I’ve been there. Used to work with a girl, had a huge crush on her and I assumed she did me as well. She used to hang out, we’d get lunch every day, she would sing songs at her desk and substitute my name, flirting was obvious to me and everyone in the place assumed we were in a relationship. Until I finally had the courage to ask her out.

She was completely surprised.

Oh well, live and learn. Eventually found my wife and here we are almost 20 years later with kids. Eventually the right one will click.

Prob fake but imagine spending a lot of time trying to form a friendship with someone and in the end you find they were only trying to fuck the entire time.

Theres a lot to unpack here, but really OP made a mistake by asking to go hiking. Thats a terrible first date idea and also isnt inherently date-y. Likely he was just missreading her kindness as flirting, but if he had asked her to dinner or coffee brunch it would've made his intentions more clear to her.

Not that it really matters because its fake and gay anyways.

I'll never understand how difficult people make things by not being forthright and making things awkward:

"Is it okay if I bring my boyfriend?"

"...I think there's been a misunderstanding. I had asked you on a hike as a fun first date, I didn't realize you had a boyfriend. I'm going to bow out of this, but I can give you the hike info if you want to take him." And then you laugh about the misunderstanding the next work day, and keep things at work from then on. No reason for it to get bad. Flirting is still fun! Just leave it at that without expecting anything more.

Had a college friend that went through a similar situation. We figured she was looking for a threesome because her bf was very much like my friend.

I’m actually in a situation somewhat like this. A girl our online group knows became somewhat fixated on me. She wants to talk all the time, fantasizes about us living together, but I know she has a long term bf. She isn’t happy with him, but still, they love together and we know him, so it’s fairly inappropriate.

fake, anon had a girl interested in him

gay, he almost had a three way

Completely possible anon was a creep and she felt uncomfortable saying no.

I'm reading a green text post here, and then the comments are analysing the situation as if this is r/amitheasshole. What's going on Lemmy?

Honestly gaslighting like that is disgusting to get someone's hopes up like that only to find out she has a BF. A girl was doing that to me, and now I have a hard time trusting people anymore.

OP had a chance at a three way and dropped the ball...

I don't get why anon believes he is being used. It was a miscommunication, sure. Did he spend money on her before this? Using him as a ride to go on a hike? Hikes being extremely cheap and only needing to pay parking, usually.

It's kinda weird to wait until the last minute to ask if someone else can come along on a planned outing.

But the rest? I dunno. Looks like a pretty standard mixup.

Definitely sending mixed signals not mentioning her boyfriend and saying she has to do things alone, but not sure how that qualifies as "using". Hiking isn't really something people "use" others for, it's not like he would have been carring her the whole time. If she was getting him to do her job when he was talking to her then yeah, but this doesn't mention anything like that. She could very well have just wanted a friend to talk to at work and didn't know how to bring it up after a while...

Maybe I'm overthinking this...