Search Results: boyfriend shying away

Background: we’ve been friends 3 years. I only started liking her more recently as we got to know each other better hanging out one on one. Before I only occasionally saw her in groups. She’s shy and has low self esteem. She also assumes guys don’t like her & she’s never had a boyfriend before.

Way she behaves:
- if we’re hanging out alone, sometimes she can be distracted whilst I’m saying something.
- she rarely texts me first and never initiates plans.
- if someone hints or jokes about something between us, she either laughs in an embarrassed way, says nothing or denies it.
- she can be nervous when we’re alone and carefully words what she says. But not always.
- She laughs at a lot of things I say and when I do something silly like when I bump my head as I follow her across the train carriage as she moved away from the door. But then she laughs at a lot of things.
- in a group of mutual friends, she likes to talk to me the most. She’ll actively come and talk to me and if I’m talking to someone else, she’ll butt in the conversation. She also appears to follow me. If I stay back to take photos whilst the rest of the group walks away or something, she waits for me even if everyone else goes off ahead.
- She says yes every time if I suggest doing something alone with her unless she’s seeing a close relative.
- She occasionally makes prolonged eye contact with me and gets close to me but other times she keeps her distance and if I make eye contact, she reciprocates with a strong smile but then looks away after 5 seconds.
- She made prolonged silent eye contact with me once (about 50cm away) when we got separated from our other friends but then we heard our other friends coming and she pulled away.
- She seems to be next to me in nearly every group photo were in.