Home→Forums→Relationships→Does he like me?→Reply To: Does he like me?
Dear Katrine Nielsen:
I want to make this reply comprehensive and include some of what you shared in previous threads, as all that you shared is connected, and it can be helpful now to consider it all (quotes from previous threads are italicized while quotes from your current thread are in regular print):
“I got diagnosed with Complex PTSD last October”- I am not surprised, given what you shared before: “I’m a 30-year-old woman who have struggled with severe anxiety, depression and stress starting at the age of 7” (Aug 2020). At the time, because of Covid, you were back at your parents’ home in your native country, “unemployed, no friends“, following 1.5 amazing years working and socializing in London. You wrote back then, 2 years ago: “For the first time in my life, I started feeling like a normal person, and now I’m back to Square one“.
In September 2020, you shared that you (30) live with your mother, father and older sister (35), that your sister has been brain damaged since she was 12 following a years-long undiagnosed and mistreated Encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) and her behaviors were very troubling to your mother and to you. She was in the habit of taking any innocent comment made in the home as “a personal attack on her“, and at least at times, proceeding to do the following: “yelling and screaming.. pulling her hair and rolling around on the floor… verbally turn her anger out on my parents“.
You shared that your mother has “untreated trauma” that has been aggravated by your sister condition and behaviors, while your father “doesn’t think it’s that bad“. Seeing your mother, “the rock in our family… the one who is always there and keeps us going“, seeing her crying over your sister’s behavior, “was so terrifying” to you. “If she falls, we all fall“, you wrote.
You shared back in Sept 2020: “I’ve never had a boyfriend. Something always happened, they move away, got fired from work, dropped out of school, ending things before they even started… I deal with social anxiety and I have trust issues, not saying all men are players, but I never trust that someone could be interested in a relationship with me. And I’m bad at going out and meeting people“.
In April 2021, you shared that you made plans to meet up with a female friend, but on the day you were supposed to meet her, you “had a meltdown due to stress“, so you cancelled the meet up. The friend (who was diagnosed with BPD), accused you of cancelling the meet up “on purpose to deliberately hurt her“, and wouldn’t believe your sincere explanation that you cancelled because of your meltdown, and not for the purpose of hurting her. You also shared at the time in regard to your parents: “Both my parents have had trauma growing up, and they never taking care of those wounds“.
Your last post on that thread, on April 25, 2021, ended positively: “I’ve been criticized and bullied, not just by other people, but by myself (just) as much. I’ve been insensitive and mean toward myself, so trying being nice and compassionate with myself would definitely be a better approach. Like being my own parent, so to speak… Learning to be my number one supporter, and setting boundaries is necessary, and not something that means that I’m selfish“.
In your current thread (a year and 3 months after the post above), 2nd and 3rd post, you wrote regarding your male co-worker (“the cute guy”): “I needed to know that I wasn’t crazy for starting to think he liked me”.
Given your social anxiety and diagnosed C-PTSD, it was very courageous of you to initiate a karate lesson with him. He didn’t feel capable of teaching you karate, but he suggested other activities that two of you can do together: “swimming, or running or yoga” and the two of you , as well as his brother, met in his favorite park, did about 40 minutes of yoga and hung out afterwards for a few hours. On the scenic walk back from the park, he said, out of the blue, that he can see himself living in the capital of your country and asked you how far is your hometown from the capital. At that point, it seemed like he was interested in you in a romantic sense, and so, courageously again, you cautiously asked him if he was interested in you. “He replied no I’m not interested your amazing person but I don’t see you that way”.
Your reaction: “I was heartbroken and confused. It takes a lot before I believe a guy likes me and everybody who knew him better than me said the same thing. We are all confused. I have guy colleagues who feels protecting of me like a sister but none of them are awkward around me…There were a lot of other signs that I have left out because the post would be too long”.
