"Straight" Friend Treats Me Weirdly

Hi everyone. I wanted to ask your advice regarding a problem I have with a friend of mine. I started a grad program a year ago and with it, a graduate assistantship. One of my classmates and co-workers is a straight-identified married man a year or two older than me. We became fast friends, but things have been weird from the beginning.

The first time I encountered him one-on-one, I was looking up from my work and he was just standing by the stairwell door staring at me. I waved, he made a face and rushed through the door. A day or two later, I was in my office. He walked over, but the minute I looked up, he did a 180 and left. I thought, "Is he shy and nervous around me?"

Then he started visiting my office regularly. He always had a question to ask. Sometimes it was the same one as before. A co-worker finally told him he didn't need excuses if he wanted to come hang out with me.

Then I noticed he would stare at me during class. I thought I was losing it. But I mentioned this to a friend, and the moment I did, she started noticing it. She said it happened throughout class (and at events for our program). One time I think he was even checking out my rear as I bent over to put my backpack down. Every time I caught him, he'd jerk his head away. He'd also mimic my body language. I'd even intentionally switch my leg positions or rest my head on my hand to see if he'd follow, and he almost always did.

Things got weird at the end of the fall semester. There was the annual Christmas party, and he was flirting with me more than usual. Someone asked where his wife was (he hadn't brought her to a single event so far) and he said he "didn't know it was allowed." At the end of the night, as everyone started to leave, he said, "We should go out for drinks." A friend said, "Sure--but where?" He said, "I know a gay bar, but I feel like we'd need a gay guy to go there." I'm the only (openly) gay guy there, so he was clearly trying to get me to go without having the courage to ask me. Feeling tokenized, I left. However, he apparently got rip-roaringly drunk that night, never messaged his wife once, told a friend he'd gotten married young and still had a lot of questions about himself. Then when he got home, he apparently got yelled at by his wife who was worried about "another woman" and demanded to be brought around more. Since then, she's made several appearances at events.

However, his strange behavior continued. Friends said he talks about me all the time when I'm not around and that he'll relate every topic of conversation back to me. A buddy said during class whenever I talk, he'll lean every which way so he can see me. He started texting me regularly (even took a pic of gay scene in a book and sent it to me). We bunked together on a trip and I woke up to him staring at me from his bed one morning. On the same trip, he worried about me getting cold and had me wear his jacket. When we go out with our friends, he'll often cut people off to sit next to me. As I'm sitting there, I'll feel him draping his arm across the back of my chair. Once, while he did that, he even turned towards me and put his feet up underneath my chair, like he was locking me in some kind of pseudo-embrace.

On a couple of occasions when I've been talking to him, I'll notice him put the leg closest to me up on the desk in front of him and drape his arm over his lap. I think he's trying to cover his "excitement."

Is this normal/platonic behavior for a straight guy? The problem is with all this attention and affection dumped on me, I've started to have my own feelings. Which means that the more he does this, the more I hurt, because he's with someone and sometimes I have to see them together. I'm not OK with him treating me like this because it's not leading anywhere. If it were, I would be. I've tried avoiding him but a) our program is way too small b) he seeks me out. Case in point: our program had an event at a bar. The minute I entered, he saw me and his face lit up. I went and hid in the corner. The second the announcements had been made, he sought me out. In fact, a straight buddy said he completely abandoned their convo right in the middle of it to come over to me. He pulled up his chair so close that I couldn't move without touching him. He talked to me in a weird voice that my straight buddy said he doesn't talk to other people in. ***His wife was at the bar when this happened.*** They are completely a-physical together. She'll touch him on occasion and he just sits there totally rigid. Often, they don't even sit near each other.

What do I do? What do I say? How do I get past someone who keeps forcing himself into my life?

 

Thanks, guys. I agree with what you're saying.

It seemed like this was headed in the direction of him coming out or making a move or something--up until the wife expressed her concerns and suspicions and told him to start bringing her along because she doesn't have any friends.

Now it's just this constant back-and-forth whiplash. Staring, texting, arm over my shoulder one minute--referring to his "straightness," talking about how his marriage is "fine," remarking about how he wants children the next (is it weird that this guy constantly refers to himself as straight? I don't feel like any other straight men I know do that because it's just understood with them).

I imagine there's a lot of denial on his end paired with shame/guilt about his wife. They moved across the country for him to be here and she's supporting his broke behind while he tries to complete our grad program.

I don't think I expect him to come out, but I refuse to put up with his behavior anymore. You don't get to touch me or drain me of all my emotional energy if you're not my boyfriend, you know? I think my measure of self-care is distancing myself from this guy--it's just about finding a way of distancing myself that he respects.

My best visual metaphor for our situation:
[I run from him. He chases after me. He grabs me. "I'm straight!" He stares longingly into my eyes. "You can't have me." He gives me a passionate smooch. "My wife is nice and my marriage is fine." He locks me in a tender embrace. I stand there immobile, wearing an uncomfortable expression, utterly confused.]

 

It's hard to tell if I consider us friends or not. I feel as though he's had these feelings pretty much from the beginning of our relationship. In fact, what engendered the friendship was all the weird visits he'd pay to me at work and all the conversations we had as a result.

