By way of background, I'm currently in a postgrad course at university am en route to a professional qualification. There is a girl on my course whom I've known from day 1. We have good banter, although communicate more over text and Facebook than we do when we sit next to each other in our lectures. She's quite pretty and she knows it, having once said, "I know I'm pretty and think that I'm better than everyone. And I know I'm bitchy and annoying". She pokes fun at me a lot, which is pretty standard given my misadventures in clubs, national stereotypes, and life in general. I have a fairly self-deprecating humour. But occasionally it goes a bit beyond the line and she'll say things like, "we could be friends, but you're just way too annoying!". We'll get into mini-arguments that she'll initiate when we're out at social events that will make people around us somewhat uncomfortable and gravitate away. I have been drunk on a couple of evenings and gotten into arguments with her, but we've patched things up and didn't seem to really care.
My friends and colleagues suggest frequently that there's a lot of tension between us and that we clearly like one another. So recently, I was out at a party and a friend told me to just get the tension over with. In part because I had a bit to drink, and in part because I thought he was right, I told him to bring it up in front of us both in a jokey way (as in "yeah, sure whatever, you try sayin' that!"). So he called over over and said as much, which I didn't exactly expect. I then tried to ask this girl to drinks/a date and she said a whole series of things: "no, I'm not going to date you, I'm not ready to date...you're too nice a guy, I'm into jerks, sorry.....you deserve better.....you've been friendzoned". After she left, I had a bit of a meltdown because the rejection made no sense. And I'm now a bit of a social pariah. I will have to see her eventually at university and she hangs in the same social circles as I do.
Any advice on how I should approach this would be greatly appreciated. I've been rejected a lot in the past for similar reasons -- women usually see me as a reliable friend and entertaining guy. But it's come to the point where they can abuse that loyalty I have and "have their cake and eat it" so to speak. I'm probably going to have to see her later this week for another social function.
Thanks for reading.
-J.J.