![\"A](\"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dear-carol-mixed-signals.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Dear Carol,\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n This guy in my civics class is funny, sweet and friendly. We have a lot in common and he\u2019s also close with my best guy friend, so the three of us spend a fair amount of time together. Everything was good until I realized I had a crush on him. One day, we were texting for three hours, so I asked him to the dance. He replied that he \u201cdidn\u2019t know\u201d and he\u2019d \u201ctell me another time.\u201d After that, he started being kind of mean to me. It went on like that until I told him I was sick of waiting, and did he want to go to the dance? He told me no, then our conversation just stopped. I was really sad about it. The other day, I was playing basketball at my BGF\u2019s house and he came over. He wanted to play one-on-one the whole time. He is a lot bigger than me, so to stop him from shooting, we had a lot of contact. He took it as a chance to give me piggyback rides, and when it was time to go, he gave me two hugs and we were holding hands. The next day at school, he barely talked to me, but later he called, and we talked for an hour. Now the dance is coming up, and I don\u2019t know what to do.<\/strong><\/p>\n -Crushing and Confused<\/strong><\/p>\n Dear Crushing And Confused,<\/p>\n I don\u2019t blame you for feeling confused. Sounds like he\u2019s confused, too. On the one hand, he doesn\u2019t want to be pressured. On the other, he\u2019s happy to hang on the phone and give you piggyback rides. You\u2019ve already asked him to go, so don\u2019t ask again. Maybe talk to your BGF about this? Even after the dance, you\u2019ll want to know where you stand. If he\u2019s not kind to you in school, I hope you won\u2019t stay under his spell much longer\u2014especially since from my POV, he\u2019s not always \u201cfunny, sweet and friendly.\u201d (You may wish he were, but he\u2019s not.) Make an effort to focus on other things, too, like school, family, friends and basketball.<\/p>\n Carol Weston is the author of 16 books, including Girltalk<\/em>,\u00a0Speed of Life<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Ava and Pip<\/em>. Follow her on Insta\u00a0@carolwestonnyc<\/a>\u00a0and visit\u00a0carolweston.com.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n More Dear Carol, right here:<\/strong> Dear Carol,\u00a0 This guy in my civics class is funny, sweet and friendly. We have a lot in common and he\u2019s also close with my best guy friend, so the three of us spend a fair amount of time together. Everything was good until I realized I had a crush on him. One day, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":317334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[283,286,284],"tags":[48,150,42,285,8540,450,461],"class_list":["post-317292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-crushes","category-dear-carol","tag-advice","tag-crushes","tag-dear-carol","tag-life","tag-mixed-signals","tag-teen","tag-tween"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlslife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\ud83e\ude77 “Dear Carol, I’m having trouble staying focused on schoolwork”<\/a><\/strong>
\n\ud83e\ude77 “Dear Carol, I don’t know how to stand up to my parents”<\/a><\/strong>
\n\ud83e\ude77 “Dear Carol, How do I ask for space without being rude?”<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"