something to talk about

Post date: 2020-01-22 06:43:27

People are gossiping about me and a friend. Everyone thinks we're secretly dating. It really bothers me to think that people are talking about me. How do I address this?

I have a platonic relationship with a friend of the opposite gender. We're not dating - nothing remotely romantic has ever happened between us. We are both single. They are conventionally attractive and I am not. I don't think that we would work as a couple - we're at different stages of our lives, want different things and have different values - and I don't want to date them. We have an affectionate, emotionally intimate and supportive relationship with lots of disgustingly adorable in-jokes etc but there isn't a whiff of anything sexual. If we were dating it wouldn't be a big deal, but we are not.

My question is about the way our mutual friends quiz and tease me about it endlessly. I constantly get hassled about this person - "oh, you LOVE them"; "you two seem VERY chummy"; "so what's going on between the two of you anyway?" - and various other comments. I've lost count of the number of times people have asked me about our relationship. I always say, "We're not dating, I don't think of them that way, we are good friends". But people don't believe me. (I don't know if people hassle my friend the same way - I'm embarrassed to bring it up!)

This bothers me a lot and part of the reason - I know this is ridiculous - is that back when I was in school people spread rumours that I was crushing on a friend of mine. It became the talk of the school and he found it so embarrassing he stopped being friends with me. (I was not a cool kid.) Also, sometimes I wonder if the reason people seem so invested in figuring out what's going on between us is that my friend is far more eligible and attractive than I am.

But more generally, I am a private person, despite being quite open and extroverted, and I dislike the idea of people talking about me behind my back. I dislike the idea of people watching us interact and analysing what our feelings must be. We do most of our socialising in groups but also do a lot of social media interaction so everything between us is out in the open.

So... (1) How do I address people asking me repeatedly if we are dating? I am calm and consistent in my responses and I worry that getting annoyed would signal to them the opposite - that there IS some big romantic secret that my friend and I are keeping from everyone for no reason. And (2) how do I stop feeling worried about people talking about me? I hate the idea, but I know that I can't stop people from thinking what they will think.

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