Dear heather:

You made a lot of assumptions about what he thinks and what he feels without checking with him to see if your assumptions are true. Here are your assumptions and possible other explanations:

“his eyes lit up”- you assumed it meant he liked you in a special way. Maybe he just opened his eyes wide in surprise.

” He couldn’t take his eyes off me in school… He stared and stared at me…he still stared and stared”- you assumed he was looking at you with longings. Maybe he was just looking in your direction, not at you specifically.

“I knew he was hurt”- you assumed he was hurt. Maybe he didn’t notice that you distanced yourself from him.

“He replied instantly and gave some bizzare excuse of ‘yeah sorry I have been too busy to talk to you.’ Which I guess was him trying to protect his ego”- maybe it was not an excuse, maybe he was too busy or just uninterested.

“If I was near he’d try draw attention to himself and put on weird accents to see if I would respond.”- you assumed he was trying to draw your individual attention. Maybe he was trying to draw anyone’s attention, or he was just having fun.

“he seemed to be sulking ALL day.” – you assumed he was thinking of you. Maybe he was experiencing some physical discomfort, an upset stomach, for example, and that is the distress seen on his face.

“His jaw dropped when I walked by”- again, an assumption that he had an emotional reaction to you walking by, while he may not have noticed you walking by.

I will stop here with the examples, there are so many. Basically, you make a lot of assumptions based on what you FEEL, how you interpret his facial and body expressions, without checking or verifying your assumptions. Then you base your behavior on these assumptions. The conversation you had with him eventually indicate to me that most of your assumptions, maybe all reported here, were incorrect.

Challenge your assumptions, consider different possibilities, and verify with the person via a clear, honest, straightforward conversation, sooner, better than later.

anita