Genuinely not sure how this will be received, but at this stage tut-tutting at me can hardly make things any worse! So be as blunt as you like. I don't care.
First off, about me: early 40s, single female, precious little life or sexual experience (for reasons which don't really matter here, I think, but 'high' functioning autism is certainly a part of it, as is a seriously dysfunctional family). Also suffers from severe depression and anxiety.
About C: early 50s, married man, lives in Canada. Wife is a stay-at-home wingnut, ie. she sits at home and reads bizarre right-wing nonsense on Twitter all day long. Doesn't do a stroke of work as far as I can tell. No children.
Right, well that's the protagonists sorted. I met C five years ago on an online depression forum. We clicked straight away and kept in touch via email or the forum. He was proper into me, more than I was into him. I don't mean he ever said anything explicitly sexual, but he would sing my praises and joke about being my stalker on the forum. Always used to sign off his posts to me with cute sayings too, such as 'hugs and stuff' or huggy emoticons. Here is one admittedly rather extreme example of a post about me from two years ago.
You're clever enough to root a tablet, you're funny enough to make the most jaded laugh, you're giving enough to draw compassion from the most hardened, you're brave enough to say no, you're brave enough to say yes, you're smart enough to guide your own treatment, you're humble enough to admit you're limitations, you're self-aware enough to know you need to change, you're articulate enough to quantify that change, you're pretty enough to catch an eye, you're wise enough to reach out for companionship, you're loved enough to have great friends, you're frugal enough to live on your own, you're dextrous enough to crush geometry dash, you're confident enough to have awful taste in music, you're patient enough to be my friend when I don't always deserve it, and you're more than human enough to make a positive impact in the people who get to know you.
Hugs n stuff.
I mean, he was literally still carrying on in that vein up to one week ago. This next bit is an extract from a letter from him to my medical team, which I never showed to anyone. I might now, but it would be for different reasons to what he intended.
Miranda is a highly gifted, exceptionally intelligent woman with a demonstrable talent for painting and sketching. Miranda has a quick wit and wonderful sense of humor, and has proven to be a loyal and valued friend. Miranda expresses a real affinity for animals and is a talented photographer, often posting pictures of her day-to-day encounters on social media. Miranda is active on many social media platforms, and is exceptionally helpful in forums dedicated to Depression, Crohn’s Disease, and Ulcerative Colitis. I first met Miranda on a social media forum for people with depression. I have been diagnosed with both MDD and GAD, which are currently managed effectively with a combination of SSRI medication and talk-therapy. Of note is the extended amount of time that was required for Miranda and me to create a foundation for honesty and openness. This significant time frame for trust, along with Miranda’s tendency for self-deprecation, has led me to believe that Miranda may be unconsciously underplaying the severity of her symptoms when discussing them with a clinician.
I'm not saying he always spoke like that, but he was a gushing sort of person in general. At the same time he never tried to hide the fact that he was married; indeed he seemed to show it off at times, like he was cheerfully reaping the benefits of cosy domesticity. For example he would talk about how he and his wife would "complement" each other, or how they would resolve disagreements. But, while he never ever slagged her off (to me in private or publically), he never really praised her either. He never banged on about her intelligence, her scintillating personality, her good looks or anything about her as a person really.
For the first few years I didn't give a shit about his wife. I didn't consider myself any threat to the marriage, as I wasn't interested in C that way for the longest longest time. Even now, looking back, I couldn't tell you when that began to change - I can only tell you what exacerbated it.
One was a series of personal tragedies in the past year which left me in a more vulnerable and low state than ever. I went into a psychiatric ward for 3 weeks over Christmas, then a day hospital for 2 weeks. The psychiatric ward was an acute ward, intended to stop people from killing or harming themselves, but otherwise offering no counselling or psychological interventions. The day hospital was better, but only because I had more freedom and there were a better set of people there (a couple of which I'm still in touch with).
The second was downloading WhatsApp to speak to my new chums from the day hospital. C was on WhatsApp already and so naturally we added each other. Well, speaking every day on an instant messenger really changed the dynamic somehow, at least for me. We'd always had a good rapport in the past; our senses of humour meshed together well and I found him genuinely easy to talk to, in a way I did with virtually nobody else.
Being "closer" to C meant and talking to him far more led to me slowly becoming more dependent on him. I started falling for him, and becoming increasingly frustrated by my own extreme isolation and singledom. I envied his wife badly - I think C actually enjoyed that part, although he had to pretend he didn't obviously.
I tried to contain my feelings but occasionally they would spill over into a whingefest, which C always appeared listen to patiently. But instead of my feelings getting better, they just got more intense. Three weeks ago they culminated in a total meltdown over one of C's few actually innocent comments about his wife! It didn't matter: I was too far gone. Er, what are the rules of talking about suicide on this forum? Don't want to breach any rules but I was very very suicidal, hopeless and despairing.
After a day or two of that, I recovered and realised I had pushed C too far with my suicide talk. I apologised and promised I would never try to involve him in my suicide plans again. One reason I 'selected' him to approach was because he had always been one of the calmest and least flappable people I know. I didn't want anyone panicking on me; least of all I did not want to go back into the psychiatric ward!
