Dating : Looking for opinions on my weird friendship with a co-worker and why she won’t just come out and reject me, or something

Dating : Looking for opinions on my weird friendship with a co-worker and why she won’t just come out and reject me, or something

TLDR – Have a thing for a co-worker, let her know while we were hanging out together all night as friends a couple months ago. We see each other almost every day. She’s always talking to me, walking with me back from breaks, making sexual jokes, but won’t respond when I bring up doing anything. She refuses to outright « reject » me. I’ve caught her stalking my Facebook. She invited me to a (since cancelled) event with a very small group of people. She initiates most in-person communication. Wish I could figure her out.

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I’m a late 30s man and I’ve been friendly with this mid-20s female co-worker for the past year or so. We talk almost every day, sit together at break, but until a few months ago it was definitely just friendly co-worker status. We’d only seen each other outside of work once and it was group thing. That said, I’d developed… something for her. She definitely caught me looking at her a few times. Hard to explain but just the sort of eye contact that someone meets and catches, and other looks. There was at least one time I was 100% sure she caught me checking her out. It should have been obvious. She was walking by and I guess her hips caught my eye (sort of a primal response, I wasn’t even 100% sure it was her when I saw her figure). I turned around and looked and she made eye contact. A few minutes later, she came back that way, stopped and said my name and made some very mundane small talk and came very close into my space. In general, she is in my personal space a lot, initiates a lot of communication, and makes a lot of sexual jokes and double entendre type banter. I can be oblivious, and I know she is very friendly in general, but I thought for sure there were some « signs » of something here. At the very least I was certain she would recognize that I had interest in her.

A couple months ago we went somewhere alone as friends. It’s hard to get into the context and details without being too specific, I think. In short there was sort of a bet that I won and we did an activity that allowed me to collect on that bet. While we weren’t at a bar, there was a bar connected to the place. The night started around 7pm and we were done around 10:30 pm. She said « If you want to hang out some more, I will buy you a drink. » So, OK. We did that. We each had 1 drink and sat and talked for about 2 hours. One thing that came up was how our co-worker Matt (who’s been desperately trying to date her to the point everyone we work with knows and talks about how he acts like a teenager and is « buried deeper in the friendzone than anyone in history »), tried to win a date with her by beating her at a game. I talked about how I thought that was pretty pathetic and how I would never do something like that. Because of the circumstances behind our meeting I made sure to let her know that was not what I had been trying to do, and that we were just here as friends. She was all « Oh, of course not. You wouldn’t do anything creepy like that. » We had a pretty interesting talk and at various points she would even say things like « See, this is why I couldn’t date Matt. We wouldn’t be able to talk about this kind of stuff. » My internal dialogue was pretty much going off like « Well, shit, date me. We CAN (and are) talking like this. »

Around 12:30/1am she said she had to go home and got up from the table. I had been going back in forth in my head whether I was going to 1. « say something » 2. forget about any romantic pursuit at all 3. just put it off and see if we had future hangout opportunities and be pretty passive right now. I had pretty much made up my mind to just accept our friendship and let it go for now. BUT, in that moment I pretty much said « F it » and let her know in so many words that I was into her. I wasn’t very dramatic or over the top about it, just wanted to get across that was attracted and interested beyond work friends.

Well, she sat back down and we stayed until 5am. She claimed that she’s never noticed me looking at her or trying to flirt with her and that she « wasn’t rejecting me (which she repeated a few more times) » but she just hadn’t thought about us dating or in a relationship. I didn’t believe that, and later she even changed what she said to « Well, I just thought I would leave it up to you if you wanted to talk about it. » After we talked another 4 hours, we absolutely had to leave. She asked if I wanted a hug. So we hugged in the parking garage as we were leaving. I never want to overthink things like that, but fwiw it was a long, tight face-to-face (or probably her face to my chest) hug that it didn’t seem like either wanted to let go for awhile. We actually had to work the next day.

So, since then it seems like we’ve just continued the friendship but with a lot more contact. Again, mostly initiated by her. I’m just living my life trying not to think about her too much or become too emotionally invested in someone I’ve never been on a date with. There were points where we texted a lot and then that sort of dropped off. I stopped initiating there. We don’t sit together for breaks as much, but she will always come find me and talk to me if I don’t go out of my way to be around her. The other day, she told me she would have sat with me at lunch but she doesn’t like being around a new co-worker who was there. OK, whatever. Then she let me know she was taking the long way back (she was working on the south first floor and I work on the east 4th floor) to walk with me.

About a month ago I caught her stalking my Facebook at 2am on a Saturday night, liking posts from 3 years ago. She says she didn’t know she did that. Whenever I post anything I usually get a like (or « love ») from her before I even see the status finish posting. I made the mistake of commenting on hers the other night and got an instant like and response.

Last weekend we were supposed to go out in a small group (for an event she created and made the invitations for) but that got cancelled because we all had to work extra to meet new deadlines.

The latest thing is she wants to have deep discussions about things like movies and music. These are things that interest me, but I don’t really want to talk about so much unless we can do it outside of work. I don’t want to be like the guy from 500 Days of Summer or something and get attached to some chick just because we like the same albums.

The thing I don’t get is she won’t just come out and say we are only friends or she isn’t attracted to me or whatever. And I’ve asked her to, if that’s how she feels. She’s had no problem publicly rejecting Matt (telling him as well as everyone else that she isn’t attracted to him) or another guy we work with – saying in front of about 50 people « I already told you, I don’t like you like that. » So it doesn’t seem like something she has a problem doing. Am I just being naive and this is a « normal » thing when you’ve been « friend zoned » or whatever you want to call it?

Sorry for the long post. Maybe I turned her off by talking too much (which is funny since I have social anxiety and don’t talk much).