DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I need some good male advice, please. A guy who I met recently will be going back to hiking the AT within a week. We have hung out with each other, caught a movie and had great sex for the past 3 weeks.
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I told him I would miss him once he gets back on the trail, and he responded with “awwww”…
Do not know what to think about this, he’s affectionate and caring, but I’m getting the friend zone vibe for a reason I think.
Can you help me out with this, Dr Love? I mean Nerdlove?
Need A Male To English Dictionary
DEAR NEED A MALE TO ENGLISH DICTIONARY: So… if you all are hanging out regularly, going on dates and having great sex over the last couple weeks, I’m going to go ahead and say that there aren’t “friend zone” vibes going on here. I mean, as I’m always saying: the whole deal with the Friend Zone is that there’re just people who don’t want to date or f--k you. And ya’ll’ve been dating and f--kin’.
I think the issue here is that you’re reading way more into this than is necessarily there. What he means by “awwww” is pretty simple: he doesn’t really know how to respond or have much of a response to your telling you that you’ll miss him, but he doesn’t want to just leave you on read. Replying with “awwwww” is an affectionate way of acknowledging the sentiment (you like him, you’ll miss him) but cautiously, without either coming off as stiff and disinterested (“thank you”) or implying more than he feels like may be there (“I’ll be thinking of you too”), but will still expressing appreciation for what you’re saying.
Now, part of where things get a little hazy for me is that you don’t include some key details. You say he’ll be going back to hiking the Appalachian Trail. Does this mean that he’s basically passing through town, rather than someone who lives there and is off on a week-long trek? Was he taking a break before getting back to it? If that’s the case… well, I suspect that this was a trail-fling for him. If so, I can see why he might hedge on the side of less-reciprocal; he doesn’t want to give you the wrong idea or lead you to think that there’s more to this.
Now if you’ll pardon me but you accidentally inserted a quarter into the vend-o-rant: this is behavior that makes me grind my teeth because this is comes up a lot in flings and casual relationships. Someone wants to try to ensure that things stay casual, but they do so by being distant and less communicative. Some will even actively avoid being affectionate or expressive, in hopes it keeps the other person from developing feelings. It rarely helps, and mostly hurts, and almost always creates confusion because everyone assumed they were on the same page when in reality they were reading entirely different books.
This is why clarity, genuine communication, checking in with each other and – importantly – actually saying what you are or aren’t available for is so critical. If you have been hoping that this is a potential relationship or that things are going to pick back up after he completes the trail and he was seeing it as a trail fling, then the disconnect makes sense. You had very different expectations and so you were seeing things in a different light. I suspect the guy may have caught this but rather than actually saying “hey, just so we’re clear…” he let things go. I mean, after all, saying “you know this is just temporary” might have meant the end of the sex.
And if that wasn’t what you were thinking… well, again, that lack of clarity meant that you were both talking past each other, rather than to each other, and you might’ve had a different result both while he was in town and after he left.
TL;DR: he didn’t know what to say to you telling him that you missed him and erred on the side of acknowledgement, appreciation but also distance. You may have had conflicting ideas of what your relationship was and that lead to potential miscommunications. As always: use your words, be willing to risk consequences in the name of actually understanding one another and make sure that you both know what you’re actually doing together.
Good luck.
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Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com