Kissed then friendzoned by former work colleague

[EternalBachelor]

I have been working with this girl for around a year and a half. Over time we developed a flirty work banter and she was quite touchy feely. She also got jealous if I spent too long talking to the secretaries. So I did suspect she might like me. I tested the waters shortly after she joined suggesting a weekend lunch. But she was completely different outside of work: more reserved, quieter, didn't really seem to be enjoying herself. The same was true the few times we took lunch together at work. So this disconnect put me off pursuing anything further.

Once when we were flirting a bit by text and I got carried away she said we work together and if something were to happen between us it would ruin our great friendship and she had a boyfriend at work once and would never do it again. So I did start to think that was the reason she was holding back.

Eventually in May we end up going to dinner together because one of my company's restaurants had a new opening promotion. The implication was we were going as friends. But it felt like a date and when one of our colleagues came to say "Hi" she was signing my praises saying I was "smart, handsome etc" Her energy felt a bit different from the previous occasions we'd hung out together outside of work. Afterwards while walking to the station I took a diversion to a fountain and suggested we made a wish. She said she knew what my wish was. I said "What?" and she kissed me. I kissed her back but she seemed to get skittish and took off saying she had work tomorrow.

The next day she said it didn't feel right and we work together and it is better we stayed friends. I was a bit shaken up and confused and while we slowly lapsed back into our usual work banter and texted occasionally outside of work on a few occasions I did ask why she didn't want a second date especially when she was looking for a new job. As well as repeating the colleagues line she also said I didn't know how to treat women and make them feel important and she wants to get married and needs a generous person and if something was going to happen it would have done already and she'd know by now if it felt right and if she was going to develop feelings she would have done so by now.

Anyway she left work about a week ago but continued texting me and calling me every so often. Before she started her new job we agreed to meet up for dinner to celebrate her new job (as friends) and had a good time but again every time I got a bit too close she would comment and her body language remained a bit standoffish. We went for a drink after work on Friday and I tried holding hands which she was OK with for a little bit then said it felt weird and when I put my arm around her on the bus home she did not push me away but was looking straight ahead and not exactly cosying up to me. When she saw I was a bit upset she repeated all the lines about being friends and not developing feelings but added as well she wasn't ready for a relationship.

What am I to make of all of this? Should I just say I am not interested in being friends and stop contacting her and see if she misses me. Or is it pretty clear there is no hope for me here and I should just move on?

 

[Atom Smasher]

You are her official orbiter. You satisfy her craving for attention.

In the past she has fantasized about you and she wants you to be a certain way for her but you are not that certain way. Hence she dips a toe in the water every once in a while but always finds out that the guy she wishes you are is not the real you.

Cut bait and fish other waters.

 

[SirBigBell]

Atom has nailed it. She keeps you close enough to keep harvesting your attention, but distant enough to not give anything in return. In my younger years I fell victim to this dynamic countless times, so i know from first hand experience what you are describing.

Here is the reality - by you sticking around and getting tossed about like a wool ball in the paws of a kitten, you are haemorrhaging your value big time. Women are attracted to men who know their worth and are bold enough to protect it.

If you want this woman to change her tune and start to desire and take you seriously, you have to change your mindset and start projecting and protecting your value. Cut the calls, cut the texts, cut all contact for a month. If she calls or texts, ignore them for 24-48hours before replying with “sorry Ive just been quite busy; hope you’re well. Speak soon”. Sooner or later she will know that she has slid down your list of priorities and that fountain of the assured free attention she enjoyed has finally dried up. She will then either step up efforts to properly play ball with you or she will sling her hook and stop tossing you about by giving you hope and withdrawing it. Either result is good.

 

[Machine10033]

No..... don’t say you do not want to be friends anymore Jesus. Just move on and stop wasting anymore time. Your her comfort blanket and nothing more... you can try and change that dynamic but why!!??? It will take so much work and honestly there are a billion other girls out there you can just start fresh with and learn from your mistakes! I have girls that I use when I am bored... I want them around when I have nothing else going on or I need a confidence boost. I vanish for months on them and they will still text me. I cannot respect a girl like that.. that’s similar to your dynamic. Just pick yourself up and never give the girl the illusion of friendship. Guys and girls are not friends...

 

[Robert28]

All you had to say was “fvck your friendship” when she said that’s what she wanted. She doesn’t have to accept your relationship wants, and you don’t have to accept her stupid friendship. I dunno why women want to be friends with men so bad, it’s the stupidest thing ever. I don’t even nicely turn their offer down anymore, I just flat out say “f your friendship, I don’t need it nor want it.”. If she told me all those lines about I don’t know how to treat a woman and blah blah blah, and then proceeded to call and text me, she would have never heard from me again. Ever. She damn sure would never see me again, work or not, I’d make the effort to go out of my way not to see her. She’d be dead to me.

