A Guy Told Me I Liked Him More Than He Liked Me And I Felt So Stupid

Hearing “I think you like me more than I like you” was like a kick to the stomach. It hurt and it made me feel very silly, especially since nothing like that has ever happened to me before. I’ve always been in situations where my feelings were at least reciprocated, sometimes even more strongly than my own. It was a completely new and very humbling experience.

1. It really took me down a few notches. Not only that, but it made me realize that I’m not immune to rejection or someone disliking me. In fact, I’m just as likely to experience it as others. This was new information to me. Yes, seriously.
2. I felt like a mad person. Honestly, my immediate thought was to wonder what I’d done wrong to make this guy feel this way. I felt like my reality had been shaken a bit and I felt very unsteady. I didn’t understand what actions of mine led me to this point since in my head, I’d done everything right.
3. It scared the crap out of me. I did really like this guy and the last thing I want to do is mess it up, so it terrified me when he basically told me I was way too much. I feared that I wouldn’t know how to tone things down and wondered if I even needed to at all. I was also afraid that I wouldn’t be okay if we broke up (which was a lie I was telling myself).
4. It made me want to close off. I was mad, I wanted to shut down and close him out. I wanted to take all my feelings for him and throw them in the trash. I was angry as well as afraid. I didn’t want to get hurt and it seemed like that was where the conversation was leading. Naturally, I wanted to protect myself by closing off from intimacy. I did this by being really quiet.
5. My first reaction was to take sexual things off the table. We had been fooling around up to that point. One of the first things I did was I said that if we were going to slow things down and I was going to chill out then sexual things were going to be taken off of the table. I didn’t want to be physically intimate with someone who was just figuring out if they liked me or not when I was sure that I liked him.
6. I really thought we had potential. It hurt because I cared. This was someone that I’d developed feelings for, someone I really liked. I thought that things were going well, but apparently, he thought there was this imbalance. It dug deep because I don’t have feelings often for people like the way I did for him.
7. This idea was based on assumptions. What was the most frustrating about all of this was that he wasn’t basing his idea off of actual facts or experiences. He was basing it off of assumptions and things he had made up in his head. In other words, I had to hear this for pretty much no reason because he realized that he hadn’t actually based his thoughts on something concrete.
8. After talking, he retracted his statement. Once we had a conversation about my side of things, what I thought and how I felt, then he realized his statement wasn’t true. He didn’t realize how much we really were on the same page and he figured out that I wasn’t trying to force him into anything. He saw that I’m actually a nice person and not some mad love fiend. What do ya know?
9. The comment was hurtful anyway. He apologized and took it back, but it still hurt like heck. It was a low jab, knocking at my insecurities and destabilizing me. Even though he retracted his statement, the damage was done. It still left me feeling guarded and like a fool. I couldn’t let go of it that easily.
10. I actually think what he said was BS. He realized it was BS, but I also had to come to that realization too. The truth of the matter is that he liked me a lot and I could tell. It’s obvious in the way and the frequency that he touched me as well as other things that he did, like bringing me around his friends. It’s obvious that he liked me, so I really didn’t have to worry about that despite what he said.
11. There were some ways I could change. I’ve been talking a lot about how what he said was crap and not true, but there was a grain of truth to it. The reality is that I can come on really intensely and sometimes this may be scary to potential lovers. I’ve been known to move too fast and to rush into things, so I started working on all of that and tried to chill out so that this relationship could work.
12. Ultimately, it’s not that big a deal — liking each other more or less happens. How much people like each other is seldom 100% equal. It’s fair that sometimes one person might have more feelings than the other person. Someone may be more into it. This isn’t a big deal and doesn’t mean the relationship is doomed. So, even if at some point he does decide I like him more than he likes me, there’s still a good chance the relationship can bloom.