A younger guy shows signs, is this flirting or is he friendly?

[Anonymous]

Hey, So I'm 24, this guy is 19, we click as friends, yet he's quite affectionate and all over my social media since July, tell me I'm beautiful, etc, yet he is kind of 'too serious'. I don't try to pursue, never had dated a person this young , yet he tells me I look 16. We met 2 weeks ago, he invited me to his friends' event, he invited me again a week ago and we talked quote a lot, told me he wanted to meet again and asked to come to another event. At night after meeting, he sent me a meme with little kinky context, then he did not text for 3-4 days. He texted me today and we talked about going to one of my favorite places in our town, it's a lake where I joked I see mermaids sometimes, and he said he wanted to see one and then marry the mermaid. It was obviously a joke, but is he pursuing me? :D he's not vulgar, he's not even too obvious or something, he's very chivalrous and polite, but just wondering how to read between the lines. I think he's also not very experienced, I had a long term (4yr) relationship before, ended it this summer, so I'm just thinking out loud and trying to do right... I like being around him though, he's respectful, calls me his friend. thoughts?

[abc3643]

Go for it.

Keep this in mind:
If you get a man that young, you can mold him to fit you because:
1. He is not all fucked-up from previous relationships.
2. He is not hardened yet and does not know a great deal about life. Put another way, he's not "set in his ways".
3. He is awestruck with you and very much will idolize you partly because of your age.

Now, what this doesn't mean is to try and change who he fundamentally is, but he's new at being an adult and, at 19, he's not really an adult. Sure, he has the body of an adult and should have the mental abilities of an adult, but he hardly has any real-world experience at being an adult.
So, not only can he be a boyfriend, but you can "show him the ropes" about being an adult - something he knows next to nothing about - and so you can mold him a bit into the adult you want and need and that he probably should be anyway.

[Asker]

Thanks !
Yeah, he's always saying how he's amazed by my life, personality, says for him I'm exemplary and is proud of me and gives me compliments all the time :D he's sweet, I also think he might be careful as well. I like taking it slow, he started being more 'flirty' after we met irl

[abc3643]

He's not careful!
He's a 19-year-old boy.
He doesn't know his ass from his elbow and caution is not really in his vocabulary. He may be apprehensive because he doesn't know what to do, but, other than that, he's not cautious because he doesn't have fear of you other than fear of failing and disappointing you.

Trust me - he's your puppy dog to take home and keep and love.

[Asker]

Hehe

[spartan55]

First of all, please get the pursuer/chase notion out of your brain. No one needs to chase anyone. Second, women sometimes get so caught up in irrelevant minutiae and think they are required to 'read between the lines'... and then overthink until their heads explode. The guy has asked you out twice in two or three weeks. That means he is interested. Now, your problem is it sounds you haven't anything to show him you are interested. If you are, you need to make that clear to him.

[abc3643]

^^^^^^
@asker, read that! The "read between the lines" thing. With men, there is nothing written between the lines. It's just blank space.