Hanging Out

As part of my New Year's resolution, I've gotten to know two really awesome people. Both of them are also female gamers, and it sounds a bit silly, but talking to them, a lot of the time I find myself saying, "Me, too!" I really enjoy hanging out with them. One of them, Ally, was telling us about her own experiences with being, "one of the guys".

She really liked this guy (GG), they spent a lot of time together recording podcasts, watching TV shows, and playing board games. She thought that maybe he was spending more time with her than with anyone else, but it was hard to tell as they often spent time with other people, and he is really friendly in general. Eventually, she figured that he wasn't interested in her, but she still thought he was a great guy, so she tried to set him up with one of her friends. It didn't go so well, as her friend wasn't really interested in him, not being nearly as geeky as she is. So she tried again with another friend (who also happens to work at the same company as her) who happens to be a hot, Eastern European programmer (who also happens to be a huge geek).

The second matchmaking attempt was more successful. Her programmer friend got along really well with him, and the three of them started organising events together. Ally still had feelings for this guy, and even though she knew he was interested in someone else, she didn't want to pass up the opportunity to spend time with him, even if it was just as a friend. How often do you find a friend who is interested in all the same things you are, and takes good care of you?

A few weeks later, Ally was hanging out with the co-workers of Hot Eastern European Programmer when one of them mentions that HEEP went out on a date with someone she met online over the weekend. Ally was a bit confused, and she asked wasn't HEEP going out with GG? None of them even knew who GG was, HEEP had never mentioned him. So Ally went back to GG and asked if he and HEEP broke up. Now GG was really confused. As far as he was concerned, he and Ally had been dating for the past few months. He said that he never asked his female friends to just "hang out", and so he thought all the times that they hung out together were dates. However, from Ally's point of view, hanging out was just that... hanging out.

The two of them had a conversation where they made it official to each other that they were boyfriend and girlfriend.

The entire situation stemmed from a misunderstanding. He pretty much never spent time around other females, and so he thought he was being clear of his intentions when he asked her to join him on various activities. Though, seeing as they were both pretty geeky, the activities he came up with were not the traditional date activities (dinner, movies, coffee). I guess that led to her not considering those outings "dates", and made her unclear of their status. However, since she's fairly shy and modest, she didn't want to ask him whether he was interested in her in a romantic way, because she didn't even think he would be interested in a girl like her.

When your friendship group's gender ratio happens to be heavily skewed towards the same gender that you are attracted to, I think this can be a common occurrence. I would have no problem seeing a movie, or going out to dinner just 1-on-1 with a male friend, and wouldn't consider it a date at all unless they specifically said so. Probably because I've done it so many times and it hasn't been a date. Dante and I used to meet up for coffee regularly, but neither of us had romantic intentions.

Ally's story reminded me of RT. In my first year of uni, we spent a lot of time together. Mostly painting models or playing Warhammer 40k. We'd meet up after class to play board games. He asked me to see Shaolin Soccer with him, but I had an optometrist appointment a couple of hours before it, so I said I'd meet him at the cinema, instead of his house, which was fairly close to mine. However, my appointment was delayed by 3 hours, and he didn't have a mobile phone, so I couldn't even tell him that I was going to be late (I tried calling his home, but there was no answer). I showed up to the cinema 2 hours late, and he was still there waiting, so we went to see the movie. He even came to my house on New Year's Eve as I mentioned I would be home alone as I was working that night and my parents had gone out to the family gathering, and we spent the night playing Tiberian Sun.

At the time, I was 100% sure that there was nothing between us. There were girls on his running team that he spoke about a lot, and also this girl that we both went to primary school with who was my best friend at the time, and who he was completely in love with during our school years. After hearing Ally's story, I think I'm only 95% sure now. Thinking back, it seems like he went further than your typical friend would go, but I don't know if that's because he had romantic intentions, or because he's just a really nice guy.

Is one of the reasons the feeling of being friendzoned comes about? You think that you are making all the right moves, but you never do anything overt due to fear of scaring off the other person. You feel like you are on the boarder of being in a relationship, but never actually confirm it. Or is that just really deluded?