As stated in another comment, part of my surprise with this dude wanting to be my friend is because I stayed outright avoidant and skeptical of this dude for a long time. I still felt ‘pursued’ if you will by him while doing so. Not romantically, or in a creepy way, but the feeling was there. And since I associate the feeling of a man pursuing me with dating maybe I just didn’t initially process that it’s just not the same for him. And so maybe I’ve been kind of a standoffish dick to him for no reason because I just never processed the idea of being anything else. I just saw a complicated dude chasing me down and was like “oh.. bye”