My 16 yo son has asked me to start a thread asking for advice for him.
He likes a girl at his 2x a week youth group. He doesn't know her very well but talks to her a bit most weeks. She's a year younger than him. There is another boy who he believes likes her as well. There is bad feeling between them from some past history (not girl-related) and the other boy appears to be acting in a competitive manner towards my son. Nothing aggressive, but each seems to be trying to out-compete the other for the girl's attention. My son is stressed by what feels like endless conflict with him.
There is also a second boy who my son thinks might like the girl. This boy is quite feminine and spends all his time hanging out with the girls in the capacity of group clown and drama queen. He is often putting himself into the girls' personal space, leaning on them or pushing his chair right up to them, poking them and giggling with them. The girls seem to enjoy this. He gets up close and personal in a way that most boys would only do with their girlfriend, but he behaves like this with several different girls throughout a single youth group session. He only speaks to one or two boys, and that not often.
When he was younger, he was obsessed by wearing dresses and all his favourite toys / TV characters were very girly girls eg Disney princesses. His hobbies are acting and dance and he struggles a lot with anxiety. He looks thin and weedy and not especially good-looking or heart-throb like.
I take the interactions between him and the girls as suggesting that he might be gay (whether he realises it or not) and that the girls find him fun and unthreatening but are not mega interested in him as a longer-term boyfriend. I do know that he has had at least one girlfriend before. He has recently been spending a lot more time with the girl that my son likes.
My son is wanting tips to help him cope with this situation. He is getting very depressed about it because (a) he struggles with the ongoing sense of conflict with the first boy and (b) he is worried that the girl spends quite a lot of time with the second boy.
My son is autistic, lacks social confidence and has never had a girlfriend before. This is all high-octane emotional territory for him, so he often comes home from youth group feeling absolutely desperate about what seems to him to be an unbearable situation.
What would you advise him to do in this type of situation?