I (17M) had a situation with a girl from school and just got "rejected" without ever actually confessing. Feeling embarrassed and confused.
I (17M) had a situation with a girl from school and just got "rejected" without ever actually confessing. Feeling embarrassed and confused.
So there's this girl from my school, let's call her Anna. We both do an extracurricular activity together (think competitive/performance based, we see each other regularly). A few days ago she reacted to one of my social media posts and we started chatting.
Important context: the entire story I'm about to describe happened over the course of about one week.
At first the signs seemed pretty positive. She was the one to initiate the whole conversation. She sent me a heart react on one of my messages unprompted. When I was stressed about an important exam she encouraged me and told me not to worry, that I'd do fine. She kept the conversation going by opening up about personal stuff when i asked her - her hobbies, what she's been working on, things like that. It felt natural and warm, not just small talk. (Basically think not one worded answers. She would always send 3-4 messages at once.)
I started to like her. I made the mistake of showing our conversation to a friend of mine (call him Matt), who started giving me advice. Some of it was okay, but some of it honestly backfired and made things more complicated than they needed to be. For example he suggested some things to say that felt unnatural and didn't fit my style.
At some point I was hoping to run into her at a school event but she didn't show up at all. After that the texting slowed down noticeably. She would often leave me on read for hours, sometimes longer, even though I could see she was online. It started feeling one sided.
Also worth mentioning - at some point I sent her a couple of flirty messages (i'm pretty sure around 2-3) and while she did respond, she didn't flirt back at all. Looking back that was probably a sign too.
Then today, after our extracurricular, her best friend (let's call her Mia) i went up to her with my friend Matt and basically told me that Anna isn't interested in me romantically. She said that just because two people text doesn't mean anything. It was pretty blunt honestly.
The thing is I never said anything directly to Anna. I never confessed, never asked her out, nothing. So now I'm in this weird in-between situation where Anna clearly knows I like her because Mia told her (or she told Mia and they discussed it), I got rejected without ever actually putting myself out there, and I still have to see her regularly because of the extracurricular and school in general.
I don't feel devastated exactly, part of me saw it coming once the texting slowed down. But it's genuinely embarrassing knowing they talked about it behind my back, and I'm dreading seeing her next time because I don't know how to act. Do I pretend nothing happened? Do I act normal? Should I talk to her about this? Should I keep texting her? What if it's visibly awkward?
I guess my questions are:
1. How do I handle seeing her regularly after this without making it weird?
2. Looking back at the early signs (initiating, heart react, personal convos) - was I just completely misreading everything or could she have actually been interested at some point and changed her mind?
If you guys have any questions about the whole thing let me know. Any advice appreciated, feeling pretty stupid about the whole thing right now.