Sometimes it’s hard to know if a guy likes you and is just too shy to ask you out or if he’s not interested at all—at least it is for me. I thought this guy’s social anxiety was holding him back so I made the first move, but it turns out he didn’t like me at all.
- I knew he was super shy but he was different around me. He hardly spoke to anyone in the office and kept to himself a lot. He never went out with us for drinks after work, and he blushed—literally blushed!—when someone talked to him. However, I started to notice that he treated me a little differently than other women we worked with. He’d say hi and give me a smile. He seemed to stare at me when I was around and I started thinking that maybe he liked me.
- I tried to flirt. I wanted to go out on a date with him, so I started flirting a bit more to show him that I liked him. I’d find excuses to go to his office and then try to chat a bit. He seemed eager to chat and we’d share a laugh or two before I headed back to my office feeling pumped with anticipation that maybe something would happen between us.
- I was impatient and wanted to get the show on the road. I didn’t want to wait forever for this guy. I’d ask him, “What are you doing this weekend?” in the hope that he’d invite me out but he never did. It was so frustrating, but I kept telling myself the guy was seriously introverted. Plus, I knew he’d confessed to one of the guys in the office that he sucked when it came to dating. Maybe he wanted to ask me out but was too shy? To find out, I knew that I had to take matters into my own hands.
- I bit the bullet and tried to make plans. I decided it was now or never. It’d been months of chatting and it was getting us nowhere. I was done. I wanted to move things forward instead of continually wasting time, so I went to say hi to him one morning and then I said that it would be cool for us to take our conversations out of the office. Perhaps we could go for coffee? Instead of giving me a straight answer right there and then, he said he’d have to let me how his week turned out. I found it a bit odd but I gave him my phone number anyway. I hoped he’d get in touch, but deep down I knew that he wouldn’t.
- He never called or texted. Although he’d promised to call me later that week to let me know if he could fit me into his weekend, he never did. No surprises there. If he’d been shy but interested in me, he could’ve easily texted me. I’d made it so easy for him to contact me because I’d done most of the work. I’d practically asked him out, after all!
- We’d built up a friendship. It wasn’t like I’d asked this guy out in a way that took him by surprise. We’d been getting to know each other for months. He didn’t act very shy when we had one-on-one communication. In fact, he was pretty outgoing and really fun to be with. I figured this was because we had become friends. But now that friendship was biting me in the butt, adding to my feelings of rejection.
- He just wasn’t that into me. Based on the fact that we could connect really well via conversation and he didn’t get all weird and fidgety around me when it was just the two off us in the room, I thought that he wouldn’t have a problem with asking me out but he did, which shows me he wasn’t interested in having anything romantic with me. He just wanted to be friends. It sucked but I had to face the truth.
- Shy guys are still capable of making moves. I’ve always thought that no matter how shy a guy is, if he really likes a woman, he’ll make the first move. I don’t know about that anymore. I think that sometimes a guy can really be that shy, but here’s the thing: he’ll still respond to a woman’s flirting and reciprocate her interest. No guy is too shy for that!
- I totally ignored the signs. Looking back at my interactions with this shy guy, I can see that it was too convenient for me to label him as introverted rather than face the facts that he wasn’t looking for anything romantic with me. I mean, I was always the one initiating conversations. Yeah, he seemed to enjoy them, but he was cool with just keeping them going on a superficial basis. He made no effort. Ugh, lesson learned.
