If someone who you were interested in said this to you, what would you think?

[torie]

@InterestedObserver

At the risk of citing a bullshit book full of bullshit; he’s just not into you.

Move on.

In my experience, any guy who IS into you will move heaven and earth to be with you, impress you, make clear he want you for his own, and NOT blow you off EVER. “Cool it off”? Are you kidding me? At this juncture, IF he was in any way into you/“liked you”, he’d be pushing YOU towards taking it to another level, not making excuses to push you away.

Jesus, my late DH kept a 3rd date with me even though he’d run a spike through his foot a few hours earlier and was in terrible pain. This guy can’t be bothered to acknowledge you? Dump the MF already…he’s already dumped YOU, honey. Face it, you were a fuck and a few making out sessions to him, nothing more. He’s a dick and you are an idiot if you read anything more into it.

Yes.

@Bam_Boo_Gut

The whole gang are excited because their friend has banged the guy with the mysterious love life and they want more gossip.

We do enjoy gossip, admittedly. We also enjoy helping each other pick apart our situations and learn from them. We’re pretty close-knit.

You seem to have this idea that once someone has expressed some sort of romantic or sexual interest in you, they have an obligation to keep on being interested unless they have an ironclad, fully reasoned, and thoroughly explained excuse for not liking you any more. This is something I am having trouble understanding… I pride myself on being a very logical and forthright person, but I have never been able to fully explain even to myself why my former interest in a person just wakes up dead one day, and I’ve certainly never given any of these people a long explanation of every facet of their being that is a turn-off to me. Or even ‘hey, I found someone I like a lot more, see ya around!’ To me, that would be more hurtful and confusing than simply telling them that it’s not going to work out (or, in situations with no entanglements, just switching off the flirting).

No, in any situation like this I’ve ever been in in my life, I’ve never expected a long itemized list of all the things he didn’t like, subject to peer review. People certainly are free to like who they like and not like who they don’t like. It’s just a matter of how it’s done. “I’m sorry, I’m not really feeling it anymore. Nothing you did, we’re just too different/i’m in a weird place in my life/my mother was eaten by wild dogs and I have to go seek my revenge/whatever”, or even “I’m sorry, I’m just not feeling it” without an accompanying explanation is more respectful in my view than some bullshit non-answer like “I like you, but things are cooling off”. As we’ve established, he doesn’t like her. If he did, things wouldn’t cool off. Don’t blow sunshine up my ass and all that.

Anyway, I really feel for my friend because we’re a lot alike. That’s why we clicked quickly. She’s a “heart on your sleeve” type who’s trying to get along in a world that doesn’t do well with that type of personality in general. It’s hard for most of us sensitive types to “get” that the we need to toughen our skin, suck it up and move on because most of the world just doesn’t give a shit, and that not every single emotion needs to be acted out. She’s not quite there yet, but she’s trying. At first she was dealing with some (self-imposed) humiliation and ego issues, but she’s moving on. She’ll be fine.

Anyway, I started the thread to get outside perspective to settle the divergent viewpoints we were having, and it helped. Thanks to everyone for their input.

[ladyfoxfyre]

I don’t think sex early or late really makes a difference, maybe he just doesn’t like her anymore. Or they are not sexually compatible, either way he just doesn’t feel the same. It doesn’t have to be that he “hit it and quit it” or that she gave it up too soon. I’ve been really into guys before and we had sex once and it just wasn’t there, and didn’t continue seeing them. Does that mean that I got what I was after and now I’m done with it? Wouldn’t someone who was just out for sex in the first place be more interested in continuing to have sex with someone who was interested in them rather than just have sex once and stop?