Seeking a balanced assessment of my recent behavior

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I am not sure if this kind of post is allowed here, but I wish to write it because I need some peace.

Facts: I am 37M, single since 2016, balanced guy, mediocre in all the ways there are for someone to be mediocre. Now onward to the recent stupid behavior I want to discuss.

Every few months I get the male and sentimental equivalent of a baby fever and I get into two or three weeks of intense longing for a partner, during which I create - then grudgingly delete - dating apps, profiles at dating websites, and so on. Things usually go back to normal after a little while and I stop agonizing over it. By ‘normal’ I mean being emotionally available if someone is interested but without actively pursuing a relationship or doing anything about it. I lead a very solitary life, and the pandemic made it worse because I work from home permanently now, and I barely leave the house anymore.

This year’s first - of usually three - baby fevers coincided with a visit to my home country to spend some time with my father and sister. Things go as planned, life is normal, I get to meet an old friend every couple of days and take it easy. No problem? No problem. But I am in baby fever mode and my eyes are wandering around looking to find and hold eye contact that could be meaningful enough to sustain me with something that resembles interest. One evening I am on Facebook fighting it out in a private group with some guy, and I find this private message from a female member of the same group who’s been watching my comments and she says she finds me intelligent, so I say awesome and we start talking.

She is pretty and we have an awful lot of stuff in common. She’s also my age, which makes her ideal. But I am careful not to start weaving my bullshit around this because she lives in my home country, but I can’t help but talk to her every night. She suddenly suggests we meet in person, which is something I am against doing that soon into getting to know someone online, unless it’s some guy and you’ve become online buddies. But I can’t resist the prospect and I say OK, so we go and meet 10 days into knowing each other and at least 5 days into talking every night (texting, a phone call, and some voice notes on WhatsApp). She never expresses any feelings but gets quite…cute? Something along the lines of ‘hug’ before she logs off, and ‘Hey’ at a certain time in the evening, every evening (of those days). So I get quite buttered up myself if you know what I mean, but I also don’t express feelings, but I get too cuddly with my greetings as well.

We go ahead and meet and she’s everything I was hoping she would be times twenty thousand. We spend 3 hours talking, she says she gotta go, I walk her downstairs, she takes her car, leaves, and I take mine and go back home. Except I am on cloud 21, and I text her that same evening saying: 1) I enjoyed my time, and 2) I am interested in you. Rookie mistake I know, but I don’t have much energy to waste getting emotionally built up only to fall from the 20th floor later on. If this was going to go belly up, it needed to go belly up before I was too emotionally invested, and goddamit, do I make it my business to be emotionally invested, and I did, and I texted her that. Nothing over night. The next morning she texts and says I am a lovely guy but let’s stay friends, so I say friends it is, then. I give myself the talk, take a day without texting (during which I was busy with a bereavement in the family). She texts that same night and says where have you been, I answer casually, and I take the first step of turning this connection into something friendly and casual: I send a stupid meme. She sends a stupid meme back. She pops back online, we start talking. I’d already told her not to worry about it, and I am pleased to be her friend. I knew it was going to be difficult, but I thought: let me worry about that later. Also, I am not a big fan of unrequited love, and the more casual it gets, the faster I’d be emotionally emancipated.

The only problem is, she starts flirting. As soon as I straightened up, she started asking me questions about love, relationships and sex, without answering much in return. Which brings me to a very important point: she’s very enigmatic about something in her past. I know she’s single and she hasn’t got much family left, but she’s very closely guarding a secret that I suppose makes a great part of her daily life and thinking. The reason I know it’s that big is because I could see the walls built up around the secret’s perimeter when I peered through conversation into different areas. The secret is so big that, if you wanna order a pizza with this girl, you will likely run into something she can’t say or a question she won’t answer, but I respected her privacy and said it’s none of my business. Any way, she starts flirting and I get lured back into the sweetcountry but I do so with more reserved and silent cuteness than explicit statements. But she cuts me off again. She disappears for a day or two, as if the conversations we were having late into night were just an accident. This happened two more times.

