What the card describes as a feeling
The state is waiting without resolution. A person reading here is attached and is not moving on it, either because they are still working out how they see it or because acting would require a change they are not ready to make.
The image is of hanging upside down by choice, and the tradition insists the perspective gained is the point. Emotionally that means the person may be genuinely reconsidering rather than merely stuck, though from outside the two look identical.
Upright
Upright the reading is a pause with meaning in it. Feeling is being held while a view of the situation changes. Sacrifice appears here too: someone giving something up for the sake of the connection and not announcing it.
What this card does not describe is momentum. Anyone hoping for a card that says a person is about to act should read this one as a plain no on that question.
Reversed
Reversed the suspension has gone bad. The commonest reading is stalling, a pause that has lost its purpose and become a way of avoiding a decision indefinitely.
Martyrdom is the other, and it is worth naming: sacrifice that is being counted, resentment accumulating under a display of patience. A third handling is release, someone finally coming down and letting the situation move.
Outside romance
In a friendship this is affection frozen after something unresolved that neither person will raise. At work it can be a colleague who has an opinion of you and is waiting for the situation to change before acting on it. In families it often describes a relative who has been holding a position for years and has stopped noticing they are holding it.
What a feelings position can and cannot tell you
Feelings positions are a modern development in how spreads are read; the layouts they come from were about circumstances. The card contributes a quality and the reader contributes the person, which is the whole of the mechanism.
So this cannot tell you what someone specific feels. You get a shape and you assign it. If that assignment gets treated as knowledge, the reading has quietly taken the place of a question you were free to ask, and the deck has become a way to postpone it. That is a real cost, not a technicality.
The Hanged Man's suggestion is to work out whether the wait is doing anything. A pause with a purpose is worth keeping. One that has become a habit is worth ending, and ending it usually means saying something.
Questions people ask about this
Does the Hanged Man mean someone is stuck on me?
It reads as attachment that is not moving. Whether the stillness is reflection or avoidance is not something the card distinguishes.
What does the Hanged Man reversed mean here?
Stalling that has lost its point, sacrifice that has turned into resentment, or a suspension finally being released.
Is this card a sign to be patient?
It describes a pause rather than recommending one. How long a pause is reasonable is a judgement about your own situation.