Hello. Many of you do not know me, as I've just signed up here. So let me introduce myself briefly. I'm a twenty year old med student in my fourth year. I live in a very conservative country. It is so conservative that both genders are separated in educational complexes, including my university. No, it's not Iran. As you might imagine, my batch is composed of guys only. You might have noticed from my personal information below the avatar that I'm biromantic heterosexual. I wouldn't mind enjoying romance with both genders, but when it comes to sex and arousal, I find myself being attracted to the opposite. My orientation is not my concern in this thread. For over a year now, I've been having a sort of intense " crush " to one of my class mates. He is the only one in the batch who appears to be feminine in the way he styles up. The only guy with girly neck lengthed hair. Of course, in other places around the world, this is just a normal standard. But please bare with me my local differences. Whenever I'd see him, my heart would start beating. I tried to simply be his friend, but most attempts failed. I tried to go to the gym with him, tried to train other sports with him, and asked him to do many other things with me only to be rejected. But now it becomes worse. I've been getting mixed messages from him. Once he'd ignore me totally, but then if I would directly approach him, he'd be all normal and such. On another occasion, he spoke to me on facebook telling me how much he loved or liked me. But then whenever I saw him at class, he'd go into his defensive mood, avoiding even eye contact. You can imagine the amount of confusion going on with me. I decided to live by self made rules of honor and self worthiness; that a person who ignores me to that extent does not deserve my attention. I did everything, martial arts, intense music with intense workouts, but nothing solved it. I'd think about it when I wake up, when I go to bed, and even in my dreams, I'd see him. I don't know whether this is a normal crush or not. Fact is, I've reached the conclusion that if he were even slightly interested in me, he'd initiate a sort of contact. But nope, nothing. Many of my messages just stay ignored on facebook whatsoever. You might advise me to confront him on the matter, but as I explained to you, he might spread the word to his mates and my reputation would go straight rocket down with bad consequences you could probably not imagine due to the society I live in. I fail to cope. I tried looking up psychiatrists\ologists on the internet with chat sessions, but all of them demand payments. I apologize for the lengthy message, but this forum has been recommended to me and I thought I'd give it a go. Thank you.
I don’t live in a conservative country, so I don’t know if I can help. However, the way you describe him reminds me of me sometimes, and I’m also boyish or maybe girly, depending on what you mean by it. If he’s at all like me, then maybe it will be of some help to describe what goes on in my mind. I tend to be shy when I’m attracted to someone. I often feel nervous about making eye contact or saying anything. With the opposite sex, I’ve become more comfortable through practice. With the same sex, I still get extremely nervous, so usually just ignore them. If they approach me directly, it sometimes gives me the courage to overcome my shyness, but I’ll still be nervous the next time, until I get to know them (which I usually don’t :icon_sad. It’s worst when there are a lot of people around we sort of know, e.g. in class. For me, it’s much easier to talk in private, or with FB or SMS, but it can still be hard the next time we’re in a group. With a new friend of mine, even after we had talked for a long evening over dinner with a few others (and some beer and wine to help) and started chatting on FB, I had trouble making eye contact or chatting when we were in class. Actually, it got even harder, because the more we talked and chatted on FB, the more I wanted to be friends with him, and the more afraid I was that he’d notice my attraction to him and be scared away. It was probably very confusing for him, especially since I assume he’s completely straight. I probably seemed very strange. I don’t know why he didn’t just give up, but I’m so glad he didn’t. I don’t know if your classmate is like me, but I didn’t mean to send mixed signals. I couldn’t overcome my shyness, and then felt awful afterwards, for seeming to be unfriendly to someone who was trying to be friends with me. If I lived in a conservative country, I think I’d be too scared to respond, even over FB or SMS. There may be some other reason he’s not responding to you, but if he still seems to be sending mixed signals, it could be that. If you’ve got any common friends, maybe you could try arranging something in a group. If you’re with people you’re comfortable talking with, and he’s with people he’s comfortable talking with, it might make it easier for you to talk to each other. (*hug*)
Precisely. I had the same mind thought about what might have been going on in his mind. But then I always bashed that idea by telling myself : If he really felt that way, he would at least do something to contact me, not treat me as a total stranger. It just shows me that he isn't genuinely interested in me, and perhaps he noticed that I like him, which I don't know how he should have, and is trying to avoid me due to that. I'd like to go with your view on the matter because it gives hope and is very nice, but I cannot ignore that fact that he is giving absolutely nothing from his side to maintain or even pertain contact.
It’s hard to say without knowing the details. If he was friendly in the past, it’s possible he likes you, but doesn’t want to accept it because of the society or his view of himself. If he doesn’t want to maintain contact, I don’t know what you can do except respect his wishes, and try to create a distance. Maybe you can do it in a way that lets him know you’ve nothing against him, but have concluded that he for some reason doesn’t want to be friends, so you’re respecting that. Do you see him often? With crushes, time and/or distance usually help to get over them.
Well said. That was what I was trying to do; letting go. But I became so desperate and depressed that I started dreaming about it and eventually signed up here to get some feedback on the matter. It's more than a year now, I don't know if crushes last so long.
Everyone’s different, but I’ve had crushes last for a long time. My worst one-sided crush was with a girl I had become friends with (the crush came after we were already friends), and I think it went on for over a year. We were seeing each other every day, and when we weren’t, I was thinking about her. When I finally told her, she said she needed space and we shouldn’t spend so much time together. I don’t know if she was also thinking of what was best for me (knowing her, she might have been), but stopping spending time together and more or less ignoring her for a while, plus knowing that she didn’t want to be more than a friend with me, was what got me over it (even though, unfortunately, our friendship was never the same afterwards). Since you live in a conservative country, I wouldn’t say anything to your classmate, but I have to say that actually saying something to her and getting rejected was a big help for me. If you can focus on his non-response as a rejection, then maybe it will help. If you can, I’d also just try to avoid being around him and maybe even unfriend (but not block) him in FB.
Exactly. That's what I was trying to convince myself of all the time, but then I noticed that my mind won't play this game, and keeps bringing up the memory constantly. I can't seem to cope. Debilitating.
