I believe I may have made an awkward situation even more awkward and now we have a lot of tension that its confusing and I don't know what to do. BACK STORY! I met this guy at my new job (big NO!) and we started talking and hanging out. He's gay, he just turned 21 and we have a lot in common. Well we hung out a couple times and his birthday came up and I bought him a birthday card as a friendly gesture. It was a generic card with Happy Birthday and hope your day goes well. It exploded with him telling some actors that he received a birthday card from me, they started teasing him about us dating and then shortly after over facebook chat he gave me the friend speech which turned into me becoming offended and giving him the cold shoulder for awhile, but still being professional. In a round about way through texting and emailing we talked, became friends again but now there's tension that I can't explain. He's always hanging out in my theatre when he is done with his theatre. He will only talk to me when no one else is around. He will text me every now and then, but when I start to go into a big conversation he stops talking. Whenever I'm talking to another manager he joins the conversation. He's really starting to annoy me and I really don't know what to do. It's turning into a professional and personal struggle and yes those of you who I've talked with before know that I have big problems with this and as to why I keep drowning myself in these relationships I'll never know. The other situation is he is a very poor leader, so as another supervisor I am always having to walk into situations he hasn't taken care of and since we have this personal struggle it bleeds into our professionalism which is starting to suck! I'm frustrated and annoyed. I'm regretting the whole birthday card idea, now we don't hang out at all anymore or barely talk and he seems so apathetic towards the tension we both have towards one another. I'm venting and I hope it makes sense to y'all!
I don't know. I don't really like him anymore, he's not the person I thought, especially after all this drama. I guess I just want him to leave me alone, but I'm disappointed that I've gotten in this situation in the first place after only being in this new city for four weeks. I want the tension and drama just to be done.
I think he's heavily influenced by other people's judgments being he takes a birthday card to mean something greater than it actually is because he's 21 and he still gets teased...so he probably analyzes things much deeper than they need to be. I've dealt with people like this at work before and the best way to make things flow is to let them have their way. Only talk to them when they want to talk because you know damn well they wont be up for an open conversation where you feel most comfortable (that place being where ever you dame well please). Not letting him talk to you will involve more drama because again he'll analyze the issue as being more than it is and might involve you looking like the bad guy in all this. He's the one with the problem and the one with some growing up to do. I mean if someone ever insinuated I was crushing on them because of a birthday card I'd slap 'em with it and give 'em a paper cut. That's dumb. Specially in the South, That's common courtesy. Don't let this bother you.