 

[sazc]

At this moment, if you really want to get under her skin, the next time she reaches out, tell her "sorry, i don't do women 'friends' " and then NC her ass while she texts you a flurry of "what do you mean?" And then a slew of angry "jerk!" Messages. Just watch them roll in and laugh

That statement blatantly cuts her value down as a human being. It's a way to communicate "if there's going to be nothing sexual between us, then you aren't worth my time or energy"

It will hurt but she deserves it the way she's been stringing you along

 

[Robert28]

I’ve only successfully turned “let’s be friends” into something more once in my life. What helped was we were dating prior to that but she sprung that LJBF on me after I noticed her body language changed on me on 3 dates all of a sudden. What I did was basically flip everything around from that point on, I made her do ALL of the work. If she didn’t text me, she wasn’t going to hear from me, if she didn’t suggest something to do I wasn’t going to either, if she wanted to hangout she had to make the plans and if I was free I would go but if not I wouldn’t. However, when we hung out I did act like my old fun self that she’s fallen for before and I noticed her body language changing and her becoming more flirty over the course of a month or so. These were hangouts, not dates, but I would again ghost the **** out of her afterwards for days. No matter how good they went or how much fun we had, SHE was going to have to contact me no matter what. And she did. Eventually she even brought it up “why am I always contacting you? You never text me”. My response “I’m treating you like I would any of my other friends, this is what you wanted remember?”. Throw that **** back in their face. She finally fell for me again but my God the work I had to put in. I’ll never do that again. Now I just say “to hell with your friendship, I don’t want it”.

 

[sazc]

I’ve only successfully turned “let’s be friends” into something more once in my life. What helped was we were dating prior to that but she sprung that LJBF on me after I noticed her body language changed on me on 3 dates all of a sudden. What I did was basically flip everything around from that point on, I made her do ALL of the work. If she didn’t text me, she wasn’t going to hear from me, if she didn’t suggest something to do I wasn’t going to either, if she wanted to hangout she had to make the plans and if I was free I would go but if not I wouldn’t. However, when we hung out I did act like my old fun self that she’s fallen for before and I noticed her body language changing and her becoming more flirty over the course of a month or so. These were hangouts, not dates, but I would again ghost the **** out of her afterwards for days. No matter how good they went or how much fun we had, SHE was going to have to contact me no matter what. And she did. Eventually she even brought it up “why am I always contacting you? You never text me”. My response “I’m treating you like I would any of my other friends, this is what you wanted remember?”. Throw that **** back in their face. She finally fell for me again but my God the work I had to put in. I’ll never do that again. Now I just say “to hell with your friendship, I don’t want it”.

You claim you have it all handled, all under control, yet here you are lamenting on the situation, at length.

You're never going to be able to figure out why ppl are fvked. Why someone would run hot and cold on you like this. The best thing you can do, moving forward, is notice when the hot cold pattern is happening and cut it off asap, never looking back.

Take control of your situations, don't allow your situations to control you. Then you won't have a reason to post about it on an internet forum

 

[Robert28]

You claim you have it all handled, all under control, yet here you are lamenting on the situation, at length.

You're never going to be able to figure out why ppl are fvked. Why someone would run hot and cold on you like this. The best thing you can do, moving forward, is notice when the hot cold pattern is happening and cut it off asap, never looking back.

Take control of your situations, don't allow your situations to control you. Then you won't have a reason to post about it on an internet forum

I wasn’t lamenting, I was giving an example of my experience in turning around a let’s be friends situation. It can be done sometimes but the girl that friend zoned you has to have some sort of sexual attraction to you prior to her doing it in order for you to get out of it. Women that TRULY want to only be friends aren’t going to set up hangouts with you once a week no matter what, just you and her. 99.99% of the time it’s not worth it to ever be friends with a woman that offers. You’ll be able to tell that one time it’s different and she’s just testing you to see how you’ll react. It’s much easier to just flat out reject all friend offers because even if you do get that one rare chance to flip it around, it’s going to be a lot of work.

 

[Machine10033]

I dunno why women want to be friends with men so bad

It’s simple!!! It essentially neuters the man. Females keep guy friends because they validate them! I met a girl in a bar one time and she was out with 4 guys.. all her friends. The second we started hitting it off they were like vultures... I had 4 orbiters hovering as we talked so I left. Went to another bar and within 20 minutes had a text from a number I didn’t know. It was that girl saying “hey where did you go? “ she asked everyone in that bar if they had my number so she could find me. I told her where I was at... she had one of her guy friends drive her to meet me and then asked if me and her could go somewhere else. She essentially bolted on her orbiters to get ****. On the way back to her place she laughed about her guy friends and how they are so protective. I nearly threw up in my mouth thinking about how sad of an existence that would be.... but anyway me and this chick stayed in touch for like 2 weeks and it drove me insane. She was always fishing for compliments. She brought up how amazing she is at sucking c0x.... then brought up how she feels like she gets stared at a lot because of her breast implants. I never validated her and eventually ghosted the loon. She needs those guy friends to feel good about herself! Don’t be that guy ever !!!

