It’s not clear to me yet what you want: not too serious, but more than friends, so… sex? Not judging, just trying to understand. And maybe you don’t know yet.

Nothing wrong with that, but then what is your actual challenge here?

I just don’t know how to (for lack of a better word) make others see me for more than just a friend.

You don’t. It’s complex and subtle and annoying. 😉

You don’t turn someone who doesn’t love you into some who does. You keep looking until you find a person who was already going to love you. And there are many, even when it doesn’t seem like there are. And it takes a maddeningly long time for some folks. It did for me.

It could be both! Why not?

I’m not sure. Maybe. Sometimes. I don’t know.

I can only tell you that my best results have come from replying with a neutral “Thank you”, then repeating the questions. I prefer it when they answer all my questions, but ultimately, if I want answers, I need to persist, and so I do.

Excessive apologies can feel disingenuous and perfunctory. That makes it difficult for me to know when an apology is genuine. That erodes my trust.

Excessive apologies can signal to me that the other person sees me as a threat, and I don’t want to feel like a threat, so I feel attacked.

But I could also choose to interpret excessive apologies as a sign of past trauma, so I could choose to have compassion and patiently ask the other person to talk to me about what’s going on. I can share how I feel and hope that they feel ready to discuss what’s happening for them. Patience would be key.

What’s normal is that you had a traumatic experience, then internalized a Survival Rule to avoid repeating the behavior that led to the trauma. Depending on your age when the original incident happened, the Survival Rule might sit very deep, causing you to follow it even without thinking and without knowing why.

All that is normal: expected, sensible, reasonable.

The rule itself might no longer be needed. Can you imagine a situation in which it would be perfectly fine to interpret as a joke something that someone says without specifying it as a joke? Can you imagine three? Ten?

Now it depends whether you mean actual DEI or the nonsense that companies do in the name of DEI or the unfortunate overreaction that some people support related to DEI due to the resistance to actual, reasonable, sensible DEI.

“… regardless of all other factors…” sounds like the second of these.

Obligatory mention of lazygit for those who prefer vi and its descendants.

No, I’m not making any claim regarding which is better. Hold your cards and letters. In many other universes, I’m a daily user of magit.

Let me second this and emphasize the following:

• do anything
• do it whenever you have even the slightest impulse to do it
• do it for as long as you want to, even if it seems like no time at all
• do it for yourself

… then stop.