Or rather, one unusual person. My social skills are usually adequate to my needs, but I'm out of my depth here. Difficulty level: fraught professional history + social anxiety.
We work together, and the history is pretty messy: he was, but no longer is, my boss, and we got on exceptionally well until some ineptitude on his part resulted in damage to my career trajectory (which I've since repaired, but the incident still stings). He and I are, as you can possibly infer, a man and a woman respectively; both apparently heterosexual, in our late thirties.
To answer the inevitable "why are you even bothering":
1) after stonewalling me about it at the time, he has since seemed to regret what he did and tried to make amends on a subsequent short collaboration, despite my having been pretty distant with him for some time following the rupture;
2) until the aforementioned rupture, we had what I felt was a pretty unique intellectual and even interpersonal affinity that I honestly never had with anyone else. (I have many cherished fellow weirdos in my life who love me and vice-versa; I'm certainly not starved for recognition or affection as a baseline, and yet that is not like this.) The destruction of the original relationship, while I felt and feel it was mostly on him, was a source of real grief.
For a number of months now (like...18?) he has made repeated attempts at approach, or repair, or something, usually undertaken despite very visible nervousness. Like, he often seems *terrified*. These bids are almost always followed by freezes that seem like sudden rejection: clearly choosing close physical proximity when other options are available, but then refusing or being too stressed to speak to or look at me if I try to address him; enthusiastic, shaky approaches and conversation on a given evening, followed by, eg, ignoring my greeting the following day; selectively ignoring me in group settings (as in, speaking comfortably to every person at a table but me)—but then giving me a huge smile at our next encounter, sometimes in the same day.
These sudden flips are disorienting because when we worked together we had a consistently easy rapport (until the rupture at the end), and the content of the conversations we've managed since then suggests that he hasn't become indifferent or hostile to me as a person (remembering my interests, background, opinions, etc). Without wanting to slide into cope, I've also come to realise over the years that he's genuinely a little unusual: I have no real idea how he might be wired, but a lot of the social discomfort and attendant behaviours I see in / have described to me by friends with, eg, intense anxiety, ADHD/AuDHD, chronic illness, etc. seem to fit him very closely.
I guess what I'm driving at is that he seems genuinely different enough that his alternating warmth and withdrawals could plausibly be attributed to limited bandwidth, rather than the otherwise obvious "this person is a volatile asshole / just doesn't like you that much." If that's the case, and he does want to recover some sort of closeness, I want to try to reciprocate his attempts—which seem to have increased lately—and/or at least make them easier. (For what it's worth, I'm always warm and receptive when he initiates, but it doesn't seem to be making him less nervous each time. He does not seem this nervous with our other colleagues, with whom he's maybe a bit formal but otherwise gentle and pleasant.)
My default in situations like this (mixed signals, apparent social anxiety) is just to let the other person decide what they want to do, and respond positively when they do show up. But in this case that seems dangerously close to making him do all the work, when social approach seems to actively stress him out: if he does want to be friendly again, I don't want him to burn out, or believe I'm not interested, and give up. On the other hand, his repeated sharp (and semi-public) withdrawals make it hard to take the leap of regularly approaching him myself: this could just be someone who doesn't want much interaction due to reasons I'm not privy to]. I don't want to stomp on his boundaries and make everything worse. (I did initiate a casual conversation a while back, and he seemed receptive but also stressed, so I'm not totally sure how it landed.)
What can I do here that isn't either too timid to be read as warmth, or else potentially clumsy / overriding what could just be a real wish for space?
If anyone recognises this dynamic from their own life, and navigated it to their satisfaction, how did you do it?
If you maybe identify with my colleague, how would you want a semi-alienated coworker to show they want to reconnect without it being intrusive or overwhelming?
A big thank-you in advance to the Hivemind. |
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