Weird Behavior

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I dated a guy at work for about a month, but if you count the 'talking' period it was more like 3 months. Anyway, he broke up with me out of nowhere about a month ago. He never really gave me a clear reason why. I know he's got issues with the passing of his fiance a few years ago, and I think that has a big part of it. But he never came out and told me that was the reason, so I guess I shouldn't assume...

In the days after he was very upset and scared that I didn't want to keep a friendship with him. We talked about it, and I made it very clear that I DID want to keep the friendship. We agreed that we'd still do the things we had already planned (taking a road trip, going to see a few movies) and things would just go back to how they were before we made things official. He seemed very happy with this.

Funnily though, when the days came for us to do these planned things, he had excuses as to why he couldn't go through with them. I used to text him every few days or so, just to see how he was doing, but he never put forth the effort himself. Here lately, but not until the past two weeks or so, he has acted very strange when I'm around at work - wanting to leave early, avoiding conversation with me, things like that. Outside the occasional working together or passing each other during a shift change, he never sees or speaks to me.

He apparently isn't only blowing me off, though. He's got a 'band' now (a.k.a. new, EXCITING people to hang out with), and a lot the people he was friends with before complain about being blown off by him too. But it's different with me. He's still friendly with them, calls and texts them, and occasionally wants to hang out with them.

I've decided that I'm not putting forth the effort to sustain a friendship if I'm the only one doing so. But I just don't get it. He was really dead-set on staying close. It wasn't ever so serious that he should be acting this way. I'm going to ask a mutual friend of ours if she knows anything I don't... she'll let me know if she has any info.

But if she doesn't... why is he acting so strangely? Is it that he still feels awkward? Or he feels bad? Or he regrets the way things happened? We're both pretty socially weird and hard to read... which was bad for our relationship anyway, as he never really expressed his feelings properly.

I thought the confusion was over.

It sounds like he just used you for companionship for a little while, got tired of you, and dumped you. He then felt guilty and tried to soften the blow with the crap about staying friends, even though he didn't mean it. Now he's avoiding you because he feels akward about how things went between you.

He sounds like quite a flake and you're probably better off without him.

This exact situation happened to me recently.

I'll admit it. I was guilty of doing something similar in the past. It happened when I was a sophomore in college. There was a girl in my class (let's call her S) who I thought showed interest in me. So I became interested in her solely because of that, even though I wasn't attracted to her. I decided to start doing the usual things to make a relationship happen.

Let's fast-forward two months, to a day when I took my "girlfriend" (or so I thought) to a dance held in the gym of my college. Since she's gone on a date with me before then, I honestly believed that she liked me, even though nothing more than a hug happened. At one point, slow songs came on. I tried to dance close with S, but she didn't want to. It was more shocking to me than sticking a fork into a European outlet (220 volts). It dawned on me: the whole time, she only liked me as a friend.

Like a lot aspies, I changed the way I communicated with her after that day. I still said hi to her before class, but no longer made an effort to come early, no longer called her on the phone, and no longer tried to ask her out again. The communication gradually faded out during the next semester. She probably wondered why I suddenly became distant, but I made the mistake of not looking at the whole situation from her point of view. I guess I got so caught up in the prospect of having a girlfriend, I didn't stop to think how she felt about it. Live and learn, I guess.

So about the guy you dated breaking up with you. Have you done anything to make him think you weren't romantically interest in him? This is the opposite of what happens more often, when a guy thinks a girl likes him when she doesn't. (If you two kissed at any point, then feel free to skip the next few sentences, because that alone is a clear signal.) He might have felt like you weren't into him. So in his mind, he put in all that work, only to find out you liked him as a friend. In other words, you thought you two were dating, but he thought you friend-zoned him, because he missed the signals you were sending. Now, this doesn't justify or excuse the way he randomly broke up with you, but it might explain it somehow.

I don't recommend confronting him about it, because he might actually feel guilty for having done that. Let him learn his lesson and move on. It doesn't look like you did anything wrong, at least not intentionally. Of course, if he really did deliberately use you for companionship, then he should be ashamed. Find a guy who will appreciate you as a person, and be clear with your feelings.

I've never really thought about him using me for companionship before.

