If He Wants No Strings, Why's He Trying To Get Me To Fall For Him?!

I recently met a guy online a few months ago. I wasn’t really looking for anything serious, just someone fun and new to spend time with because I was fresh out of a relationship that had lasted two years.

Enter: “Adam.”

Adam is crazy funny. We got on like a house fire and were shooting off joke after joke before exchanging numbers. It took about a month or so before we met in person because I was on vacation, but he checked in pretty often and made his interest very clear.

For our first date, I had him find a dog friendly restaurant for us as I’d just brought home a brand new puppy from vacation and needed to keep him with me. He picked one of my favorite places and met me there, bringing along an inexpensive gift referencing a sarcastic joke I’d made the day before.

The date started off well- we told stories that painted us as both as adrenaline junkies with terrible judgement (first dates gone horribly wrong- including someone on heavy hallucinogens attempting to choke me out was one of my highlights.)

We’re both very outgoing, so we made friends with the waiters and people at surrounding tables. It was a super fun time. While we were walking away from the restaurant, figuring out what to do next, he suddenly picked me up, threw me over his shoulder, and ran me over to a car that belonged to a man who had been sitting at a table across from ours! The trunk was open, so he stuffed me in and yelled “go, go, go!” at the owner, who stood there confused as all hell before everyone realized it was a joke and started laughing hysterically.

We went and played mini golf afterward, and it was great fun. We were giving each other a lot of guff and teasing each other. He insisted on paying for everything opened doors for me, and so on- all the gentlemanly things that you’d expect.

During dinner, he’d told me that he’s never experienced anything like “love” before, but has lived with and been in serious relationships with a few women. I told him I’m casually seeing a couple people and am just really looking for fun new people to hang out with.

He walked me to my car, and while we were walking toward a dark alley he joked “we both know what this means,” and grabbed me, put his hand over my mouth, and started dragging me back toward the alley for about 5 seconds while I was screaming and laughing.
I never felt like I was in danger, I knew he was just joking.

He dropped me off at my car, kissed my cheek, and called me on his way home to talk until he got there. We’ve spoken every day since and seen each other every week.

The second date was your standard dinner and a movie, though we found an abandoned shopping cart, which he zipped me around in for about ten minutes between the restaurant and movie theater parking lots before “parking” it in front of the ticket counter. He held my hand during the movie, and he fed me popcorn and tried to eat mine from out of my fingers. I’d sometimes pretend I was going to feed some to him, and would “accidentally” drop it at the last second. We were giggling like maniacs the entire time- luckily the theater was mostly empty.

He’s a complete psycho, but in such a ridiculously fun way.

He calls me almost every day and texts me all day, even when he’s at work. He’ll send me little videos of the remodel he’s doing on his house, or the things he’s doing at work. He says yes to everything I invite him to, and he invited me to a BBQ this week. I’d told him I was in a weird mood due to a little bit of a falling out with my best friend. He called me to cheer me up for an hour and got me in a good mood in no time. We both talk about how weird it is that we have the same super dark sense of humor and how fun it is to be around and talk to each other.

He and I had a “what are you looking for?” talk, and it’s been made pretty clear on both ends that I’m not available for a long-term committed relationship and neither is he.

However, on our third date, he was really affectionate with me. He picked me up and spun me around when he greeted me, and physically carried me to the restroom after I’d laughed and demanded he put me down because I had to go. He had said something along the lines of it being his one goal to make me “as happy as possible” on the phone earlier that day, and so he ordered two plates of what he knew I wanted for us to share. When the food arrived, I was visibly excited, but he said “What, no happy tears?” And I said “not quite” so he got down on one knee and pretended to propose to me while everyone around stopped what they were doing and stared. I laughed like a maniac and told him to get his silly ass up off the floor.

