What was he trying to say?

What happened to the old-fashioned concept of sitting down and talking and having some face-to-face experiences, like a walk or a movie or an ice cream?

Trying to have a relationship by text seems really odd. How can you have a very good friend with whom you don’t spend real time?

^ I have nothing to add to this.

…except that as Flutherites we’ve come to know an invaluable piece of information: It is incredibly difficult to connote emotion through text. Even more so when you’re limited to 120 characters. I have a hard time imagining what it’s like to “seem bummed” in txtspk.

If you’re he’s really a best friend, just ask (that’s one of the perks). If he ignores you, knock on his door and ask again. Be straight forward about it, you think something’s wrong and you want to see if you can help if you can and listen if he wants to talk. This isn’t the time to advance agendas or have ulterior motives (replacing his ex for example), just be genuine in your effort. Even if he brushes you off now, he’ll likely remember it later; one typically doesn’t lose or give up a best friend so easily, it takes work. Also, don’t lose touch, if a week goes or two goes by, even if you’re not sure what to say, just say hi and ask how he is, he may not reply but he’ll notice and sometimes it’s enough to know someone’s out there.

Sorry, he is not interested in you right now. Move on.

I know that when you get worried about someone, the worry can feed on itself. It gets worse and worse as you gnaw over things in your mind and you make up story after story to explain what is going on.

In my experience, it isn’t very long before the stories you make up are far worse than reality. In my experience, we end up driving ourselves crazy over what we worry about.

The solution is to make yourself stop doing this. Stop making up stories about what he might be thinking. Recognize that you are doing this and then tell yourself that you don’t know what he is thinking and you are only going to make it worse if you act based on something you only think he is thinking.

The only thing you can do is wait until you can talk to him and find out what is really going on in his head. You have to stop reading tea leaves. You have to stop making up his thoughts. You have to accept that you don’t know and won’t know until you talk to him.

You shouldn’t feel bad about doing this. Most of us do it, even as we get into our fifties and sixties. The lesson I’m trying to teach you is hard to learn. I still make this mistake when my emotions get tied up with someone and I don’t have any way of finding out what is going on.

But it helps, I find, if I can manage to make myself wait, and if I can tell myself not to believe anything I made up to explain this. I tell myself to wait. Waiting is the hardest. Very very hard. But there really is no choice. You can either wait and drive yourself crazy, or you can wait and refuse to drive yourself crazy. Or you can get so anxious and desperate that you try to force yourself on him, and that is pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.

So. Patience. Tell your mind it’s ok to freak out, but it’s probably nothing. And even if it is something, you’ll deal with it when you find out. You can do nothing until you find out, and if you try to make things happen sooner, the outcome will certainly be bad.

Patience. I know that’s not what you want, but it’s what there is.

We do spend time together, but it’s not always easy when you live an hour apart, both go to school, plus sports and everything else. Sometimes a text is the only way to communicate. And I’ve known him long enough to know when he’s not happy…it’s pretty obvious. Before I moved, we had more of a face-to-face relatonship, just saying.

I would think that since he isn’t even texting you back at this point, there probably isn’t a way to make everything better.Seriously, do you want to be involved with someone who insists you are a liar and punishes you for something you didn’t even do? Come on now, would a best friend treat you this way? The short answer is no. Move on.

Welcome to what’s called the “man cave.” Sometimes Lots of times, guys withdraw to deal with their problems. When he’s feeling better, he’ll hit you up.

@aggsalmost18: Is this the same guy you were referring to a week ago, when you asked almost the same question?

http://www.fluther.com/149542/why-is-he-ignoring-me/

@gailcalled: yes, it’s the same guy but a different question. I didn’t ask why he was ignoring me, I asked what he meant by what he said. If you don’t want to see what I say, don’t come to my questions. Plain and simple.

I am trying to understand what you are saying; that has nothing to do with my volition.

You don’t see an underlying theme in all five of your questions?

@gailcalled: I do but they all ask something different. I’m sorry that I’m still basically a kid and don’t have everything figured out yet. Like I said, this isn’t just any old guy. This is a guy that I’ve known for years and I’m just trying to decode this situation so I don’t lose him completely.

You have to arrange to spend more real time with him. That’s the only way you can sort out any relationship.

Texting mini-messages is not a substitute, for even the cleverest writer.

How about moving to e-mail so you can write a longer message?

@janbb: that sounds like a plan :)

It’s been my experience that guys are pretty straightforward when we talk. The exact words are very probably either what he meant to say or what he thought that he meant to say.

He sounds high maintenance, dramatic, controlling and evasive. Not good ingredients, imo, for any relationship on any level, friend or otherwise.
Why are you doing this to yourself? Don’t get wrapped up in the “what did they mean?” game. Asking yourself or others what someone else means and trying to figure it out; did they mean this? or did they mean that? or maybe they meant this…. it’s all such a head messing game. You can go around in circles, think you find the answer and completely miss it.
Why don’t you just ask him? Tell him that what he said confused you and what exactly did he mean by it?
He will either answer or he won’t. Either way you will know. I’m a firm believer that no answer is an answer itself. I would never intentionally ignore someone I cared about and respected and I expect the same in return. Therefore if a person does this, it says to me that they simply does not care about me, respect me and have no consideration for my feelings whatsoever. This isn’t the type of man I would knowingly allow into my life. The groundwork has been set. They are already treating me badly on a friend level, it can only get worse as the relationship progresses and I wouldn’t see it until I’d already had a lot invested.
Take the blinders off, look at this for what it is. Game playing men like this are a dime a dozen and true friends don’t make you run around in circles and keep you wondering “what did that mean?”. Life is difficult enough without people messing with your head like this.

(Good answer. Please use breaks to make it more readable.)

@Ela: You were exactly right about him being dramatic and all that other stuff. Great answer :)