Hey Era, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. FYI, I'm a gay guy, mid 20's and the guy I'm interested is 10 years older than me, mid 30's.
So, I met a guy at a friend's party about 2 weeks ago. We hit it off but I had to leave early, so I asked my friend for his phone number (I thought about asking him directly, which I usually do, but I was a bit of a wuss I guess). Texted him and it got a pretty good response (though, the reason I texted him - or the reason I went with - was that he was working on something similar to my field, and thought it be pretty cool to stay in touch). We texted back and forth for that day, he seemed pretty interested, asked me lots of questions about me and talked about whatever (nothing related to our fields or anything like that) and by the evening, I suggested (very generally, since I was busy that day) to have drinks, to which he said he couldn't make it because he had plans to watch a film with friends, but he asked me to join him if I wanted to (again, I couldn't).
Texted the next day (friday), but he seemed a bit off and by the evening, I was the last one to text. So I didn't hear from him through all weekend and then I asked my friends if I should give it another shot and ask him out (more directly, since the last time I said anything about drinks, it was very generic and not clear). So they suggested I do that. I asked him out on monday (last week) and he said he couldn't because he'd be busy that week with some friends from abroad (he told me they were coming, though I didn't know when exactly), but then said we should definitely leave it as 'pending'. So by then, I just figured he was probably not interested and moved on.
I hear back from him, a day later, but couldn't check my messaged after 2 days since he texted me. But when he texted me, he was apparently just replying to an audio message I had sent him on monday, and how he'd forgot about listening to this, because he'd been very busy with his friends. We texted again, back and forth, and again, it gave me the impression that he was interested. At some point I sent him an audio about something I was working on and wanted to know what he thought about it, and he sent me something like this "I think we should talk about this. I'm back to (our city) by next week, and we could grab a beer and talk about it ;)" and suggested that by phone it would only be more complicated. That was probably the last thing he texted me (friday) and I simply replied with an audio saying sure and that he should let me know when he wants to go, but I also asked him how his trip with his friends was going. Then, again, I've not heard anything from him.
So, any thought on this? I've dated other guys before, but I've never been so confused about someone liking me (or not) like right now. I'm, of course, not going to text him again and wait if he actually texts me to ask me out, but at this point, I'm clueless.