He'd told me earlier this summer that he wanted to go out for drinks to discuss some political issues, but he seems to have either forgotten or chickened out. On the trip we went to I felt as though he acted boyfriend-y towards me. He insisted on buying me drink at the airport bar (had his arm over the back of my chair while we sat there), offered me has jacket so I wouldn't get cold, and stared at me weirdly while I was asleep (at least I assume he was, because when I woke up he was just lying there grinning at me). At night when we were sitting in our beds (he was on his laptop and I was watching TV) I saw him keep glancing at me out of the corner of my eye. And on the last night we were there, although we both wore PJ bottoms most nights, he stripped down to just his underwear. We were at the convention center with some other friends and he said he was going off to explore, yet he just kept walking back and forth around the convention center as we prepared to leave. When we finally did leave, my friends said they thought he stayed and was wandering around in hope that I would go with him.

So there's what he says and what he does, which seem to be in direct conflict with each other. Although what he says isn't too convincing. The most affectionate thing I've ever heard him say about his wife is "I like (name). She's nice."

Anyway, I'm all up for having a one-on-one with him, but he needs to ask me. I'm worried that if I show any interest in him, even platonically, he's going to spin this as it being a one-way street and me being into him just because I'm the out gay dude and there's already this trope to borrow on of gay men having unrequited crushes on straight guys. But he's the one the weird behavior has been coming from all along and everyone has witnessed it.

Y'all are so helpful. I'm glad I came here and you're helping me out. Thanks!

 

I've already hurt over this. I just don't know how to shake him off. We work and go to school together, and there aren't many other people in our program to help me hide. I have to constantly be around him and it's hard to figure out what to do to get him to stop making these advances. Best I can discern is to call him out on the weirdness of what he does in the middle of him doing it (so I have tangible evidence) and hopefully when other people are around. He won't want other people thinking that he's gay, so maybe he'll start restricting any behavior that seems to point to it.

 

I think I'm going to have to. It's so hard. Sometimes I feel like he's digging in his heels with his relationship. He'll bring up his wife, talk about stuff they did, etc. On the other hand, he's never said he loves her or he misses her when she's away, he drinks a lot and eats a lot of junk food, he makes jokes about divorcing her, etc. Sometimes I think when he mentions her he's trying to convince himself to be faithful or that he likes her more than any of us.

Just hard for me to understand how someone who acts like he supports gay people and isn't particularly religious couldn't come to terms with his own sexuality.

 

I think what pains me most about this situation is how unfair it is. I've never made any sort of move on this guy. All these overtures have been made by him. And yet I'm suffering. I feel like I'm being used to get whatever homoromantic/homoerotic urges he has out. And then he goes back to his privileged "straight" life and leaves me by myself to anguish over all this. I know I'm romanticizing his life, because he's probably confused and hurting deep down. Still, it makes me feel bitter the he has a doting wife who's supporting him financially while he's in this program, takes him to all these fun places, etc. while I'm stuck in my humble little apartment not going anywhere and just thinking about how messed up my life is. I didn't ask to be in this situation and I am anyway.

 

Agreed.

It's just hard because he has someone and I don't, regardless of the nature of the relationship. I get so lonely sometimes it seems like anything would be better than this.

He's mentioned on several occasions how he wants to have kids and I'm just like, "No. Don't." I feel like he has this romanticized notion of the heterosexual nuclear family. Or maybe he's convincing himself that things will all fall into place when children arrive. It's just going to be another nail in the coffin, though.

I think this guy might be so far in denial he's not even worried about breaking it off with his wife because he's convinced himself he won't.

 

Oh, I hear you. What helps is that the more he continues this behavior but tries to act "straight," the ickier I find him. School has started back up and within the first five minutes or so of seeing me, his hand was on my shoulder even though he doesn't get physical with anyone else or let anyone else touch him. Then he sat super close to me at a school event and crossed his legs toward me and when a professor took a photo of the event, a friend apparently found it funny enough to send to me via text because it captured him being--well, him. He's also started texting me multiple times a day since school has started back up.

What doesn't help is that the person who had been my closest friend in the program always says, "But he thinks you're his best friend!" whenever I express any disgust toward him. And I saw that she'd befriended his wife and found out that he and she had been working on school projects together all summer without letting me know. It feels like a betrayal. It feels like she's saying to grin and bear his predatory behavior. So now I don't just have to distance myself from him, but from her as well.

I guess my attitude is that I don't expect him to come out, but he doesn't get to treat me like a boyfriend. I'm not going to text with him all the time, I'm not going to let him touch me, I'm not going to let him drain me of all my vitality with his constant neediness. It's already taken such an emotional toll that I can barely get my stuff together, I'm depressed all the time, and I'm anxious all the time.

He refers to his family as "crazy." They're not religious. His dad may be somewhat macho and I know he was pretty neglectful. He makes fun of both of his parents all the time, but one time he was talking about how his dad is unhealthy and almost started crying when he said he wanted his dad to be around. He also came close to tears once when he was telling a story about how his dad didn't notice him or things he was going through when he was in high school. These are the only times I've seen him emotional.

What I don't understand is how allegedly LGBT friendly he is. He has LGBT friends, he goes to drag shows, he reads articles about gender and sexuality. However, I think this is all fairly new in his life--within the last few years or so. I know he briefly worked for a religious nonprofit organization but said the whole Christian thing didn't linger. His whole story seems to be one of trying to find himself though. He dropped out of community college, did the music thing, considered the art school thing, did the photography thing, tried the Christian thing, got married, went back to college and is now trying to do the academic thing in our grad program.

Nothing about this makes sense and because he has given me nothing verbally (not that I expect him to), I feel like I'm going crazy and I constantly second guess myself and wonder if he really is straight. But something's not adding up.

 

P.S. I should clarify that by "school projects," I mean that my former best bud in the program and he are doing creative writing together with a sort of "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" thing. It's not like they're working on an assignment for class or anything.