Hello all,
I’d really appreciate some advice please. I recently moved to a new town and got friendly with a guy whom I met up with a few times (3 times in total along with lots of texting). We were only seeing each other platonically, but I found myself starting to catch feelings for him. I never told him that I liked him in that way, but the closeness that I wanted with him manifested in a one-sided friendship that I tried to stay blind to.
I was doing all the giving: being a supportive and encouraging friend, even buying him drinks when he was the one who had invited me out or chosen the venue, and he was doing all the taking. My fondness for him also made me open up about some hard times that I went through earlier in my life since I wanted to feel closer to him; I wanted to feel ‘accepted’ by him in a way, but even then he didn’t offer any words of support or encouragement.
Normally I wouldn’t stay in such an unbalanced connection, but my fondness of him was making me want to see if things could blossom somewhat. Also, he leads a big social group that enables lonely people in the city to meet each other and make friends by going to socials that he organises. Being a new woman on my own in his city, it is naturally better for me to be on good terms with him.
However, eventually the one-sidedness of our ‘friendship’ got to me and I approached him with my feelings about it. This unfortunately led to an argument in which he overreacted and took things much further than was needed. He kicked me out of his social group and made cold and calculated digs at me from what I had told him about the bad experiences from my past (which were irrelevant), twisting what I had told him as to deliberately provoke me and throw them at me by way of insults.
It was all a deliberate attack to hurt me as much as possible and was a disproportionate reaction to me simply expressing my feelings. As can be imagined, what he did hurt me a lot.
He realised that he had overreacted and apologised, asking me to come back to the group. But I was naturally very hurt. What made it worse was that every time I wanted to talk through and unpack my feelings to him on what had just happened, which I always did in a civil manner as is my nature, in the middle of conversations he would suddenly block me from contacting him further, saying “I’m done with this conversation now because clearly nothing I’m saying is helping”.
So not only had he created the bad situation but he wasn’t willing to take accountability to fix it or help me talk through what I needed to in order for us to be cool again.
Despite this, he has tried asking me a few times to reconsider coming back to his social group and attend the socials, inviting me to meet up with him to talk through what has happened so that I feel like coming to his socials again, but which I am now declining. What is disappointing is that he doesn’t seem to care as much about us fixing our relationship as he does about me simply coming again to his socials: he is being explicit about this and keeps saying how he’s “not expecting our relationship to ever be fixed after what he’s done so that’s all cool- my only hope is that you feel like coming to my socials again”. This is a further nail in the coffin because I want to see that he does care about our relationship too.
It is making me too sad to attend his socials since naturally our fallout will be like a thorn in the side if I attend the parties given that he’s the one running them - he will be a visible and active presence throughout when I’m trying to move on from this fallout and make new friends.
But at the same time, I don’t want to miss out on opportunities to meet people through his social group. I am unsure as to what to do here. Would love some advice please 🙏