It originally started between me and him when he had a co-worker of ours tell me how he felt about me. He had been talking to everyone about me, how he really really really really liked me like that. All his friends had been telling him to say something, but he set her up to do it because he didn't have the guts. Well we discussed it, and decided we would 'see where it goes'. About a month later, he made it clear that he 'wanted to be with me', and so it was.

We cuddled, hugged, held hands, but that was it, physically.

Exactly one week before he decided to end it, he was saying things like "He had never wanted to put forth effort with other girls, but something about me made him want to"... things that no-one had ever said to me before, that really touched me. He had introduced me to his family, all his friends, which I thought was recipe for something really serious. I was in the process of doing the same when it ended.

... which is why I was so caught by surprise when he broke it off.

There is one, particular issue with him that stands out in my mind. Here's a thread I wrote about it.

I don't want to assume that's why things are the way they are, just in case he really did just 'change his mind that fast'. Just seems unlikely to me. Like I said in that thread, I can't even begin to imagine what he went through with that, but I still feel that my emotions have been played. He needs to do something different next time around if this is the issue at hand, because I was honestly hurt, and nobody's emotions should be played that way. He's just so vague... I don't even know if that was the problem!

Regardless of the way things went, I really wanted to keep a close friendship, because we did have a great one before. It just seems as though he's either unable, or doesn't want to, even though he acted like he did.


Thanks for the feedback, everyone. It really helps a lot.

Aha! This completely changes things. From the way you explained it, I highly doubt he used you for companionship, so that's not an issue anymore. It actually sounds similar to what I went thought with S (a girl I talked about in my last post). Let me explain what might have been on his mind in the next few paragraphs.

OK, so he "really really really really liked you", but was afraid to tell you how he felt. However, he felt strongly enough that he sent someone else to tell you. Sounds a little high school-ish to me, but I'll give him the benefit of doubt. At the minimum, you two were brought together. But he might have been troubled by the phrase "we'll see where it goes", because it implies open-endedness and ambiguity, concepts that clearly go against aspies' black-and-white thinking. At the same time, he liked you enough that he preferred "we'll see" over "no", which is romantic on his part. He introduced you to his family and friends, which also clearly indicates that he wanted to get serious with you. But you also said you two haven't done anything beyond hugging, cuddling, and holding hands. Did he try to kiss you at any point? And if so, did you allow it or resist?

I'm asking because to me, kissing is a benchmark of interest. If a girl doesn't want to kiss me by the third date, I start wondering if she ever liked me "in that way". And if not, is she going to tell me we're just friends while still letting me do the usual "boyfriend things"? Don't get me wrong, I always appreciate a mutual friendship, where both parties want to be friends. But I will not take the "just friends" option when my intention clearly was finding a romantic relationship.

It was pretty rude of him to end things like that, and I'm sorry you had to go through it. However, it's quite possible that something went off in his mind and gave him the idea that you weren't interested in him. Maybe the way you two interacted was similar to how he interacted with girls who friend-zoned him in the past. So he decided that you weren't interested in getting serious with him, and broke it off. And since he forgot to think about how you'd feel, he did it in such an abrupt manner.

I think he may have tried to kiss me once. Whenever I would leave his house, he would walk me to my car, hug me, occasionally kiss me on the cheek, and that was it. So this particular night, that was what I was expecting. I guess where our heads didn't meet at the proper angle, he kind of almost kissed me on the cheek on accident. Realizing what had just happened, I blurted something like "oops", but he was embarrassed so he let go and quickly went in the house.

I was planning on taking it upon myself to do it next time the opportunity arose, but within the following few days was when he broke it off.


We sound pretty juvenile, but we actually did talk about it once. I had never had to be the one to make moves in relationships before, and neither had he, so neither one of us really knew when to make them. This is only what he told me though.

I get the idea that there's an incredibly amount of nervous energy flying around here... can't say I blame you guys...

^ I'm pretty disappointed about it too. I can honestly say that I don't feel nervous at all around him. It was awkward at first, which was unavoidable, but the only thing that makes me feel awkward now is his weird behavior. It would make anyone feel uncomfortable.

I wish he didn't feel nervous around me. We had a great friendship at one point, and it looks like it was ruined.