I kept reading articles about the friend-zone and the constant seems to be that you get there when you're spending a lot of time talking to a girl, hanging out with her, acting needy, white-knighting, orbiting and so on. I haven't done any of these, maybe you could make a case for orbiting since we would spend some time together in social circle activities, or if we ran into each other at college in our 10 minute breaks but since these are all a social circle activities you're kinda orbiting around people you know more or less right? So we had very little rapport, I don't really know much about her and neither does she about me, we only shared career prospects and shared a couple of childhood stories and that's it. We haven't talked about family, not even shit as basic as music tastes, favorite food and so on.
The problem is that there was a lot of tension between us. We sometimes flirted but we mostly engaged in it whenever the tension was going down so we would spice shit up again. Other than that we would try to make each other jealous (odd, immature and unhealthy since we don't know each other and there wasn't really any need for anything like this) but I would usually have good reads, not fall for the bait yet I would try and succeed to make her jealous in return. Or if I wouldn't get her to do something that I wanted, I would flirt with other girls, and act very aloof, like a jerk towards her and this would you usually make her sad and confused.
So this is very awkward since we don't really know each other, yet we're doing dumb and goofy shit like that towards each other as if we were exes trying to get back together. So this is why I am so confused as to where I stand with her.
For instance, out of Chase's 14 signs that you're in friend zone, only moving slow applies to my case but even he acknowledges in the comment section of that article as well as other articles like 'hooking up with friends' that it doesn't really apply to a social circle girl that you don't know well. The reason why I though it's auto-rejection is because her behavior seems to be more specific to her being in that state. Also it says there that if you're acting aloof on top of moving slowly, she will end up in auto-rejection. However what's indeed confusing is that she hasn't really gone cold (she did on some occasions go ice-cold but last time I saw her which was 2 months ago she seemed to have warmed up a bit; she was the one who came up to me to say hi). And on top of that what you told me about her protecting her ego and trying to prevent a heartbreak seems to be specific of auto-rejection. I didn't manage to find anything like that in relation to being slotted into the friend zone, but if you know of any such material I would greatly appreciate a link or something.
Also, as I side note I did have similar cases in the past with girls that I was much closer with. They would usually go cold, then warm up a bit again, some (rarely) would try to friend-zone me but I could tell that they didn't actually see me as a friend and were doing it simply to protect their ego. One girl in particular who I knew had a huge crush on me would refer to me as a friend but then she would tell me that she's in love with me and that I'm hurting her and shit like that. I would usually dismiss that by saying stuff like 'yeah, you know we're not friends so cut the bullshit'. What I noticed was that their attraction level was hitting new highs but the bad precedent would make them keep their guard higher than before.
Anyway, thanks for taking time to respond. I may or may not sooner or later to get this girl warmed up again but what I'm learning now is invaluable.
