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hunterofartemis

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Grey-Ace Ventura

As a person who's currently living in a single room in a university dorm, who has no in-person clubs and one in-person class due to the pandemic, who's alone about 95% of the time, I'd say it's possible this guy might just want someone to talk to and hang out with. I'd be more suspicious if he was someone who didn't go to your university, rather than someone who happens to live on your floor. If he hasn't said he wants to meet up for a date or something, I don't really see anything immediately suspicious. If you do want to meet him, you could say something like "that sounds great, I'd really like to make more friends."

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You are assuming he wants a relationship. And maybe he does, but maybe he just wants to hang out as friends. I think it's a bit early to worry about potential relationships later on. Since you live on the same floor, did you see him before or have a chat with him when you met him on the floor, or has it been purely through facebook? 

 

If you don't feel comfortable hanging out in real life with this guy, you shouldn't do it. No-one should feel forced to hang out with someone they don't want to hang out with. 

 

If you like the idea of hanging out, why not? You can reply with a 'sure, I like hanging out with friends' or if you don't consider him a friend yet you could say 'sure, I haven't got anything planned'. 

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It's probably best to explicitly friendzone him sooner than later and hopefully you guys can have a nice friendship! It's super hard to meet people in college right now. Depending on how comfortable you are with coming out, that could be a convenient way to let him know you're not looking for a relationship. But if that's not the move, there's plenty of great friendzone tactics.

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I think if he hasn't explicitly expressed that he wants a relationship, there's actually a fairly good chance that he might just want to be friends. Especially with the current pandemic and all that. I've often found myself questioning whether some of the guys I was friends with wanted more (and in some cases it turned out to be true), so I totally get where you're coming from.

 

If the thought of hanging out with him makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to. If you do want to meet up with him, you could say something that makes it clear that you're interested in a friendship, as the others already said.

 

Though I'm not a fan of the word 'friendzone'...

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In my personal opinion, part of maturing is learning to have uncomfortable conversations.  Far beyond dating situations alone, all interpersonal relationships benefit from being able to face difficulties, from work relationships to friendships.  The question then becomes not how to tell him to avoid it becoming weird, but how to deal with your own fear of it becoming weird.  He may get upset, he may not.  When I started pushing myself to tell uncomfortable truths, I was surprised how often it DIDN'T upset people as much as I thought it would, so part of it is practicing assertive communication in small ways before building up to the bigger stuff.  The harder part is learning to deal when people do become upset, because sometimes they do.  There's no real magic trick here except to go through it and learn that you're still you on the other side.  It helps to talk afterwards with friends who can commiserate.  Personally, my aversion was strong enough that therapy helped me in identifying why I take responsibility for other people's emotions.  I'm not saying you need therapy; just that if things get worse with practice instead of better, counseling can help figure out why.

 

None of this is to say that I know best and directly telling people is always the best solution.  You very well can get by with subtle hints or avoidance here, and it's a good skill to have.  Your story just brought to mind my own experience of trying for so long to ghost people or avoid any difficult conversations at all.  I learned the hard way that some problems become worse instead of better with that approach, and being able to face difficult conversations is a good tool to have in the pocket (not to use in every situation, but when the situation calls for it).  Good luck!

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On 3/5/2021 at 6:45 AM, hunterofartemis said:

just realised he's probably looking for a relationship

He could genuinely just want to hang out.

 

Personally, in such settings, I just went with the flow but the moment it was clear they wanted more, I just told them I liked them as friends. 

 

I have been proactive in such settings before, but I find that made it awkward where you're trying to determine if its a date date, hang out as friends, and so on. 

 

I just kept the hang outs in highly public places, and if they wanted more private settings, you then could clear up any fog on where you stood.

 

I otherwise wouldn't make this more than it is, unless he made it clear that it was. 

 

I would then just politely advise him where you stood, clarifying on how much fun you had and that you just aren't looking for a relationship vs its not you its me, clearly eluding to it being him.

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