The Doctor is dragged back into the world by Clara in the Snowmen before he has any idea that she's Oswin too or anything more than a normal Victorian barmaid. Those people who claim the Doctor only cared about Clara for her mystery and clearly wrong right from the start. He gives her a TARDIS key in the first episode he meets her, and his reaction to realising she was Oswin too and there may be another one of her out there isn't confusion or even curiosity, it's mad happy joy. It certainly sounds like the ageless god has got a bit of a crush on an ordinary girl.
Hide frames their relationship as a love story mirrored by that of the aliens in the episode. It also cautions Clara against it though - "there's a sliver of ice in his heart." The relationship between Eleven and Clara perhaps best mirrors that of Ten and Rose in Series 2 - in a relationship without being in a relationship. The Maitland children even call the Doctor 'Clara's boyfriend' and neither of them bat an eyelid. But like Ten and Rose, that 'sliver of ice' keeps getting in the way since the Doctor is not human and romance is too normal a concept for him. That's not to say the Doctor didn't love Rose, but that he couldn't accept it or understand it as a human emotion like that.
The Doctor and Clara both build this fake-romantic relationship over Series 7, both flirting openly with each other but neither willing to actually admit anything concrete at any point. The closest we get to acknowledgement really is near the end of Hide, the Doctor puts his arm around Clara but then realises he has overstepped a boundary (although Clara doesn't seem to mind) and apologises, but is quite happy to put his arm around her the exact same way two episodes later in the Crimson Horror. Their relationship has grown beyond the usual boundaries of friendship, but still not explicitly romantic.
The main arc of Series 7 for the Doctor and Clara is the idea of 'the Impossible Girl' and the mystery of how Clara can still be alive. Hide is once again the episode to look too though where the reveal is that "this isn't a ghost story, it's a love story." That could apply to the whole season - Clara isn't a ghost, she's a perfectly ordinary girl, she just happens to end up thrown into the Doctor's timestream in the finale. The real mystery for the Doctor is how he feels about her - because as I said earlier, the Doctor isn't human and love isn't a concept he can really understand like one.
Why does the Doctor seem to find so many excuses to touch her and hug her more than any other companion? Why is he thinking about her so much in Nightmare in Silver while the Cyberplanner is inside his head? Why does the Doctor think of her as "perfect. Too perfect?" She's on his mind because she doesn't understand not just who she is, but who she is to him - he is as in the dark as we are about whether he loves her. All that touching, all those things they're saying about each other - it's edging towards romance because they both can tell it's greater than 'just friends'.
Clara tells us the trick is "Don't fall in love" and that she does that "quite a lot, sometimes twice a day." It's an odd way of saying it - you'd think you only have to not fall in love once. Well not if the emotions of love are there and so the threat of falling in love keeps coming back. The Doctor's giving her the other half of the romantic relationship she's teasing him with, so why won't she fall in love? Because she's smart enough to see that "sliver of ice" - she can tell it's something more alien than that. But also because she has the same problem. Clara might be an ordinary human but it becomes clearer and clearer over her three seasons that emotionally she's just like the Doctor. What she's feeling, unlike Rose, is something similar but not quite love, just like the Doctor is.
They're both playing at fake boyfriend and girlfriend but both also know that's not who they are. That 'take' on the relationship is categorised as a "mistake" by Twelve in his first episode, telling Clara firmly he's "not her boyfriend" and making it clear it's not her mistake but his to think like that. It seems at first like a rejection of her feelings and Clara wants out from the TARDIS, but a phonecall from Eleven changes her. She hears from him that he needs her, and then Twelve laments "you look at me and you can't see me" and something clicks for her. She realises that the relationship hasn't changed, he just wants to stop putting the wrong label on it. She decides to stay and Twelve and Clara's relationship begins.
If he's not her boyfriend, then what is Eleven to Clara? The answer is exactly the same as Twelve just before either of them realised that. They both realise that romance is not really what they want from each other and it then gets to evolve to this deeper dependency. It's a friendship more intense than a relationship could ever be. Danny Pink is then introduced as Clara's actual boyfriend to prove that the relationship with the Doctor is more important and more meaningful to Clara's life. Danny is used to show that a romantic relationship is still hugely influential and important - she's willing to sacrifice everything to bring him back in Dark Water - but it's ultimately the man she describes as her best friend that she consistently chooses throughout the season and lives her life dependent on in the following season. Because Doctor Who has always been a show about the complexities of close intimate friendships. A friendship like the ones the Doctor forms is the most intimate and meaningful relationship anyone can have. A romance could be built on top of that, but that's not the direction the show goes in to show its possible without.
If it's sounding complicated or like I'm struggling to put it into words then that's because it is and I am. This is the sort of relationship that is almost impossible to define with words because friendship just sounds so small. In Hell Bent, Clara tells the Doctor: "People like you and me, we should say things to one another. And I'm going to say them now" but we don't get to hear them because that relationship is always going to be more powerful while it remains unspoken. So I'm going to give the last word to Steven Moffat on his thoughts about friendship, here talking actually about Twelve and Bill but I think giving an insight into all Doctor/Companion relationships and particularly Clara:
"It has all the spark and joy of a non-romantic romance. Do you know what I mean by that? When you meet somebody who really does become incredibly close you and it ahs an awful lot of what a romance has, except it doesn't have any sex or romance in it... When you meet the people in your life who do become your great teachers, you do have a different sort of crush on them. As I say, it's not an erotic one. It's a fascination. It's a joy in their company. it's meeting someone who opens new doors to you. That's a good relationship to model the Doctor and his best pal on." - Steven Moffat on the Doctor and Bill's relationship. Source: TVGuide (via https://ifunny.co/picture/it-has-all-the-spark-and-joy-of-a-non-xhMxanbv4)
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