Boundaries and self preservation

[lastlostmonkey]

I've got a fair bit going on at the moment and not coping v well with it. Have been to GP and been referred for counselling etc. so it's kind of in hand, but I get very low or worked up and don't deal well with it. I have a colleague at work who is doing my head in. We are kind of friends but he is pretty inconsistent towards me, overly sentimental for a while then apparently bored / uninterested for a while. I have started to find him very difficult to deal with and it's just adding to all the other shit, plus now I've got into a stupid thing when he's bored etc. about feeling it's my fault and I should apologise / win him over. I just don't need this. I need people who are going to be proper friends to me right now. How best to deal with it given that I see him three days a week? I don't want to be rude, but I need to snap out of this confusing situation.

Can you sort of leave him to it? Be friendly enough to be polite (and don't get embroiled when he goes 'sentimental' whatever that means); then, as soon as you've finished the conversation, it's gone from your mind. Don't give him too much head space. Are you perhaps secretly hoping it might develop into more, hence minding so much when he withdraws?

I don't think I'm secretly hoping anything, and I have checked and checked again. We are both married with small DCs. I think we get on and I was a bit thrown by the sentimentality - it's happened before that someone has said to me 'oh, aren't we such good friends' or similar and I've just gone along with it when really it just seems like we get along at a normal level. But you're right about headspace, just not sure how to get to that tbh.