Need advice on an office attraction between boss/employee!!!
I'm going to try and make this as brief as possible. Please bare with me here...
I work at a comedy club. I love everyone I work with. We have a lot of fun and we're like family. Well we got new management this past summer. I've known our new boss for a little over 8 months now and in that time I've grown to really like him a lot. I think he's a great person and has made many improvements on our club. He's so easy to work with and he's become very close to a lot of us. He's not just our boss but also our friend. I've always been myself and have tried to build a friendship with him but the energy between us is always so awkward. Even from the very beginning. He's always treated me different from everyone else. He's more open with everyone but with me he freezes up and gets nervous a lot. I've never done anything to him so I can't understand why it's always been so awkward. Because of the energy I would get nervous too. So I sometimes blame myself but then I realized that there's been many times when I've tried to talk to him and establish a bond (since we have so much in common) but he barely ever responds. He keeps a distance from me and avoids me like the plague. Well I let it slip to a few co-workers that I like him and word got around. Although I, myself, have never told him that. There's been a few moments when we'd be hanging out after work and I've gotten a little close but never crossed a line. Like I said, we're all family at my job so we all tend to hug and be close a lot. I'm very shy and quiet so I keep to myself 99% of the time. Especially when I'm on the clock.
Well we had our Christmas party recently and he dropped me off after the party. Before I got out of the car, he asked if I had a good time and I told him I did. I told him he did an excellent job putting it all together for us. Then he started telling me how he gets insecure a lot and thinks he could do better. I told him he has nothing to be insecure about when he's done so many great things for the club. And he just kept saying he is and tries to push himself a lot. I told him that maybe that could be a good thing because he'll always motivate himself to keep climbing the ladder. He just looked at me and then all of a sudden he told me I make him so uncomfortable! I was thrown off track and asked him why. He said it's because he thinks I'm attracted to him and he's not attracted to me at all and he kept apologizing. Then he said he's my boss so it's difficult. I was confused at where this was coming from and I just asked what I did to make him think that and he said I didn't do anything. Then he said he might have just misinterpreted it and I told him he wasn't completely wrong. I said I am attracted to him but I'm attracted to him as a person and I see how close he is to other co-workers and I just want us to have that. I just want to be his friend. So we talked a little more about it and then I got out of the car. The next day I saw that he made this one picture I took of him a few months ago (and said he looked good in) his profile picture on Facebook. I thought it was strange. Especially since he hasn't changed his profile picture in over a year.
I'm so confused because I don't understand why he said that to me. And it was so cold the way he said it. He was saying it to me like I'm a hideous person who stalks him all the time. If I didn't do anything then why say anything at all? And why be so awkward? Just because you think someone's attracted to you? And why would he be so worried about his job if he wasn't attracted to me? He wouldn't really care if he wasn't, right? There's millions of people who are attracted to people and the feeling's not mutual. You get over it and move on. The only time it could be uncomfortable is if they were coming on too strong. Which is not the case at all here! His behavior is so weird to me and I've been wrecking my brain for days! I would really love if anyone had any insight or has ever experienced anything like this before.
