14 Solid Signs Your Guy Friend Likes You But Is Hiding It

We help you decode him

Are you not sure if your guy friend likes you or not? Is he just being friendly, or are there bigger feelings hiding behind his sweet behavior? Take a look at these 14 signs that your guy friend likes you but is hiding it.

Many guys will try hiding their true feelings to easier be able to get close to you. But when he secretly likes you, most of these 14 signs will be present. The more of them that are present, the more he likes you.

Let’s dive in.

1. He is always up for spending time with you

How we spend our time is the most tell-tale sign of how we really feel.

Thus, one of the first solid signs you should look for is that a guy friend who secretly likes you, but is hiding it, always gravitates to you.

He might fight this impulse on many different levels. But at the end of the day, how he spends his time is a reflection of what truly goes on inside him. He simply can’t hide his interest. And he can’t help by acting on it.

So, if he always texts you and suggests different activities you can do together, he most likely has a secret crush.

Is he always around?

If he keeps showing up at the places you go to. Or try to get closer to your friends and family or if he takes a sudden interest in your passion or hobbies.

All of those are signs that your guy friend likes you, but is hiding it. He secretly wants to get closer to you.

You can also watch how he acts when you are around a group of people. If he chooses to engage with you, most likely he is romantically interested.

He might try to avoid you

Sometimes people are afraid of exactly the person they like, so they might also try to actively avoid you. But if this guy friend likes you, he won’t be capable of keeping up this behavior for long. He will always come back to you.

So, don’t look at how he behaves on a single day or on a single occasion. Watch how he behaves as a whole. This will tell you if he secretly likes you.

2. He can’t help looking at you

Sure, we are usually up for spending time with our friends, so that’s not the only sign you should be looking for.

The next very important sign is how comfortable he is having eye contact with you. If a guy is interested in you, his eyes will always gravitate toward you. He will keep checking out what you are doing, even when he is busy with other things.

Prolonged eye contact

If the two of you are having a conversation, he will be comfortable with keeping eye contact for a long time. If he looks away from you, just wait and see; if he likes you, soon enough, he will look back.

When we like someone, we just can’t get enough of looking at them.

Normally men only hold prolonged eye contact with a woman they are sexually interested in.

He might be shy

If your guy friend is on the shyer side, the eye contact will still be there. But he will look away more quickly. However, if he likes you, his eyes will always find their way back to you. He will also often be watching you when he thinks no one else notices.

He looks at you and smiles

Another sign that he likes you but is hiding it, is that he looks at you and smiles or laughs when someone says something funny. He might also look at you directly after he has said something funny. He wants to check if the comment got your approval.

It’s like the two of you share a secret

When we like someone, the best thing in the whole world is when we look at them and smile. If he has a crush on you, he will not be able to resist this behavior.

His eyes will always seek out yours, especially in a group of people. And especially when something funny or interesting is going on.

He craves your approval

He will also often look at you to get your approval. For example, if he says something interesting and important, his eyes will quickly check out your to see how you reacted to the information. That’s one of the biggest signs that a guy friend likes you, but is hiding it.

3. He asks you a lot of questions

When we are romantically interested in someone, we find them endlessly fascinating.

We want to know everything about them. Even minor details become important. If he just wants to be friends, he might still ask you about yourself.

You are his favorite subject

But the distinction here is the depth of those questions and their frequency. When he likes you, he is just so much more interested in you than he is in someone else.

Do check how interested he seems in other people you meet and compare that to the interest he gives you.

He wants to know your opinion

Another thing you can check is if he is always helpful to steer the conversation back to you and allow you room to speak when you are in a group of people. Of all the people around, he is most interested in hearing what you have to say. He also wants other people to hear what you have to say.

When he likes you, he will always be very interested in hearing your opinion, regardless of the subject.

4. He doesn’t like when you talk to other guys

Another surefire way to bust a friend who secretly has a crush on you is how he reacts when other guys give you attention, or when you mention other guys.

If he indeed likes you, you will feel his behavior shift. He might freeze up or become overly chatty.

The thing to look out for is that he has a gut reaction to you interacting with other potential guys and that gut reaction is one of discomfort.

His reaction is not appropriate to the situation

When we hear of a friend’s dating adventures, we are often interested and positive. We often encourage them and ask nice pleasant questions.

But a sure sign of a guy friend who likes you, but is hiding it, is that he might shut you off or become stiff and uncomfortable.

He might try and hide it and play it cool. But you should still be able to sense a shift in his mood and demeanor.

5. He doesn’t talk about other girls around you

One of the easiest signs that you are the main interest of a guy is that he doesn’t mention other girls around you.

