You meant well, and you did fine

Hi Carolyn: I moved to a new city and have been making friends in my office. I’d been seeing a lot of one guy, in ways that seemed more and more datelike to me – nothing dramatic, but he kept trying to pay for my half of meals, he made me a mix CD, etc. Most of my friends are men, I like hanging out with one person at a time, and in the past I’ve sometimes been irresponsible about making my intentions clear, which means I’ve hurt people I genuinely like.

The other night, feeling like I’d been sending mixed signals to this guy, I panicked and apologized. Turns out, no, he’s interested in someone else. I feel half-stupid and half-relieved (I just got out of a relationship and need friends but not dates); still, I’m wondering whether all this awkwardness was even necessary. How do you walk the line between liking his company and being a tease? – H.

A mix CD? Yep, necessary.

Make a one-word substitution that doesn’t change the meaning of your question – “I’m wondering whether all this honesty was necessary” – and it becomes much easier to answer (easy answers being the Holy Grail around here).

You didn’t want to mislead him. Whether your apology was necessary or not, it was a compassionate gesture on your part (gratuitous compassion being the Holy Other Grail around here). This is especially true if his “someone else” was merely some face-saving fiction. But either way, he got useful information.

Besides, if you had asked me how to walk the line and you hadn’t prefaced it with your awkward-mixed-signals story, I’d have advised you to do exactly what you ended up doing: Be direct. I would, however, have suggested you ask him whether you were sending mixed signals – a fine point, but there it is.

So, you get a little uncomfortable silence. With apologies to Winston Churchill, awkwardness is the worst form of social distress except for all those others that have been tried. As long as you mean well, you’ll live.

Dear Carolyn: I relocated for love and am surprised to find myself without a job, any friends, or a usual hangout. Making friends comes easy, but this time it has been tough. Volunteer opportunities are few, and the job hunt takes up most of my spare time. Any suggestions? My S.O.’s friends are cool, but I need my own posse. – Newcomer

You do, but in the meantime, you need patience. Almost everyone needs time to find an entry point – job, school, hobby – that allows them to travel from stranger to new face to familiar face.

Until you get a job, and with it acquaintances and usual hangouts and access to volunteer opportunities you never knew about and all the rest of the stuff that people acquire and acquire and then start shedding because they’re too busy, make yourself become a regular somewhere. Gym, cafe, dog track.

Two things to mix into your patience: restraint, so you don’t lean too hard on the S.O. to be your whole life for you, and courage. Treat this unplanned solitude as an opportunity to do all the things you could never drag anyone else to do with you. Make a new friend of yourself.