Has he forgotten me?

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To cut a long story short I fell in love with a former workmate of mine. We had a good friendship for two years before deciding to take a break of contact to improve on our mental wellbeings and because he had another girlfriend at the time.

We fell out after too many people got involved twisting our words around during the break of contact and over the course of the last two years he has ignored all contact with myself.

I had felt trapped without an explaination as to why he would suddenly stop talking to me altogether and because I struggle with social cues and communication in general, I started to blame myself for what happened because there was no closure and he never gave me any answers. He even hung up the phone on me last year pretending I was trying to sell him PPI. He was acting on cue to my speech and it broke my heart.

So last week, one year on, I decided to go down to my old workplace where we met just to do some photography and not really expecting him to be there, but he was. He first gave me what looked like a kind of defensive look on the passing, which I ignored and I never gave him much eye-contact.

Instead of ignoring me, he approached me and interacted with me briefly as if we were still workmates and remembered I worked with him enough to excitedly inform all his workmates, but he never told his workmates that we were friends. The thing is... I cannot understand why he would do all this... why be so kind? Why briefly approach me? Why excitedly tell his workmates I used to work with him? But fail to mention the friendship?

I texted him to say thanks, but as expected I got no reply.

My autism puts me at a position where I cannot understand the motives of others or other people's intentions causing me to overanalyse and overthink a simple situation.

Is it possible that he is maybe feeling bad over the way he treated me? And does it sound like a friendship can be rebuilt in time? I'm feeling so lost right now.

Maybe he has a new girlfriend or wife & doesn't want to complicate things even thou he may still care about you on some level. Considering the way he's been ignoring you, I would move on & forget the idea of the friendship being rebuilt. He needs to be the one to make the 1st move.

I'm sorry. I've been this confused all my life about dating...for most of that time I had no idea there was any such thing as autism. I just thought that men were manipulating me. (could be true of course, but my "looking-back" guess is that there were probably clues I could have caught.) In any case, I was so, so sad.

I only have one bit of advice, which came from a man who was interested in me (though I wasn't interested back unfortunately). He said, "when a man is interested, he'll do something, he'll take an action. If there's no action, he's probably not interested in that way." I asked him what the action was, and he tried to kiss me, and then the conversation ended because I withdrew/wasn't interested, and I wasn't able to learn of any other actions that a man might take.

My friend once told me that if you are interested, you should keep going to talk to the person, because eventually things will develop if there is a mutual interest and availability. If things don't develop, they don't develop and that's the end of it. I can't say I tested that strategy though, because I've been blinded by my manipulation-interpretation.

That is called "ghosting" - ignoring someone is now an acceptable behavior - and has nothing to do with your autism.

Listen, Korvan: a friendship between a guy and a girl always ends when one of them enters a long term relationship with someone else - especially when the other remains single.

I'm still very confused. Yes, it does look like ghosting, but I still cannot understand why he would briefly approach me in the first place - why not just continue ignoring me completely? It's not like the other people in that room knew who I was for him to suddenly change his tune. Sure, it could be an act of showing that he does still care to some degree because that's how I initially picked it up but it could have been an act to make himself look good seeing as he never mentioned to his workmates we were friends. He's no longer with the girl in question, it sounds to me like she was controlling and quite territorial with him but I couldn't tell you if he is with someone else, even if he was I would only be looking for friendship - there's no way I could produce those feelings again.

O dear...but this exactly the typical ghosting!

In the typical ghosting, the person ignores you online completely, read your message but doesn't reply - but if you bump into him/her in person for real, they act all friendly as if there's nothing wrong.

Remember, friendly people are not always your friends.

Ghosting is a form of bullcrap acquaintance-zoning, its message is : "You can be my acquaintance, we can say hello and act friend in real life like any other acquaintances, but do not contact me through more "personal" mediums" (such as phone and texting).

This what is all about, I am the person who has deciphered ghosting!