Friends will talk about whom they like or the latest date they went on.

But when a guy friend likes you, he will make a conscious effort not to mention much about his love life. After all, he doesn’t want you to think that he is not interested in you.

On a subconscious level, he wants to send you the message that no one stands a chance against you.

He might try to make you jealous

The exception to this rule is the guy who tries to gauge your interest, or even make you jealous, by mentioning other girls.

If he does this, he will ensure that you know that none of those girls lives up to his standard and that he is not seriously considering them. Basically, he wants to show you that he is desired and thus increase his desirability in your eyes.

He follows your lead

Another version of this is if you talk with another guy or mention another guy and your friend immediately tries to do the same thing.

This is actually a sign that he is interested, but doesn’t want to show his hand. You mention your latest date, only to have him mention his latest date.

If you fancy another common friend of both of you, he might say something negative about the guy in question.

6. He remembers a lot of things about you

This is such a fun way to bust someone who is hiding his feeling.

Generally speaking, we forget a lot of what we are being told. Especially when it comes to friends since friends talk a lot to each other all the time. We know we can always ask for the information again.

We also tend to forget things about other people because we are focusing on ourselves. Frankly, we are pretty self-observed.

We focus on our love-interest

The only time this rule doesn’t apply is when we are in love.

Then all of a sudden, we are not self-obsessed at all.

On the opposite, we are obsessed with the person of our affection. We want to know all there is to know about them. We have an intense craving to figure them out.

Strong emotions leave a strong imprint

Another explanation for this is that we remember things that have evoked a strong feeling in us. When our secret crush talks, even if it’s just about their lunch, the conversation still evokes a strong emotional response and as a result, we remember the things they told us.

So, if your guy friend knows that you don’t like olives, despite the fact you don’t have any memory of telling him this, chances are that he likes you.

He knows all the small insignificant details

Another sign, not to miss, is that a guy friend who likes you but is hiding his true feelings will show where his heart really is by knowing a lot of things about you.

He will pick up on details you yourself may not be fully aware of. He will also refer back to those details. Being able to show you that he sees you, is a way to bring value to your life. This brings me to my next point.

7. He brings value to your life

When we like someone, we desperately crave to be of importance to them. We want to matter to them.

Between humans, there is a surprisingly huge number of different ways we bring value to each other.

A guy who likes you will, in his own quiet way, utilize all of those different ways. He will be on the constant lookout for all the different ways he can be of service to you.

He will hear you and see you

He will listen attentively to you when you speak. He will try to show you that he gets you, understands your need, and is available to meet those needs. He might be overly agreeable, for example, like the books and songs you like.

If you say that gnocchi is your favorite dish, he tells you that he loves gnocchi. When we like someone, we always want to connect them closer to us by pointing out similarities.

He fixes things for you

He might show up at your house to repair something; he might bring you a coffee or suggest a book he thinks you should read.

He will love to give you recommendations

When guys are into a girl, they just love to recommend different things to her. This is him, basically showing you that he will be a huge contributor to your life.

He might also give you advice and try to organize things for you.

The more value he tries to bring, the more he likes you.

He might not be fully aware of his behavior

A lot of this behavior happens on a subconscious level. The guy in question can be in denial about his feelings, but if he constantly keeps inviting you to fun activities, he is still working hard to deserve his place in your life. And eventually in your heart.

8. He is comfortable getting physically close to you

What truly separates a guy who is just being friendly from a guy with a romantic interest is his longing for physical contact.

When they like someone, guys love physical contact. He almost can’t help himself.

Pay attention to his baseline

First, you have to check out how much physical contact he has with other women around you. When trying to understand someone, you must establish a baseline.

Some guys are very physical, while some others like to keep a huge physical distance. What you want to look for is if he is being more physical with you than with other women.

Some guys are shyer

Not every guy will be as straightforward as to touch you. But if a guy likes you, he will often get into your personal space. He will walk closer to you and when the two of you talk, he will stand a little bit too close to you. You should be able to feel that his body, on a subconscious level, wants to be as close to you as possible.

Test him

Generally speaking, if you are being more physical towards him, he will respond positively and mirror the behavior. If you want, you can touch him and see how long it takes him to re-pay the touch.

A guy who likes you will mirror your behavior; he will touch you in a similar way. When you are touching him, you give him permission to touch you back. If he is shy, the touch might be very light, but it will be there, in one form or another.

9. He treats you differently

Sometimes when we like someone, we might act completely irrationally around them. We want to talk with them, but instead, we spend the whole evening avoiding them.