 

[Robert28]

It’s simple!!! It essentially neuters the man. Females keep guy friends because they validate them! I met a girl in a bar one time and she was out with 4 guys.. all her friends. The second we started hitting it off they were like vultures... I had 4 orbiters hovering as we talked so I left. Went to another bar and within 20 minutes had a text from a number I didn’t know. It was that girl saying “hey where did you go? “ she asked everyone in that bar if they had my number so she could find me. I told her where I was at... she had one of her guy friends drive her to meet me and then asked if me and her could go somewhere else. She essentially bolted on her orbiters to get ****. On the way back to her place she laughed about her guy friends and how they are so protective. I nearly threw up in my mouth thinking about how sad of an existence that would be.... but anyway me and this chick stayed in touch for like 2 weeks and it drove me insane. She was always fishing for compliments. She brought up how amazing she is at sucking c0x.... then brought up how she feels like she gets stared at a lot because of her breast implants. I never validated her and eventually ghosted the loon. She needs those guy friends to feel good about herself! Don’t be that guy ever !!!

Yeah I hate women like that. She’s the type that if any of her orbiters broke off and went to talk to someone else she’d c0ckblock them. I’ve never been an orbiter like that in my life. Well, I take that back, when I was 15 I was because I didn’t know any better.

 

[nicksaiz65]

Oh my God, I needed to see this. I went through nearly this exact situation like a few months back. The advice you guys are giving in here is spot on. It's just not fair to be friends with a single girl, she's essentially calling you sexually trash. You get used for all your attention and get nothing for it while in the meantime she's fvcking and sucking 3-4 different dudes. Just embarrassing and emasculating.

I know people don't recommend going out with female friends at all, but some of my in relationship female co-workers invite me out sometimes. When that happens, I make sure my Cold Approach game is on point. I refuse to be an orbiter. I don't know if that counts but still.

 

[EternalBachelor]

Thanks for all the insightful replies. Suddenly a lot of things make a lot of sense.

For example when there are people around she flirts mercilessly but when it is just me and her she is cold with closed body language. And why when we were work colleagues she never made any effort to hang out together outside of work or text me much outside of work but since she got a new job she is texting me all the time and asking to hang out as friends.

She is getting pretty worked up. I cut contact a few days ago and she sent some angry messages calling me childish and saying "Fine, be upset with me for the rest of your life" and today she asked a mutual friend to tell me that she is no longer upset she is angry.

What I don't understand is why she kissed me. In my experience it is unusual for a girl to initiate the first kiss and because at the time I didn't think she was interested and we were colleagues and didn't want an awkward situation at work I had no intention of kissing her.
Will a girl really kiss a guy just to suck her into his web? I always thought for girls a kiss meant something.

 

[sazc]

Some women are manipulative and will use sex as a weapon, more than likely this one has some issues

You'd do well to run

 

[EternalBachelor]

"This is the last time I am contacting you! I think you are unfair for not even speaking with me! I am upset very upset but this is your decision! So let’s start week badly right?"

LOL got the following message from after 2 days of no contact from me

 

[sosousage]

sry OP but it seems theres no other way around this, to save your ego and face among your friends you must sue her for rape


also tell the judge ur azz is still bleeding to make her get maximum sentence which will be 3 days only anyway

 

[sazc]

"This is the last time I am contacting you! I think you are unfair for not even speaking with me! I am upset very upset but this is your decision! So let’s start week badly right?"

LOL got the following message from after 2 days of no contact from me

She'll get it out of her system eventually.

the real question is, what are you going to say to the mutual friends who come to you and tell you how upset she is because you ghosted her and how could you ghost a friend like that?

 

[Robert28]

"This is the last time I am contacting you! I think you are unfair for not even speaking with me! I am upset very upset but this is your decision! So let’s start week badly right?"

LOL got the following message from after 2 days of no contact from me

I wish a woman would text me this. It would be so hard to not reply but if I did it would simply say “fvck your friendship, don’t need it, don’t want it, not what I’m looking for.”

 

[Robert28]

She'll get it out of her system eventually.

the real question is, what are you going to say to the mutual friends who come to you and tell you how upset she is because you ghosted her and how could you ghost a friend like that?

I’d tell them “I don’t do friendships with women, simple as that. She dreamed up this friend zone proposal, not me. I don’t owe her my friendship anymore than she owes me anything.”

 

[Robert28]

Some women are manipulative and will use sex as a weapon, more than likely this one has some issues

You'd do well to run

Some? Try MOST.