The man I have a crush on lives directly across the driveway. I see him outside doing yard work or working on his truck. We have never spoken. Now I’m trying to work out how to signal that I’d be happy if he talked to me, which is quite an ambitious assignment for a relationship that has yet to include hello.
We’re both in our mid-twenties, and we both live with our parents. It’s been two years since I moved back home. There has been plenty of time to become familiar with the sight of each other and absolutely no conversation to go with it. He is a recognizable part of my surroundings and still, in every useful sense, a stranger.
The crush is the recent development. I don’t have a flirtation to describe or a promising exchange to dissect. I’ve realized I’m interested in him, and that has made an ordinary neighborly greeting feel like something requiring advance clearance. Nothing about his yard work has changed. The significance I’m assigning to it has.
What I want to communicate is fairly modest: I’m approachable, and if he happens to be interested, an attempt at conversation would be welcome. I’m not trying to arrange an entire romance across the driveway. I would like to get as far as establishing that speaking is permitted.
My most obvious possibility is to start waving or saying hi when I see him outside. That would give him something simple to respond to, without asking either of us to declare an attraction. The part that makes me hesitate is the long silence before it. A greeting would be completely ordinary between neighbors; introducing one now feels conspicuous to the person who knows why she suddenly wants to do it. Unfortunately, that person is me.
Then Facebook offered another route. He appeared in People You May Know, a category in which he qualifies geographically more than conversationally. I could send him a friend request. That would spare me the live opening, but it would also mean making our first contact online when our houses already face each other. I can’t decide whether that feels more casual or more deliberate than a wave.
There’s also the question of what he would actually understand. Being friendly doesn’t necessarily say I have a crush, and accepting a request wouldn’t tell me he has one either. I’m looking for a small opening, so some ambiguity comes with the territory. The awkward part is wanting the signal to be clear enough to encourage him without making a declaration I’m not ready to make.
I’m wondering how this would land from his side: which approach would make it easier to strike up a conversation without worrying that he was being unwelcome? I have no evidence that he wants to make a move. I’d just like him to know he wouldn’t be bothering me by talking.
For now, he’s still the neighbor across the driveway, and I’m still choosing between a hello he could hear and a notification he could accept. We haven’t reached either one.
