Theatre and Awkwardness and Resentment, Oh My!

I thought long and hard and decided I would, in fact, continue the parallel theme of "I forgot to post" yesterday. . . . ha!

Actually, I had a long, interesting and lovely night first at my Interplay theatre group, followed by a previous performance viewing at one of the member's home.  We have an upcoming "performance" (loosely defined, as it is very improvisation and fairly casual) this coming Tuesday evening and thought it might be informative and helpful if we checked out a hand-held recording from our last performance a couple months ago.

It was better than I thought!  I don't know what I expected; at the time I felt, well, not completely confident.  But I found it very creative, engaging, and entertaining, and I'm choosing to believe that's not because I knew all the people and I was in it!  Maybe this performance will be even better, as I know we all have more confidence now.

Generally the company and conversation throughout the evening was lively and fun.  One thing happened at the end of the evening, however, that I would like to share, and if you have any thoughts or insights I would love to hear them.

So there is this older, East Coast (don't mean to stereotype but I'm trying to give you a picture. I do have several East Coast friends!), intellectual, very analytical and verbose guy in our group, who I respect and generally  enjoy playing and interacting with in the Interplay world.  Outside this world, I don't necessarily enjoy talking with him.

We did an exercise in our group a while back in which it came out that both of us wished we had a greater number of deeper friendships in our lives but didn't for various reasons.  After class, he came over and proposed we fill that need for each other.

Now, I appreciate the thought and all, but I don't think he is someone with whom I necessarily want to build that type of friendship.  I wasn't completely clear on that at the time though, said thank-you, and agreed maybe we could get together for coffee.

So last night, at the very end of the night when I was exhausted and trying to get out the door and go home, he corners me and brings it up again in a way in which I really felt "put on the spot."

I ungracefully hemmed and hawed a bit, even said, "I don't know why but I feel a little resistant.  I know we talked in class about our desire for deeper friendships, but I think it should happen organically," or something like that.  But to be fair, I did indicate that yes, I was willing to get together for coffee.

Then I moved around him and started saying goodbye to people.  I was hoping to put it off, give him a clue that I was not really interested.  But he followed me and persisted in asking how I wanted that to happen, email or phone?

I probably at that point should have insisted I needed to leave and said I'll talk to you about it later or something, but it felt aggressive and I just wanted to get out the door. . . so I gave him my email.

This morning, I'm aware that I feel some resentment and irritation.  I don't want to get together with him, and I guess I'll tell him that in the email.

I suppose I'm wondering how I could have done a better job in communicating so it didn't get to that point, and also how to tell him in the email in a way that won't create awkwardness when we are in our group?

Any thoughts?