He started up a conversation with our server, pretending that he thought he knew her from somewhere. She played along, and we all had a blast. He continuously called her by the wrong name, and we both claimed to be “half siblings” when she told me that he was a keeper, (It’s obvious that we’re not siblings- he’s white, and I’m mixed-race.) She seemed to really enjoy our shenanigans and actually ended up offering us free dessert because she liked us so much.

We went on a long walk downtown, and he kept picking me up to carry me across the street when the light changed. He held my hand and kissed my forehead. When we met up with some of my coworkers for a little birthday get-together, the way he was looking at me drew a few comments. He also held my hand under the table and at some point gently wiped some smudged makeup from my undereyes, which made the rest of the table go “awwwwwe.”

We went out dancing with a couple of my girlfriends afterward, and both danced with and talked to separate people at different times, which is what I insisted on. I didn’t want him to think he had to stay right next to me the whole time.
After, he drove my car to his house because I was really tired and didn’t want to drive.

Right before we got down to hooking up for the first time that night, while he was on top of me, we started joking about something that was completely unrelated to sex and had a full-blown conversation for literally five minutes where we were smiling so hard that it hurt before we remembered what we were supposed to be doing.

He kept saying things like “Are you even real?” or similar during, and while it was definitely nice to hear, I started feeling kind of awkward about it.
On the way to his house, he’d said that I was the “most attractive woman he’s ever talked to,” which I made a sarcastic remark about and rolled my eyes at, because it was obviously a load of nonsense.

After we had sex, he said “that was amazing, you’re going to make me fall in love!”
I gave him a look, and he said

“Nah, just kidding.”

Then, he said “I really don’t want to like you. At all. You’re making it so difficult.” Which I told him was a really weird thing to say.

We laid there and had a nice conversation about how well we get along and how our chemistry and shared sense of humor was something neither of us had experienced before. We both said we were really happy and that we couldn’t stop smiling.

He cuddled me to sleep, and woke me up by kissing me all over my face a couple of hours later before his alarm went off. We took a shower together and he kept staring, smiling down at me, kissing me, and saying that I was beautiful and so on. We went to get coffee together and kissed goodbye, and he texted me later to tell me that I was “F****ing dope” and that he’d had an amazing time.

Since then, he’s texted me good morning every day. He always reiterates how much he’s enjoying what’s going on between us and that he loves being around me, how he can’t wait to see me, and how I’m the coolest girl he’s ever met, how his ONE goal in life is to make me so happy that I cry someday.

Again, I like hearing these things, and I like being in contact all day- But I just can’t get past the fact that we both said that we’re not looking for anything beyond having fun and how he’d said when we first met in person that he hasn’t EVER felt anything deep for anyone.

I’m totally okay with that, I have no need for him to feel anything for me, and it doesn’t affect how I feel about myself- but I’m confused as to why he’d continue to shower me with all of the compliments, attention, time, and affection. Why he’d kiss my hand in front of everyone and ask to take selfies with me. Why he’d take me out to nice restaurants, say yes to everything I suggest, bring me around the people he’s close to, call me every day, etc.

He’s just piling on all of this SUPER cute, affectionate, boyfriend-y stuff and saying things that are completely unnecessary in a no-strings-attached dynamic like what we agreed on.

It’s almost like he’s actively trying to get me to fall for him. I feel like if I was a girl who was a little more fragile, inexperienced, or naive, he’d break my freaking heart. It’s not going to happen in this instance, and again, I do enjoy the attention and we have an absolute blast together. He’s the first person I’ve ever met who can keep up with my brand of crazy, he’s game for everything, and he’s super hot, in my opinion.

So my question, and thanks for bearing with me here, is:

Should I tell him that he’s sending weird, unnecessary mixed signals and that he doesn’t need to be so extra with me, because I’m totally okay with a friendly, no-strings dynamic?

Should I just enjoy it for what it is and keep the fact that there’s nothing deeper going on there in the forefront of my mind instead of reading into it and questioning what he’s playing at?