However, while I recovered in one way I relapsed in another way. I became completely dependent on C's posts now, fantasising about going to Canada and being with him - of course I was aware of the wife, and knew it would hardly be that simple, but it didn't stop me from dreaming about it sometimes. By this point I wanted him as way more than a friend.
2-3 weeks ago I cautiously spilled the beans about my love for him, hedging it by saying "I think I probably love you". I mean, he had told me he had loved me several times over the years (only ever as friends of course :eye-roll: ), but this was the first time I had told him that. Or anyone that, to be honest. He.... basically ignored it: said something else and then added at the end of it, "Thank you for being honest". I was taken aback, but also relieved he wasn't freaked out by the confession of love. In fact really relieved and was euphoric for a day or two. Then reality settled in again and I started wondering about that odd little comment of his.
I didn't dive straight into a confrontation, not wanting to lose the plot as I had done over the suicide business (ha!). Spent many days absolutely obessing over him, trying to work out his motives, ways in which our friendship was most likely to pan out, and basically longing for him. I could just about function as normal in the daytime, but the nights were a nightmare, often literally so. I could not sleep without sleeping pills and even if I took a pill, I was awake 3 hours later. Now my sleeping pill stash has dwindled to almost nothing and my GP won't give me more zoplicone.
Ultimately I concluded I had no real hope with C. He seemed to enjoy the life of a married man too much and there had never been any indication of him divorcing or leaving his wife. I got that bit right at least. What I didn't anticipate was how quickly it would all go so terribly, terribly wrong.
Told him yesterday on WhatsApp how I felt, but with more conviction this time, instead of pretending oh it was nothing really. He claimed that it hurt him, that he didn't make friends easily (neither do I m8), that he was open about our friendship with his wife and there was nothing he wouldn't share with her. That was the highlight. It just went downhill all the way from there. I asked him if he'd ever had more than platonic feelings for me; he just kept on playing the fucking friendship card over and over again, to the point where he contradicted himself with it. (First he said it was an age thing and that he felt "very protective" of me, then a few minutes later he said he "thought of me as a peer".) Near the beginning somewhere he did seem to briefly panic, saying "fuck fuck fuck" - he doesn't normally swear. But after that he recovered his poise and his blandness.
He then had to go a meeting, saying "Goodbye my best friend". After he had gone, I said forlornly, "Is this it? Is this really it?".
He replied a couple of hours later saying he thought so and that we couldn't keep on doing this to each other. At that point I just lost my temper. Told him I couldn't work out why he needed a "best friend" on the side, when he had a wife and brother that he talked to every day. That I couldn't make sense of any of it, none of it added up to me. He proclaimed he had a happy marriage, a good relationship with his brother and had had a wonderful friendship with me. I said that it didn't ring true; he actually seemed a little irked at that and asked why the hell not.
I said because he compartmentalised absolutely everything, and that I thought he was hiding stuff from himself. If not true love, then at least the fact that his fucking great marriage wasn't all that fucking great. I then questioned him about what his wife actually knew about us. Again, another contradiction. Apparently she knows absolutely everything under the sun that there is to know about us, but uh, he wasn't sure she if she had read our WhatsApp messages or not.
Here's one last gem from him:
I've told her about my feelings for you. I've told her that I loved you. I've told her about your feelings for me. I told her that I felt close to you and that we had what I felt was a real connection.
To which the only thing I could say was: "Jesus christ, I bet she loved that."
He said his final words to me after that. He said he had to stop contact "for a while", that this was "really hurting him" and that he hated it was ending "like this". I replied more calmly, but it made no difference. He never answered back. I didn't say anything else again for many hours until 3am, where, once again, I couldn't sleep for love or money. I sent a few more rambling posts into the void. (Mostly more querying of his actions/motives and telling him to stop lying to me and his wife.) I said I was going to sleep. An hour later, he had checked the replies (as shown by the blue ticks) - and blocked me without a word in response to anything I had said.
That was the straw which broke the camel's back.
I not only was beyond heartbroken, I now - in the space of literally seconds - saw him in a new and utterly ghastly new light. I dunno how I got through the next few hours tbh. I dunno how I'm getting through any of these nights at the moment tbh. Night time to me now feels like an endless void, with no sleep, no rest, no respite. And where time has crawled to a virtually infinite crawl.
I sent him some angry messages on Twitter and had a go at his wife for being racist. (She's more anti-immigrant than full-on racist, but not always much difference between the two.) I fully expect to be unfollowed on Twitter when he wakes up. And probably blocked on email too.
I apologise for the long wall of text, but I'm way too tired to go back now and try to significantly shorten it whilst retaining all the meaning. The tl;dr version is I had a 5-year-old close friendship with a married man, to which I thought there was something more and ultimately yearned extremely heavily for something more.
The thing which hurts the most is not the romantic rejection (although that certainly hurts as well), it's the being lied to and then ran away from. Up until yesterday I thought he was a good guy who had my back in all situations! Before him, my mum badly let me down. I genuinely feel like I will never be able to trust another person again. They can seem okay for years... and then, bam, they cut you off just like that. I can't deal with that. I don't know how to move on from here. The possibility of a romantic relationship with anybody at all, ever, has receded to zero.