A friend of mine has a best friend who is terribly, paralyzingly shy. Just doesn't do well in social situations. When her friend came to visit her in El Paso, she brought her over to my house (my friend was affianced to my roommate at the time) to hang out and play board games. I tried to get the friend to open up a little more, and in the process, I got a little drunk and goofy. (This is all before the breakup and coming back to the Lord.)
Subsequent meetings and attempts to bring this woman's non-existant social side to life were not successful; The Ex really hated this woman because she seemed stuck-up, or a word that rhymes with itchy. In hindsight, The Ex probably hated her just because I paid attention to her, and wanted to make her comfortable in our social circle.
As this woman lived in DFW, and I did not, we did not see each other much. When the wedding came around in March of '13 (which, coincidentally, is when I started hanging out with you guys here), she was the maid-of-honor, and I was a groomsman. So we got to spend a couple of days hanging out while decorating the church, wedding party dinner, pictures, all that stuff. I had resolved to simply be friendly, and not force her to be social on a large scale. To give you a concept of how much this poor woman struggled with social situations, she downed three glasses of white wine at the reception to get drunk ON PURPOSE so that she could handled giving her toast without freaking out. (Most of us had NO idea she'd done that; many of us, including the bride, were absolutely floored that she managed to pull it off and we told her how proud we were that she overcame her anxiety.)
My buddy Steve, another groomsman, even came to town with a plan. "I am going to nice to Christine ALL weekend. I will ask her to dance at the reception. And I WILL get ONE smile out of her!" He succeeded. All the single folk took turns dancing with each other, and when the DJ called for last dance, I polished off my punch, and got ready to ask Christine, because I hadn't dance with her yet. Before I'd finished swallowing, she'd grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the floor, "Get on the floor, WE'RE DANCING!" Oh. Okay.
A couple of days later, after everyone had gone back to their respective towns, she started messaging me on FB messenger. It was nice to sit and have conversation with someone, so I would talk with her most nights. (I was still getting my feet wet here in the forums.) When the bride and groom returned from the honeymoon, the bride cornered me.
"Soooo...you need to know...uh...Christine likes you."
"WAT"
"Yeah...and, this is the first time she's ever been brave enough to interact with a man she likes without being forced to. It would be a good experience for her to just learn to talk with you."
"Uhhhh...does she know I don't do long distance? She knows this can't go anywhere, right?"
"Well...she'll find out eventually."
*sigh*
I waited too long, because we did finally come to terms about four months later. She was very upset with me, and still won't speak to me today (the bride says I need to give her a few years, maybe ten...no judgement here). And she's totally sworn off dating, forever and ever, amen. So not only did it come out of nowhere, I managed to completely destroy her desire for romance forever.
When I do something, I really do the most thorough job I can, it seems...even when I'm not intending to.