Dudefile #6 - Clueless?

Dear Dude Whisperer,

I feel like I'm regressed to a 13 year old recently, but I can't help it. I met this guy about 6 months ago. We instantly hit it off and being chatting all day, everyday. (We had really boring jobs.) He was dating someone when I first met him, but that ended a few weeks after we met. We tried making out a couple of times right after that, but I stopped it because he didn't seem that excited about it, I couldn't decide how excited I was about it and it seemed like maybe we were just better off as friends. I figured it was better to nip it in the bud than let it continue and ruin was seemed like the beginning of a great friendship.

Since then we have continued to speak every day, several times day, and hang out at least once on the weekend and perhaps during the week if we're free. We have an amazing time together- when I'm with him I don't really ever want to be doing anything else- generally crack each other up, and see eye to eye on many many things. Basically we have become best friends and are in what amounts to a platonic committed relationship.

It's making me INSANE. We are both single, consenting adults. We are both smart and good looking people. I could potentially be dating other people, but I am using up my boyfriend space on him... because he is awesome and hot and my favorite person to spend time with these days. And yet no one is making any moves on the other person. I fear it's gotten to the point of no return. Is it really possible for a man in his late twenties to spend the majority of his time with one (really rather cute) girl for several months and really just think they are best friends and there is nothing else doing?

I mean, I know dudes can be clueless... but that clueless? I fear that ramming my tongue down his throat will be the end of a beautiful friendship if I'm totally out of line.

And he's not gay. Really, he's not. We've discussed it.

Any insight?

Thanks, SR

Hi SR,

The DW admits it. He yelped at the screen when he read this one. And okay, maybe he swore. A little. Because it made him bananas. Clueless!?

But since the DW doesn’t understand women, only dudes, he asked his wife to read it over and see if she had the same reaction. She didn’t. “What does she do?” she asked, calm as you please.

So, apologies, SR, for swearing in your general direction. Clearly there is more mystery to women in this situation than there is to the DW. I’ll do my best to un-mystify it.

Really, to understand the dude perspective, you only need to look at one thing. When you two were first heating up, you stopped it. You thought it would be better to be friends. You nipped it in the bud. Fair enough. Your dude understood the rules and the rules were that you are just friends.

What the DW doesn’t get is how is this dude supposed to know the rules have changed? You spend a lot of time together and you speak every day, sure. And yes, you are absolutely right to assume that these are not normally the things a dude does unless he’s attracted to a woman. A dude wants to chat on the phone several times a day about as much as you want me to cut this answer short right now in favor of shooting off 6,000 words about who should play left field for the Giants this year. Which I could do. Don’t dare me. But, hanging and chatting are not enough to let him know that you are attracted to him. Compared to the concrete “No,” you gave him, directly, with words, hanging and chatting is vague, circumstantial, and up to interpretation at best.

Look at it this way. Suppose everything else in this situation is equal except you were not attracted to this guy and it was not okay for him to put on some kind of move. What if he tried to kiss you again? You’d think he was a jerk and he was way out of line. You’d tell all your friends he was a no-good lying walking boner. You’d be offended that all this quality time you thought you’d been spending was really just an elaborate plot to invade the sovereign nation of Yourpantsia. This dude is operating under that assumption that this may well be the case. He’s purposefully not kissing you because the last thing you told him about kissing was no kissing. You think it’s driving you insane? This poor dude’s been trailing you around for months doing all this totally un-dudelike stuff, biding his time, and absolutely dying for you to change your mind.

Anyway, as you can tell by now, the DW feels that this dude is the utter opposite of clueless. In fact, he’s honoring the only dude-caliber clue you gave him, which was saying we are just friends. Talk to him. Just say, “Um, yeah, so I’ve been thinking. Wanna be more than friends?” It’s theoretically possible this non-gay chatterbox will say no, but The DW would assign approximately a 107% chance he’ll let you ram your tongue anywhere you want. Repeatedly.

Does this make sense?

Let the DW know how it goes, if you have the time. Good luck,
the DW