Until yesterday, that is. We had already agreed to meet a second time but without specifying a date, and at that point I was done being an emotional hostage, and I said: obviously there’s something about your life you don’t want to share and I respect that, but please understand this is going to be very difficult as soon as I travel back. On this basis, I told her that I prefer we do not meet a second time. I’d already changed my booking a few hours earlier to force myself to say that, because meeting her a second time in this situation was going to make me fall in love with her. I said: look, I gotta travel back for work and I need some time to sort myself out before I can be a friend who deals with this less sensitively. She suddenly insists that we meet before I travel. I said: I can’t, and she said: I am sorry for not expressing myself clearly, but I prefer to do that in person, not in text. I said OK, let’s meet right before my flight. She says OK, gives me a date and time.

Today I woke up and texted her saying: I understand you want to keep certain things for yourself and I don’t have a right to question that, so let us meet as agreed and don’t feel pressured to speak about something uncomfortable. These were literally my words.

Her response, almost verbatim:

  • I am still going to confirm if tomorrow is gonna happen to begin with

  • I am not spoiled, I am going through a lot of shit

  • It seems like I am not qualified for relationships right now, even if it’s a friendship

This, to me, looks like a clear message that I needed to sod off. So I said:

  • I understand and respect that, thank you for your clarity

  • I hope everything turns out well for you, and I am here whenever you want to talk

  • Take care of yourself

She says: take care, and poof, that’s it.

Besides my obvious mistakes, I was absolutely faithful in conveying all the details.

Was I pushy? Was I wrong and did I cause this outcome?

And in all cases, how do I immediately stop thinking about this?

2

Start reading about attachment disorders and look for a therapist you can work with to give you objective feedback.

Stranger

3

I think she is playing you. It’s obvious to me, at least, she’s still in a relationship with someone.
I feel like you dodged a bullet.
I never answer in these kinds of threads. I feel strongly about this for some reason.
Be careful if you continue to speak to her. Tread lightly.
I’m worried for you.

4

Even if she’s not deliberately “playing you”, the phrase “going through a lot of shit” is a red flag to suggest that if you still want a relationship then you should expect a lot of hard work at the beginning with no guarantee of a stable relationship at the end of it. And if she’s not willing to tell you what the “shit” is, I think your last response was the best you can offer.

Also: this is an internet messageboard. Any advice you get from us may very well be terrible.

5

I’m confused. Exactly how did you become an ‘emotional hostage’ in this matter?

She told you she just wants a friend, but you immediately decide her pleasantness to you is now ‘flirting’? Huh?

You should get some counselling, to help you sort this stuff out, I think. Also, I think you should focus on your baby fevers and falling in love with someone who just specifically told you she only wanted to be friends. Maybe get a grip in your issues before projecting a ton of stuff onto someone else? Just a suggestion.

Wishing you Good Luck, I think you’ll likely need it moving forward.

6

That is what happened and I am describing things as they are. I don’t think I should provide an account of our conversations more intimate than what I wrote here to prove that she kept flirting for many days after she said let’s be friends, but she absolutely did. The kind of stuff and questions you do not ask your friends or co-workers or someone you just met, but someone you are emotionally interested in.

How I became an ‘emotional hostage’ is where I know I am wrong. I found her attractive, I liked the way she spoke and thought, and that did it for me. Are there prerequisites? Do I have to fulfil a number of hours or days before I can legitimately claim to like someone? The ‘hostage’ part is me waiting for a text that will either take me to the moon or bring me down, and this is terribly wrong .

I am aware I need some counselling for issues far more serious than this, but I just wanted to see how other people looked at the matter given the information I provided.

7

Thank you so much for this. I will not communicate with her further. My flight is tomorrow any way.

8

This is very good advice. I could not have said it as well.

Counseling would help you not fall too far into a strong attachment too fast, which is what you wrote of. Show the therapist this posting you wrote. The therapist can help you read relationship signals to bring about healthy attachments that will last.

Wishing you well from my 71 years of lived life experiences in emotional matters.