A
male
age
30-35,
*er_zyniker
writes:Okay. I’m going to start off by saying that there is probably a shorter way to explain my situation, but I can be sort of long winded. So I’m a gay man and I just finished college back in December. Five years ago, during my freshmen year of college I was going to a school that was close my home and there was this guy I had in a couple of my classes named S. We’d sit next to each other all the time and make small talk. Sometimes we’d chat after class while we were walking to wherever we had to go next. At some point during the semester I got S’s number for the purposes of studying, but he didn’t get mine for whatever reason (and no I did not have an ulterior motive). However, at a certain point during the semester I realized that I was rather attracted to him. I mean he was a really sweet guy, and probably still is. So I texted him at some point during the semester asking if I could speak to him privately the next night before class and I planned to ask him out then. Now I sent this text at about 11:30 at night after spending a couple hours just trying to summon up the courage to do that. Well the text autocorrect to me asking him if I could speak to him privately the same night I sent the text. S replied by saying that he was taken and that he was rather disturbed by the question that was asked. I saw that my text had autocorrected and told him that I meant the next night before class. At that point, S agreed to meet. So the next night I went to class and I decided that I wasn’t going to ask him because he had said that he was taken. I figured with my luck that he was probably straight anyway and asking him out would result in an awkward situation that was just unnecessary. I also didn’t ask him because I knew that I was going to transfer to a different college after my sophomore year to a school that was hundreds of miles away because I wanted to study chemical engineering, which was a program that wasn’t offered at the school I was attending at that time. Our home towns were also about 3 hours apart, so hypothetically, if we had started dating we wouldn’t have been able to see each other over the summer anyway. Plus, I wasn’t in the best place emotionally at that point for a variety of reasons. For instance, about a year and a half before meeting S, I had fallen for one of my closest friends, C. When I came out to C and told him that I loved him, he basically cut me out of his life, but instead of just telling me that he didn’t want to be friends anymore he elected to kill me with kindness so that whole issue was dragged out over the course of several months and wound up being messy and I was a wreck for a while. After that, it seemed like for the next couple years I couldn’t make any new guy friends (all of whom turned out to be straight) without becoming attached to them, which was frustrating because I just wanted to have some friends where the friendship wasn’t complicated by me being constantly upset about the fact that I couldn’t reveal to them how I felt. My parents are also rather religious and don’t approve of gays. I was afraid that if they found out I was gay that they would disown me. FYI, my parents still don’t know.Anyway, later that year, just before summer break, I was talking with S and found out that when I asked if I could see him in private, he thought I was his lab partner, who was a girl. The next fall, S and I had one class together, but it was a huge lecture with about 200 hundred students and we really didn’t sit next to each other. We just ran in different circles and we didn’t really talk to each other. I also joined okcupid. I ended up going on a couple dates with one guy, but that really didn’t go anywhere.After that school year, I transferred to my new school. About six or seven months after transferring, I was looking around on okcupid and out of curiosity, I decided to see who my best matches on the entire site were, regardless of where they lived. Well of all the gay men on okcupid, you know who my second best match was… If you said S, you’re right. So I looked at his profile and I found out we had a lot more in common that I thought, which I’ll get back to later. I was kicking myself a little because I realized that he had probably liked me. Sure, if he was already in the room when I showed up to the classes we had together, I tried to sit next to him and talk to him if I could, but he’d do the same thing. I also realized that he always acted like he was a little nervous around me. Now, I realize that this might be wishful thinking on my part, but there were just a lot of other little things that he’d do that make me think that he liked me. At that point, I didn’t really fret about it because there wasn’t much I could do about it then. I was tempted to message him, but I didn’t because we hadn’t talked in about a year and a half and I figured, what’s the point. We lived over 500 miles away from each other. I was going to school in one state. He was going to school in another state. Now this was about three years ago that I found out S actually is gay. At some point last October, when I was in my last semester of school and I figured that there was a good chance that I would move back home after college, so I decided to see if S was still on a dating site He had a different username than before, but he still had a profile and had moved to a city that was about 30 miles from my home town for grad school. Like I said before, we have a lot in common. He wants to be a ........ professor, I want to go back to school in a couple years and become a ......... professor. We’re both active. We have a similar sense of humor, we’re both witty. Both of us are pretty intelligent and strong willed. Both of us like to debate. It sounds like we had similar childhoods. We both want kids. We have similar political and personal views. We’re both looking for someone who’s independent. We have similar interests. We both like dogs. You get the point. So since I wasn’t sure where I was going to end up after graduation, I decided I wasn’t going to message him unless I knew for sure that I was going to move back home. However, I was visiting his profile basically every few days. Then one day, his profile wasn’t showing up when I did a search of the profiles in the area I grew up or when I specifically did a search for his username. I was curious, so I looked at the history of profiles that I had visited. I was able to get to his profile via my viewing history. Since he wasn’t showing up in any of my searches, I knew that he had blocked me meaning I couldn’t send him a message now. So I just forgot about him for the time being because I guess creeped him out or something by looking at his profile so much. Fast forward to about a month ago, I’ve moved back home and I started talking to this one guy on okcupid named N. He seems like a really nice guy, but I haven’t been able to meet him yet because his company sent him to work in another country for several months and he won’t get back until the end of next month. We send each other messages a couple times a week. At first we talked about our interested and such. Now most of the conversation involves asking how the other person’s week is going, but nothing too exciting. Then randomly, a couple days ago, after several months of not even thinking about S, I had this dream that he was in. It was nothing too exiting. All I really remember from it was that I was resting my head on S’s chest while lying on the couch in my basement and watching tv. After that, my interest in N, which was sort of already in decline, dropped dramatically and I got to thinking that maybe now that I’m back in the same area as S, I should reach out to him. Send him a message on facebook to see if maybe he wants to meet and catch up because in a sense I sort of view him as “the one that got away” since we have so much in common. I really liked him a lot, I never really gave it a shot, and I really regret having not asked him out five years ago. Now I realize that the last three sentences probably just made me sound like a total lunatic. I guess my question is, where should I go for here? Should I reach out to S? If I do, what should I even say? I can’t just message him out of the blue on facebook when we’re not facebook friends after having not seen him in five years and immediately ask him see if he wants to catch up. Should I just wait, meet N and see where things go there? If I do wait until meeting N and things don’t really work out with him, which I hope it doesn’t go that route if I meet N, should I just delete my old profile which needs to be updated anyway, start a new one and message S? Does it sound like I’m trying to sabotage myself or that I seem to only be interested in someone as long as their unavailable?
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reader, anonymous, writes (21 August 2016): We gay men can be so melodramatic. We are romanticists to a fault, and age doesn't seem to change many of us. However; time, experience, and common-sense will.
Everyone at some point these days reaches out to old classmates, friends; and unfortunately, their exes. I see no problem reaching out to your schoolmate; but don't create notions and fantasies that he has kept you in-mind all these years. Keep a steady grip on reality, my friend.
If you do recall in your own post, he blocked you from viewing his profile on OKC. Stories of unrequited love,long-carried flames, or crushes are romantic; but you can't side-step reality. In five years he could have changed a lot, or simply lost the interest he once had. You never dated or had a connection that would warrant carrying feelings. You kept the flame burning by basically stalking the guy. Sorry, but if you've done it for as long as five years; I don't really know a better word. I'm gay too, so please take it in a playful way.
Go ahead and get in-touch. Set no expectations and don't allow your imagination to runaway with you. You would be getting reacquainted. You've offered no evidence he is attracted to you, only friendly. Spirit knows spirit, as they say. He probably guessed you were gay too!
As for N, stop stringing him along. You're not the least interested. How would you like to be someone's backup plan, in-case someone else they really wanted doesn't work-out?
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