Pisces man gets angry for ignoring him after he rejected me

Patricia Asks:

Hi Alan,

I am so confused with this Pisces coworker of mine.
He loves to maintain long eye contacts with me but never initiated any conversations with me (we have never talked). This lasted for 2 months and I couldn’t take it anymore. So I initiated the move by asking him out for lunch to get to know each other because I am starting to fall for him. He rejected me indicating that he wants to keep things professional. So I started to ignore him and moved on. He continued to show interest by trying to catch my eye. But I continued to ignore him. This angers him. Why is that so since he is the one who wanted to keep things professional?

Patricia,

Just going by with the details you wrote at the moment it really comes down to how you are ignoring him which I am not sure. Just as an example, imagine you and I are colleagues. For me to show “professionalism” in the sense of not wanting to get into a relationship I can still say smile and say hello to you. You probably wouldn’t have an issue with that. If now every day I “ignored” you as if you didn’t exist or that you are below me I bet you would get upset too.

The other factor could be if you are 100% sure he is in a sense highly attracted to you where there may be something there then the line of being professional is a way to retreat back to be passive about the whole thing. For example, wanting to see how you truly are as a person. Like taking a picture and wanting natural poses as opposed to forced ones. It gives the person time to in a sense “envision” what a future with you could be like.

While many would think that is silly where the person should just go up to you if they are interested think of like you being interested in a class where you went to audit it before potentially committing to it. Like there you would probably want them to conduct business as if you weren’t there so you can evaluate if it is good for you or not. If the person kept coming up to you on whether or not you made a decision you probably would tell them “just looking” as you want to get back to seeing what it is truly like. Like there they can be professional and acknowledge your presence. But imagine if now they just purposely flat out refused to even say hi to you unless you are willing to sign the contract. Big difference there which I think you can see.

So those are my general thoughts and possible scenarios with what you wrote.