Popular Searches: How to tell if as guy likes you.
Let me be really honest with you, if you have to turn to Google for this information then odds are he doesn’t like you. Men are not rocket science. If a guy likes you he is going to do really simple things like respond to your text messages, make plans to see you, notice things and comment on them. There are, of course, more subtle signs. A guy who likes you might look for excuses to touch you or always be near you when hanging out in a group setting. He might remember that you liked a certain thing and bring it up in conversation. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule and there might be a guy who likes you who is too shy or scared to do these things, but if that is the case he is probably going to be too scared or shy to do anything about liking you anyway.
Still, we search often enough for clues the he likes us that there are thousands of articles out there cataloguing all of the subtle hints that a guy likes you. In college the search results were practically bookmarked on my laptop. I would return home from interactions with that one guy and pull up the Google listings. The critical question playing in my mind; does this guy like me? How can I tell? Some days it seemed my whole future happiness depended on if this guy’s feet pointed at me during conversation, one of the many clues to deciphering the code and learning if this one really, actually, liked me. After going through every nuance of our conversation and interpreting every sign until I could conclude he liked, me I would return to Google, typing in a new search.
“How to tell if a girl likes you.”
I just had to make sure because I had to be 100% certain he did not suspect that I liked him. Of all of the things in the world to have happen that would be the worst. Even then I knew you never EVER tell a guy you like him because it makes you look like an idiot. My crush having even an inkling of my feelings from his own Google searches would have been too much. I had been burned before. So I would turn to Google and scan through the articles mentally cataloguing my own behaviors. Did I laugh at too many of his jokes? How was my body language? He could never know that I liked him.
I have only done it once. Once was more than enough to learn my lesson. Cold January air lay still over the hard packed snow. A blue twilight settling in before night fell. I sat across from him at a small table in my college coffee shop; waiting for an answer. My heart bloodying the table between us. He was not anyone special, not Prince Charming, not my soulmate, just a guy I liked who checked every box on the “does he like me” questionnaire. Or, I thought he checked every box. What does a nineteen year old girl really know?
“Katie… we can’t date.”
That was his answer. Simple and to the point, we can’t date. I picked up my heart and my coffee and went back to my dorm. In the ten minutes it took for me to go from confident and excited to broken and unsure, night had fallen across Spokane. No more filtered blue twilight, no more golden sun, and too many clouds for any silver starlight to break through. What an idiot I was, thinking he had liked me. We were friends and that was all but I did not want to dwell on it. He may have been the first guy I had told that I liked him but he had not been my first crush. I had gotten over them and I would get over this one too. It would not ruin my long weekend.
I put my bruised heart away and went to join my friends for our evening plans.
Even if you take it very well and move on with ease, telling a guy you like him ALWAYS makes you look like an idiot. A better flirting tactic would be to make yourself invisible. Better still, make him believe he is invisible. Ignore him until he doubts his own existence. That is the safest course of action.
A few weeks later I saw him while I was walking across campus. Not an odd occurrence, it was a small school, I saw him every day. This time he was walking with another girl, fingers twined around each other’s. I knew her. She lived in the same dorm as me. I had a vague memory that she had been dating a guy but broke up with him a few days before the long weekend. A few days before I asked the guy whose hand she was holding out.
Just like when you hold a glass too tight an imperceptible crack formed at the edge of my confidence.
A million thoughts raced through my head but one was louder than the rest. For two weeks I had told myself over and over that I had been wrong. This boy could not really have been flirting with me. It was just wishful thinking. A nineteen year old girl’s flights of fancy. Now, watching him lightly bump her arm as she spoke or lean close when he responded, the voice in my head screamed at me. He had been flirting with me in all of the same ways he flirted with this girl. The difference, he did not actually want me. I was a substitute. A place mark for the person he really wanted and I, so stupidly, showed my hand before the game was done.
The crack grew. Spider-webbing across my self image. Confidence is a funny thing. It is the looking glass through which we see ourselves. Every rejection, hurt, and heartbreak, chips and cracks the glass, distorting the image. Where things were once clear and clean lies a broken image. We are not broken, only the glass, only the picture. We have to learn how to see ourselves again through the distortion. Some hurts are small, cracking only the edge. Others are large; rocks hurled at the center knocking out shards of glass, leaving us with partial reflections. The image staring back missing an eye, an ear, a piece of our smile. Cracks grow and travel, splintering our view until the person looking back is unrecognizable.
The crack he left cut across my throat, my voice. How stupid I had been to let this person see me and hear the words inside of me. I would not make that mistake a second time.
Now, when I start to like a guy my internet search is just a little different. I do not need to know if he likes me or not, if he does he will do something about it. Instead, I sit down at my computer and look to the bright colors of our favorite search engine. “How to tell if a girl likes you.” If I check too many boxes I adjust my behavior. There is nothing worse than a guy finding out that you like him. Okay… there are a few things that are worse than a guy finding out that you like him.
Years later, when the crack from that first boy had rested on my throat so long I barely saw it anymore, I found myself sitting across from yet another hopeless crush. This time I kept my heart tucked away where it belonged. He leaned on his elbows, smiling.
“You know, when I first met you I didn’t think you liked me.” He said it as if it were a secret he was sharing.
“Really?” I did not think I had been subtle in my genuine interest in talking to this guy and making time to see him. At the very least I was less vigilant about making sure my behavior did not give my feelings away.
“Yeah. I complimented your outfit and you just seemed so uninterested. I was like, ‘oh, okay.’” He curved his shoulders inward, illustrating his disappointment.
My cheeks grew hot. I hoped he could not tell under the yellow tint of the streetlights that I was blushing. “I… I had been waiting all day for you to talk to me.”
“Really?”
Foiled again.
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