We want to touch them, but when they touch us, we shy away. We might even look at everyone else, except the object of our desire.

We act irrationally when in love

Sometimes the behavior we display around our crush is not a positive one. For example, some guys are playful and flirty around all the girls they don’t like. But when it comes to that special someone, they freeze up and become stiff and boring and tight-lipped. Basically unable to be themselves.

Pay close attention

Thus, you cannot always trust the usual indicators; instead, you have to observe if he behaves differently with you.

He might treat all other girls in a friendly, easygoing way, but go out of his way to avoid interactions with you.

If his interaction with you is different than all his other interactions, this is a clear sign that something is going on. And that’s something that can very well be infatuation, especially if he displays some of the other signs from this list.

10. He teases you

This is such a sweet sign that a guy friend likes you but is hiding it. We naturally tease our friends more than we tease other people. But when we have a romantic interest in someone, this behavior usually goes through the roof.

We want them to feel

When we like someone, we want to elicit an emotional response in them. Since we have such a strong emotional response to them, we want them to share that experience. One very easy way to do this is to tease the other person.

The emotion this evokes can sometimes be a bit negative especially if the person is not very good at teasing. But if you like the guy back, you will feel his attempt is endearing.

Emotional closeness

Teasing between people is also an indicator that the two people are very emotionally close. Siblings, for example, are usually experts at teasing each other.

If someone you hardly know tries to tease you, this indicates that they feel emotionally close to you.

11. He is tense around you

If you pay close attention, you should be able to pick up on a certain tension every time you enter a room where he is or have a conversation with him.

You should be able to feel his body freeze up a bit and him being either more guarded with his words or starting to babble a lot.

Basically, if we like someone, we are never entirely natural around that person. We might become livelier or quieter, but they do have a very strong effect on us.

He might try to hide his awkwardness

He might also take things you say very literally. When we like someone, their words have a strong effect on us.

Many people will try to compensate for their nerves and stiffness by being overly relaxed and playful.

But you should be able to sense that unmistakable shift we all get in our bodies when something important is at stake.

12. He tries to impress you

Guys are just the best. When they like you, their performance becomes very important to them. They want to show off. They want to show all their great qualities.

If a guy friend likes you but is hiding it, he will mention all his success. He will mention athletic medals he won as a kid.

In fact, much of his conversation will be centered around showing you his best sides and what makes him unique from all other guys out there.

In simple terms, he will find any way he can to impress you.

13. He goes hot and cold

You made it this far, so now it’s time for us to be a bit more serious.

A lot of guys who pose themselves as friends have a tendency to go hot and cold. They seem super into you one day, only to ignore you the next. They encourage you in all sorts of ways, but never confess their feelings or take you out on a date.

This sort of behavior can leave you feeling frustrated and sometimes even misled.

The reason for this can be that the guy in question hasn’t made up his mind.

Depending on how long this friendship has been going on and how new his feelings for you are, being just friends can be a signal that he has a dismissive side.

The fact that he is flying under the radar tells you something about his emotional state. And it might not be good news.

He might be emotionally unavailable

I have written a couple of in-depth articles that you should be checking out at this point. Signs he is fighting his feelings for you and 10 signs of an emotionally unavailable man.

The basic line is to trust your own instinct. The fact that his behavior towards you fluctuates is in itself a sign that he likes you. But the fact that he likes you might not lead to the fairytale ending you might be hoping for. He might not be ready for a real relationship.

It is up to you how you deal with the situation. If you want to increase your chances of making him yours, check out our article How to get out of the friend zone with a guy.

14. He will be vulnerable with you

A guy who has genuinely romantic feelings for you will actually be very keen to show you who he really is. We all want to be loved for the depths of our personalities. If a guy friend shares vulnerable truths about himself or sensitive memories, this is, in fact, an indicator that he likes you.

Most people have a natural fear of vulnerability, but most people have an even bigger craving for vulnerability and meaningful connections, especially when they are romantically interested in someone.

He shares personal things about himself

One of the many signs of a guy friend who likes you, but is hiding it, is that he will want you to know the things about him that are not so flattering. He actually wants you to see him for who he truly is, and he will try very hard to give you this version.

He will also watch closely how you respond to his moments of vulnerability. We all want someone who is going to accept us for who we are.

A Final note

If you are curious if a guy friend likes you but is hiding it, you can ask one of your trusted friends to watch how he interacts with you. Have a friend check these 14 solid signs and see what they think about the situation.

An outside perspective is always good for decoding a behavior.

You should also ask yourself what you want out of the situation. It’s important that we make decisions by listening to our feelings and needs.