Let’s be friends and see what happens

Jjh Asks:

Met a Pisces on a dating site – we play golf together and he makes comments like “you should join our guys golf trip; if you come to the beach, I’ll hang out with you; when you have a house party, I want to come”.
He always makes subtle comments to leave it open to me to initiate and I do. I admit this is frustrating bc he’s so involved with his family, he’s often busy or out of town with them. So he accepts my invitations about 1/2 the time but He NEVER initiates.
I told him I’m attracted to him and like him – he said he thinks I’m great and he’s attracted to me too but “let’s be friends and see what happens”….
That was 6 months AGO. And I’m always initiating.
Am I spinning my wheels or being impatient??
It’s really hard to feel he likes me when he doesn’t initiate or prioritize hanging w me. To be clear – nothing has happened except hanging as friends
I’m all for taking it slow but this seems “non-commital” or lack of interest in me romantically

What should I do?? We are both 40 and never married. I can’t waste too much time waiting for him to figure out what he wants from me.
Should I ask him how he feels again? Or continue to be patient?

I do think he’s a great guy and worth waiting for…as long as I’m not misreading his signals and he just wants to be friends

Jjh,

I would probably do almost the exact same thing. Bottom line though is if he is constantly inviting you to places and giving you subtle comments to initiate stuff then the important thing to keep in mind is he is interested in you. Yes, from what you wrote even I personally would often let the person do the initiating even for that long.

While I don’t know him personally, if you are telling me that everything about him seems fantastic and positive so far then you should be super happy instead of frustrated as it’s a positive I feel. Just to use myself as an example while trying to incorporate some of the points you brought up if I was this person then the reason why you always need to take initiative is because I have the type of personality where once I commit to something I commit to it. Simple as that. You want someone to be there forever with you who truly loves and adores you? You bet it makes one want to be really sure.

You say he is heavily involved with his family, which I think should be a good thing, and that emphasizes the point again where once one commits into a relationship of sort then they go all in. So like here it’s more about what does he need to finally convince himself that you being in his life like the family members is the right thing to do? So if you want to speed things up it’s all about finding out what it is that he fears about you, per se, where committing to you could possibly be a negative. What is it about your character that he thinks is not the full picture that worries him?

You can do this various ways by actively engaging in conversations with things such as his life goals. That can be career related or even family. Realistically, there is no reason whatsoever a person like me wouldn’t jump into say a full relationship with someone if everything was perfect per se. Funny enough, it’s when a person all of a sudden says he loves you and all so fast that I would actually worry.

The key thing is don’t approach it in ways such as asking “how do you feel about us” because that is putting the person on the spot. It’s not a surprise that one would say “let’s be friends and see what happens” afterwards. With my type of personality I like to observe natural actions to confirm. For example, to see that you are a considerate person I am not going to ask you how much charity work you did. I will naturally go through life where one day I may see you giving up your seat to someone else who seems to need it more or seeing your urge and compassion to help even an injured animal.

That’s why it’s great too if a person like myself constantly goes to places with you because one is often actively trying to confirm or deny points about you. You can imagine too in life you can’t exactly say “Oh, let’s command a bird to drop from the sky injured to the ground today to see how she reacts.” Again, it’s about finding ways to learn about what he truly wants and values in life to then see if that matches with your values too.

I am inclined to say if you have been seeing each other that long he must have at some point mentioned various stuff to you where it may have gone over your head or you simply took no action where it’s something he values a lot.