Does my married friend like me?
He’s colleague from work and since we met a year ago we’ve been getting closer and closer. The only problem is that he’s married and I’m of course reluctant to initiate anything. As there are mixed signals and I’ve got to the stage where I’m having trouble looking at it objectively, I would like someone to tell me whether he likes me or not!
This may be long-winded, but I want you to have a clear-ish picture of what’s gone on…
When we met I wasn’t attracted to him, but he started to pay me a lot of attention in work, talking to me a lot, always sitting next to me in the staff room during our lunch breaks and my feelings changed after a month or so. His body language is always very suggestive of him liking me (legs crossed towards me etc, etc.), he stands close to me when we talk and frequently leans right in to my ear to say things quietly. He started to confide in me frequently, about work stresses and his family, although never his marriage. He has told me very intimate details about his upbringing that I know he wouldn’t tell just anyone. People in work have also started to jokingly say we must be having an affair because we're always together.
He goes out of his way to spend time with me… for example, on one occasion another male colleague offered to drive me to a meeting venue and he asked me to go with him instead, even though I told him it was all arranged. He wanted me to give him directions, he said, even though he had a Sat Nav. The other male colleague relented and I ended up going with him. He used the Sat Nav the whole way there and I barely gave him any directions!
We walk back to our cars together at the end of every day, then one day he suggested going for a coffee. This one-off coffee has turned into a weekly trip to the bar where we spend two hours chatting intimately and gossiping, before he tells me his wife will be expecting him and leaves.
He compliments me often… just last week he told me I had lovely teeth and many times he has told me he couldn’t do without me because I “prop him up”.
He asked me for my phone number a couple of months ago and texts me about once a fortnight. Once he texted me all the way through a wedding he was attending.
The only things I can think of that suggest he doesn’t like in that way, are the fact that he’s quite a moral person and it seems unlikely he would cheat; he has told his wife about me – I met her once and she seemed to know everything about me – and I wouldn’t expect him to be so open if he liked me; and he never touches me ever, not on the arm or shoulder or anything. We hugged once, however, at the end of a Christmas party. He kept it going a little bit longer than I intended to and whispered in my ear that he was grateful for all my support this year and that he couldn't have kept going without me. He had had a few by then, though!
Sometimes I think that if I were his wife I would want to kill me!
So what is this? Are we just really good friends? Because it certainly doesn’t feel that way to me. Advice please!!