You shared about the “cute guy”, in parenthesis: “(he has inattentive Adhd)”- this mental-emotional-physical disorder (like the others that I boldfaced above) deserves a more prominent placement than in parenthesis because like the others, it carries a lot of power over a person’s behaviors when untreated or mistreated (ex., of mistreatment: using alcohol and drugs).
While doing yoga, he “couldn’t even remember basic words like elbow, shoulder and knee”, he seemed “out of it” or “like he was on something”, perhaps alcohol. You shared about the cute guy’s brother that he “didn’t speak the whole time unless spoken to”. Back to the cute guy: “he has a lot of trauma. He grew up in an abusive home, moved a lot as a kid didn’t have friends saw two of his friends get stabbed in front of him. He has a lot of anxiety (he put butter in his coffee last Tuesday to help ease his anxiety), he has periods of time where he doesn’t eat all day even when he is working… he still has days were he shows up to work hungover with no sleep. I have to see him at work tomorrow. Hopefully he won’t remember our conversation because his memory is worse than any person I have met”.
My understanding: I placed words that indicate trauma (physical, mental, emotional) and mental illnesses and disorders in boldface, above Did you notice that everyone you mentioned suffered trauma: your mother, your father, your sister, yourself, the cute guy and his brother. And everyone seems to fit the criteria of one or more mental-emotional disorders?
This is not unusual. Two days ago, Sept 20, before reading your recent thread (and not having you and your story in mind), I posted in who‘s thread (you can find the post on the first page of lists of threads), the following: “We humans are all mentally ill and mentally healthy, different extents at different times. We all suffer the consequences of mental illness that carries on from one generation to the next and to the next. We are all direct victims of people who abuse us, and co-victims of the people who abused our abusers“.
I used to think, as an emotionally disturbed teenager and young adult, that one day, when I get older and better, I will join a normal world. I thought that I was the exception and most other people are mentally- emotionally healthy. I was wrong. I am healthier now than I’ve ever been and … there is no normal world for me to join. There is and has been too much trauma in the world for too long, and people’s health is greatly affected. Many spread the trauma further, be it in severe ways or subtle ways. It takes courage and learning to identify those ways and stop them, so to do no harm to others.
Back to the guy, this is my best guess as to his behaviors and motivations: he identified with your level of anxiety, seeing himself in you, feeling close to you because of the similarities. So, he expressed that closeness and his desire for more closeness, including practical closeness, most recently (living close to each other in the capital city of your country), but then.. he got scared.
It would have been nice if love triumphed over fear and (1) he would say to himself something like this: I really like Katrine. I am scared but she is scared too. If we help each other, together we can be less scared and we can make our lives better.. how exciting this would be! And (2) he would do all that he can to make it happen.
But he didn’t because he was scared and because selfishness and mental illness often go together. A person who is unwell is not inclined to think much or care much about how his/ her behavior affects others. There is selfishness and carelessness that often characterize mental (and physical) illness.
I wrote all the above before reading your most recent post, Katrine. In your post of less than half an hour ago, you shared that indeed there are similarities between the two of you (“I have done the same patterns that he is showing… we might have the same attachment issues… I did the same…”). I think that he noticed the similarities as well, like I suggested above.
You wrote in your recent post: “The thought of intimacy was scary, I will even start to physically shake when a guy gets close intimately or physically”- it’s the childhood experience of the people we love either hurting us, or allowing others to hurt us, that makes us distrust and be scared of love.
“In person and over text he was completely normal and kept trying to find things for us to do and then 5 min before his behaviour changes. I am writing to try and regulate my emotions so I can move on and not hurt like this for too long”- I think that his rejection of you was his way of regulating his emotions, lowering his anxiety, and maybe his anger as well. You didn’t mention him behaving angrily, but anger is always there, somewhere in the mix.
The title of your thread is: “Does he like me?”. My answer is Yes. I wonder what he will say if you asked him: Are you afraid to me, or are you afraid of loving me…?
anita