. And if you do this, make sure he is super possessive and jealous and makes it known to him. Preferably someone who is like 3-foot tall, muscular and does martial arts. And comes out a little intimidating and crazy perhaps because the way he looks people. Maybe a someone of a Middle Eastern origin. (I got a friend who fits the description if you wonder where this is coming from :lol:slight_smile: Even if you pay him it might be worth every cent. Even creeps have self-preservation instinct.

    If I were you I would discreetly talk with my tutor/faculty leader. Just let them know what has been going on and maybe bring a friend along. Don't make a formal complaint, just give them an unofficial heads up. This way if there is any further trouble you have some cover to your back. And it certainly would not hurt if you went to see whoever is responsible for your healthcare to complain how this thing is stressing you out and that you are a little concerned of his behavior. If this ever goes to any level dispute where outsiders are involved you are going to need as much evidence as you can.
     
  18. Aof

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    so much hate, frustration, and analyze toward the guy yet so much care and want hiding behind all of it
     
  19. invisiblecities

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    Perhaps I should. I don't know how much I should or shouldn't trust him. Our discussion Thursday night ended pretty anticlimactically. He just walked with me a bit after we left the bar, pointed me in the direction of the train and texted to make sure I was on it. I think he does those things thinking the small courtesy is going to somehow compensate for all the stress and anxiety he's caused. I've already spoken with one faculty member about what I've been going through without naming names. Maybe if I follow up with him eventually I'll offer more of the details.

    One of the worse parts of this is second-guessing myself. I sat there as he told me he had no awareness of his staring or being attracted to men in general and kept saying "perceived attraction" to refer to his weird behavior. The entire time I thought, "Is it really possible that you have zero awareness of how much you stare at me? Or of how weird you behave otherwise with me? Is it possible that a straight guy behaves this way and it's totally innocent?" Maybe it's social privilege, but it seems like because he's him his word trumps mine, but I'm just sort of mind-boggled. I wasn't expecting him to come out, but I also wasn't expecting that.

    I've been seeing a therapist regularly since August to try to process this stress and figure out how to address this situation. I've been taking anti-anxiety/panic medication because of sleep disturbance and the stress I experience in class.

    He gets to say, "How crappy that you've been stressed out about this for 75% of our program" and sweep it all under the rug?

    How unfair.
     
  20. Euler

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    Well, the other guy is not here asking our help. If he was, we would help. It's nott OP's responsibility to take care of this guy's problems. He is responsible of himself.