How to handle friend’s (35NB) apparent crush on me (30F)

TLDR: Friend in a relationship apparently used to have a crush on me. They didn’t really do anything, but it was awkward. I stopped talking to them because of it. I want to try to be friends again.

I (30F) met AJ (35NB) at work a couple of years ago. We don’t work together anymore, but we do similar types of work and we’re in the same professional community. I feel like we’re too old to be having this problem, but here goes.

AJ is in a long-term romantic relationship. When AJ and I were working together, it seemed like AJ developed a crush on me. They were super attentive to me, paid way more attention to me than others. They’d randomly give me compliments or do nice things for me. They wanted to know everything about me, and remembered random pieces of information like my birthday or a book I liked. AJ became kind of soft? giggly? when we were alone together, which isn’t their overall personality at all. I could tell that AJ was overthinking our texts because it would be like “AJ is typing…” for I swear to God 20 minutes. I could tell from their body language that they were physically attracted to me. Sometimes, they’d talk about things that sounded sensual/sexual, but not in an explicit way.

AJ was never pushy, never got upset with me, never tried to make a move. But it still stressed me out because I could tell that they really wanted my attention. It was also really awkward because a lot of this was happening in front of our coworkers. I got a couple of comments about it. This felt inappropriate for work and I didn’t know what to do about it.

After we stopped working together, AJ made sure to keep in touch. Eventually, they started volunteering at my new job, and they’d always come and find me to talk. I wondered if AJ’s partner knew about me. They barely ever talked about their partner, even when I’d ask. I finally met the partner, which was by accident. Things didn’t seem good between the two of them.

AJ and I never talked about these things. Except at one point, AJ told me that they’d been thinking about how they’re “too uptight” and “hold themself to too high a standard” and “doubt whether they have the right motivations for the things they do.”

At the beginning, I thought probably AJ would chill out over time. But it didn’t seem like that was happening. I was really stressing out about this. I told AJ that I was concerned about boundaries, and I didn’t want to keep in touch anymore. They said they support my decision to do whatever is right for me.

—

That was about a year ago. It’s coming up again because AJ and I are now back in touch. I reached out to them with a question related to work, and I ended up asking them to catch up. We caught up, and it was a bit awkward, but nice. AJ asked if I’m down to be back in touch now, and I said yes. We made loose plans to hang out again in a couple of weeks.

I’ve been to therapy in the meantime and learned about how other people are responsible for their own emotions. My therapist has encouraged me to redirect my thoughts away from worrying about whatever is going on with AJ. Like if this is a problem, they can bring that up, or do whatever they need to do. For myself, I like talking to AJ, they’re an interesting person, we have a lot in common, I would like to be friends if possible.

I’m still a bit anxious about whether I made a bad call by re-opening the door, or how things will go. Or how to handle it if AJ starts acting the same way that they used to. Would it still bother me? I’m not sure. I used to worry that AJ was trying to actually take it somewhere, but I don’t really think that anymore. I also felt stressed about it when it was happening at work, but that’s long over.

Do you think I made a bad call by opening the door? Or by breaking it off in the first place? How should I handle it, if it goes similar to last time?