3 days ago
Dear Richard Madeley: ‘My housemate and I kissed and now she's avoiding me'
Dear Richard,
I'm living in a shared house with one man and two women, one of whom is an old friend from university. We are all in our early 30s. We get on pretty well but tend to socialise with our own groups of friends outside the house – we don't do big Sunday lunches together or anything like that.
A couple of weeks ago, one of the women – the one I don't know well – asked me if I wanted to go out to the pub. We went for a few drinks, and then we kissed on the way back to the house.
Nothing has been said since, and I get the feeling she's avoiding me. I don't want her to feel uncomfortable about what happened, but I worry that if I try to clear the air I'll just make things worse.
It's fine if she thinks it was a mistake – while I don't exactly hate the idea of our revisiting some sort of romantic situation, I haven't fallen head-over-heels in love or anything, plus I don't want to upset the 'chemistry' of the house. It's just that it now feels really awkward. Should I try to talk to her?
–Ben, via email
Dear Ben
Hmm. I've always been cautious about initiating 'clear the air' conversations. In my experience, they can have the opposite
effect, leaving the atmosphere clouded by confusion, embarrassment – and even antagonism. Often the wiser course is simply to let things lie and resolve themselves with the passage of time.
If this woman is avoiding you, it's precisely because she doesn't want an air-clearing exchange with you. Maybe she's simply embarrassed about your brief clinch on the way home, or she feels guilty about it for some reason, or she just plain regrets it. Whatever the reason, she obviously doesn't want to talk about it.
You should be sensitive to that. And in any case, it's hardly a big deal, is it? It was only a kiss or two (or maybe three?). These things happen. And if she wants to pretend that it didn't, I'd go along with it if I were you. Least said, soonest mended.
