I’m looking for some outside perspective on a situation with a coworker at a new job.
For context, I started this job at the end of March. I’m not interested in dating anyone I work with, and this coworker has a girlfriend he brings up often (usually unprompted). I absolutley am not trying to get involved with someone who has a girlfriend.
He’s around my age and has always been friendly and outgoing with everyone, which is why I’m second-guessing myself. Lately though, some of our interactions have a bit more flirty on his side of things, as if he's trying to see what kind of reaction he can get out of me. The other day he started talking about his girlfriend, who’s a traveling nurse and out of town 3–4 days a week. When she’s gone, he’ll mention going out, partying, or making plans he doesn’t tell her about. He even mentoned being pissed that she's coming home early this week and he won't be able to take a 2 day trip out of state that he had been planning on doing without telling her.
He also brought up getting a chest tattoo and then showed me a shirtless picture of himself to show his back piece, again, all unprompted. I’m usually just being polite and listening, not really encouraging these conversations beyond basic responses.
I can’t tell if I’m overthinking this and he’s just overly friendly, or if he’s testing boundaries/flirting in a subtle way.
Would you interpret this as just friendliness, or something more? And either way, how would you handle it without making things awkward?