Dear Katrine Nielsen:

A bit of a study of your thread so far, it being on its 10 page.  Your quest was stated in the title of your thread and in the very first sentence of your original post, a month and a half ago:  “Does he like me? Trying to figure out if a guy at work likes me“.  You stated that you met him 5 months earlier (April 2022) at work.  You described how long he stared in your direction, what he said to you, when and where, the expressions of his face, the language of his body, as well as what friends said to him, what he said back to them, what friends told you about him, etc., starting with “My friend then  told him I think she is interested in you and he said no I don’t think she is”, in your original post.

First thing in regard to your quest is to eliminate everything that you heard about him from 3rd parties outside your physical presence  (what he allegedly said to work colleagues, friends or acquaintances, what they said to him, what they think he feels for you, etc.), and take into account only your direct interactions with him and what you personally witnessed: what you saw with your own eyes and heard with your own ears.

The reasons you should not take into account what other people say about him and about his feelings for you are two: (1) people are not likely to fully pay attention and understand correctly what is going on, particularly when drunk, (2)  they may be motivated to make you feel better (when they talk to you), to make him feel better (when they talk to him), and to make you think well of them, so they are not likely to present you with objective, balanced information, but with partial and manipulated information

Your 2nd sentence in your 2nd post is:  “I needed to know that I wasn’t crazy for starting to think he liked me“, and in your 6th post (still on page 1 of your thread): “it nearly made me cry knowing I can trust my own perception of things and I’m not crazy“- of course, most empathetic readers are likely to reply: no, you are not crazy, Katrine! You are not crazy to think that someone likes you!, and to hope that he really likes you, so that you will believe that it is indeed possible for a guy to like you.

In your 2nd post, you wrote for the first time the words that he communicated directly to you in regard to his feelings for you: “no I’m not interested, your amazing person but I don’t see you that way“. These words, for some women, would sadly satisfy the need to find out about a man’s romantic feelings. But you didn’t believe his words: “I don’t believe that he doesn’t like me and that he doesn’t see me that way” (Sept 22),  and the quest (Does he like me?) continues for 9 additional pages.

You explained away his words: “he was interested but it got too close for comfort…  I got too close and he got scared and shut down… I am 99% sure now that his behaviour towards me is a fear of intimacy“- let’s say (and it is very possible) that he liked you romantically, but then he got scared and shut down: being emotionally shut down means that his romantic feelings were shut down as well, and the end result, like he told you: “I don’t see you that way“. Isn’t it?

On page 4 (Oct 12) you mentioned crazy again: “I need to focus on the fact that I’m not crazy for thinking that he liked me“, and again, on Oct 14: ” that feeling of going crazy because I thought he liked me“.

But wait, isn’t it crazy to base one’s sanity on whether this one work colleague likes you that way?  (and wasn’t it crazy of me to encourage you to think that he does like you that way, so to convince you that you are not crazy?)

Page 7, Oct 19: “Knowing I am not going crazy and that I can trust my perception is just a huge relief!“. Following you mentioning the word crazy five times, I went back to your September 2020 thread looking for what may be behind your mention of the word. The following are your words in that thread and the current: “My sister became ill when she was 11 (I was 7)… She was screaming from pain sometimes up to 20 hours a day… It took us 7 years of fighting before she got the treatment she needed….For the first 7 years..  she was told to just get over it and that she was probably faking it for attention…  doctors.. kept saying it’s was just a teenage girl trying to get attention“-

– for your sister, for you and for your parents, to hear her screaming for hours at a time, sometimes up to 20 hours within a period of 24 hours, over a period of months and years… and to be told by anyone, let alone by medical doctors (and not in an undeveloped country, but in “a country that’s quite wealthy… known for having a great healthcare system“) that the screams are as trivial as those of a teenager seeking attention is… unbelievably crazy and crazy- making. I mean, I understand that it is not uncommon for patients to be misdiagnosed in wealthy countries, but to be told by medical doctors that a person screaming for up to twenty hours straight is faking it… is so crudely unethical and inhumane that it would have been enough to make me feel crazy and very traumatized.

I am so sorry for all four members of your family for having gone through such a traumatizing, crazy making experience. How is your sister doing these days and how are your parents? Is there any chance at all to seek financial compensation for what your parents were told repeatedly, I assume (that their acutely suffering daughter was faking it), so that you and your other family members can receive all the quality psychotherapy that you need?

anita