AITA for believing that a friend could be manipulating me?
I have had this friend for around 6 years. For the majority of this time, I’ve had a crush on him. There was a period of time when I was completely fine that we would just stay friends, until I began to get the hint that he felt the same way. He would constantly compliment me, wink at me, hug me (context being he is not normally comfortable with hugging people), ask to hold my hand in the movie theatre, etc.
This got to such a point that I eventually built up the courage to ask him out, at which he said he was sorry, but he said that he didn’t feel the same way. I was embarrassed, but moved on, as I had never had a relationship before so I simply thought that I had misread the situation.
We continued being friends after this and everything seemed fine. This was until he started dating someone, and seemed to suddenly ignore me in every way (blocking me, refusing to talk to me in person when we live fairly close). I was incredibly confused, since we were such good friends before and hadn’t had any arguments. I tried to ask him if I had done something but he kept calling me selfish and ignorant for not already knowing. Again, I reluctantly moved on, understanding that this couldn’t go on forever.
A few months later, he broke up with this person, and almost immediately came right to complimenting and constantly asking to be around me. I was extremely confused, but happy at the fact that I had gotten one of my best friends back (I still liked him, but thought that asking him out might have been the reason for this). This continued until, again, a year or so later, he started dating someone. This time, he just completely ignored me, not even calling me any sort of expletives or otherwise. And, you guessed it, after the relationship ended (after a few months), he came right back and seemed to want to see me even more often. I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks that this has to be some form of manipulation, and part of me feels like an idiot for falling into it. But I don’t know if I’m just being paranoid or an asshole for assuming terrible things about this guy that I’ve trusted for years.