I am confused

Women are a constant source of confusion for me.

I met a woman a couple months ago, actually, she IMed me in Yahoo out of the blue. I tell her she is my stalker. I've kept this on a just friends basis because I wasn't really wanting to "date" anyone. I had just broken up with MS, so she understood, and was fine with just being friends. We probably talk once or twice a week, so i started learning a lot about her, as well as she learned about me.

There are a lot of things going on in her life that make her a bad candidate for dating. The fact that she is married is not the biggest of problems. I won't go into all of it.

She really seems to like me, but gives me plenty of space. She gets flirty with me, but then tells me that it takes a lot before she would trust a man enough to have sex (not that I was trying). From further conversations it was pretty obvious she wanted to "go out".

We met for dinner right before I went to Michigan for Christmas. No pressure for calling this a date. We were just meeting and talking. No different than us chatting on the computer.

After this I got very busy, but continued to talk to her on IM, as well as an occasional phone call. There was never any pressure or guilt laid upon me if I didn't talk to her for a week or so. I would get an IM, just saying that she hoped I was having a good week, or something like that. I appreciated the space as well as the occasional "hello".

I like having women friends. Part of it is probably the sexual tension that is naturally present. But I think most of it is just the different kind of things I can do with a woman friend, that guys don't really do together. Although I will go to a movie with my guy friends, it doesn't happen often.

I think another aspect of it is I can talk pretty openly with a woman about my love life, where I can't with most of the guys. It's just not "manly" to talk about relationships. With her it is different. I'm not as open about these types of discussions.

She got very flirty with me on the phone a couple weeks ago. I played along for a little while, but for some reason I felt guilty about it. Almost like I was leading her on in a way. So I got serious with her. I was very candid with her about things going on in her life that I had a problem with (from an angle of dating her). She didn't take it well. She got very upset with me, and told me that she was amazed at how nice of a guy I was... up until this conversation. The fact of the matter was that I was just telling her my feelings about my hesitation to be anything more than friends with her. Trust me, there is a lot here.

She started crying, which is like torture to me. I wasn't trying to insult her. She had to have known that the circumstances she is in is not conducive to being in a relationship. I told her she was over-reacting, but we all know that once a woman gets this upset I was just dumping gas on the fire.

A day or 2 later she sent me an e-mail apologizing, and saying she hopes we can still be friends. I was fine with being friends as long as the drama was gone. The last couple weeks have been drama free... pretty much back to normal.

We went out to a movie last night (only our second time face to face). There was no drama, and we did have fun, but it's just not feeling right. I feel like I am in limbo land, somewhere between dating, and friends. It's very odd, and will probably just fizzle.

I think I've become cynical.