How can a woman move a friendship with a man toward something deeper?

What am I to do when I am interested, but he won't do anything? Any suggestions?

Question

As a young woman, a certain young man has caught my attention. We have become fairly good friends, but the only problem is that he’s too shy to make the first move. What am I to do when I am interested, but he won’t do anything? Any suggestions?

Answer

You say you’ve become fairly good friends, but he’s too shy to make the first move. Do you mean make the first move toward dating? If he’s not too shy to be your friend, why would he be too shy to state his intentions to date you?

Maybe he’s happy just being friends and doesn’t want to date. It’s possible, if you’re both still students, that he knows he’s not ready to marry in the next six months to a year, and therefore, doesn’t want to initiate a romantic relationship yet. Or it may also be that he’s content with your friendship and isn’t romantically attracted to you the way you are to him.

Finally, it’s possible your friendship is meeting his needs for companionship, intimacy and respect, and therefore he doesn’t perceive a need to move the friendship to the next level.

As Debbie Maken would say, you’ve got to leave men lonely enough to need you. Or as Scott Croft said, don’t meet all of a man’s “intermediate needs” lest he never feel the need to marry. The key is to not do so much as his friend that your friendship could be mistaken for a dating relationship. It’s tempting to slide into a relationship because it’s comfortable, rather than deciding to take the bold steps necessary to be a couple with a goal of marriage.

Whatever this young man’s reasons for not moving beyond friendship, I’d encourage you to not try and make things happen. A situation like this requires great wisdom because you don’t want to do anything that sets a precedent for you as the leader. Biblically, it’s a man’s role to initiate and a woman’s role to respond. Scott Croft would say pray and wait, and avoid the temptation to play the grade school game of leaking word to his friends that you think he’s neat.

Sincerely,

CANDICE WATTERS

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About the Author

Candice Watters

Candice Watters is the author of Get Married: What Women Can Do to Help it Happen, and co-author with her husband, Steve, of Start Your Family: Inspiration for Having Babies. Together they created Boundless in 1998. Little did they imagine how quickly 25 years would pass and that today, they’d have four children, two of them old enough to read Boundless for themselves.