What's the best way to manage a partially-unrequited crush?

I have so been there. It’s unfortunate when this happens because you want it so badly it’s hard to stop coming back for more. If you can stop hanging out with him altogether (and get over him) you will be saving yourself a lot of time and wasted emotion. It’s possible he’ll realize he can’t have his cake and eat it too and just decide to have it, but you can’t count on it. I have wasted a lot of time on men who never came around (which is really what you’re hoping for) and wish I had been able to take this advice. I wish you good luck, it’s much easier said than done.

It seems as though for this fellow it’s purely a physical/sexual thing. He’s not interested in anything more. Your feelings are invested, at this point, and you’re bound to get hurt even more if you continue on with him. I suggest that you stop hanging out with him and move on.

I know that it sucks..

I don’t think you’re the one behaving “stupidly”, I think he is. From the little you described, it sounds like he is in this thing when it is convenient for him. He doesn’t want to date you, because then he’d be tied down. He wants it to be easy for him to come and go from you as he pleases. I have two words of advice: Run away!

You have options:

*you already know his emotional interest is unrequited so you can choose to see him as a distraction and see how long you can stomach it. You’ll learn your tolerance for “less than” which might be a good experience to get through to know yourself better, learn your capacity for stubbornness.

*you can keep hoping for a change during your interactions and end up hurt and bitter.

*somehow make a game of saying “no” to him until you lose interest and save yourself a lot of headache.

Thanks all. I don’t necessarily get the sense this is just a sexual thing since we haven’t actually had sex…and I think he does want a relationship (he has a profile on an online dating site that makes it pretty clear what he wants). But he obviously doesn’t want one with me.

If he doesn’t want a relationship with you, that’s ok.
There’s no use in pursuing someone who doesn’t want you when your time would be better spent looking for someone who does want to be with you.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic is right. He doesn’t want to date you. So don’t worry about it. Someone else will. You don’t want to put effort and emotion into a person who isn’t doing the same for you, so politely cut it off with him, and move on.

What do you want from the relationship? I think we’re all kind of assuming you want some kind of exclusivity, but is that the case? And if so, why?

You could easily just be friends “with benefits.” It seems like he cares about you; he just doesn’t want to “date” you, whatever that means.

In any case, you need to ask him what he’s looking for, and hope he’s interested in knowing what you’re looking for. If you ask him, you have to listen. Really listen. You can’t get all defensive and you can’t get in his face about whatever he says. Your goal is to understand him and his behavior. If he cares about you, he’ll want to know similar things. Once you get honest with each other, you can see if there’s a way both of you can meet your individual needs. Then you take the action that is necessary.

We have this tendency to want to be able to read each others minds. We look for signs and signals and omens. We try to interpret behavior. We would like to believe that there is some set of rules for interpreting behavior.

It just ain’t so. The only way to know what another person thinks is by asking them to tell you, and then seeing if you believe them. It’s deucedly hard to put your feelings on the line and ask for honest feedback, but that’s the only way to really find out what you want to know.

@daloon: Thanks for the long and thoughtful answer.

Exclusivity isn’t especially important to me—reciprocity is. Every time we go through this cycle (he asks me out, things start to progress, he rejects me) I feel very sure he doesn’t feel as strongly for me as I feel for him. I can’t stop thinking about him; I read his emails over and over; I get a rush every time I see him. Just saying that makes me sound/feel like a crazy person, like I’m obsessed with him.

And I don’t think he feels that way about me. And I think if we were friends with benefits, my feelings would continue to grow stronger while his would remain as they are or fizzle out. And I would be left in a lot of pain.

I think you’re right that the only way to understand his behavior would be to ask him point blank. But I am not sure he even knows why he’s doing this. After the second time he asked me out, I asked him why he had rejected me the first time. He said he didn’t really know, just that something didn’t feel right.

I suspect I would get a similar answer from him if I asked about what’s going on in his head this round. And on some level it would be nice to get some clarification from him. But really, I don’t think he will ever be able to tell me what I want to hear, and I think I would be best served by severing all ties, at least until I don’t get all tingly and stupid and lose my judgment when I see him at parties.

Ouch. It’s really unfair of him to keep stringing you along like this. If he really wanted to be with you, he would make it happen. On the other hand, the fact that he’s kept you guessing all this time might make him seem more appealing than he really is, because he seems unobtainable. It sucks having an unrequited crush, but a big element of it is wanting something you can’t have. If this guy wasn’t playing with your emotions, he probably wouldn’t seem so special to you. Even though you really like him, if he was worth your time he wouldn’t play these games with you- he would either give you a yes or a no.