I’m posting this because I genuinely haven’t found anyone who’s experienced something like this, and I need to know if anyone has a similar experience.
About a year ago, I (18f) became super close with a guy (18 m) who is gay (though at the time, I thought he might be bi). We went from barely friends to hanging out every single day. We’re both physical touch people, so things like holding hands, cuddling, etc. were not uncommon at all, but often things would happen that felt like more than just friendship.
Over time, I developed real feelings for him. Around the same time, he was on-and-off with a guy (I’ll call him A), who didn’t want a relationship with him but would get jealous if he talked to anyone else. During this, my best friend would constantly make comments about wanting to hook up with me or do sexual things, but would say he “couldn’t because of A.” Looking back, I don’t think he ever meant it seriously, but at the time I believed him because I liked him and I still wasn’t sure he was fully gay and our friendship had developed so fast and become so much more intimate than I had imagined or experienced before.
We spent almost every day of summer together. We cuddled, kissed, saw each other without clothes, and he even said at one point that if A wasn’t in the picture, he’d want to be with me. Then later, he told me he wasn’t attracted to women at all and was fully gay. By the time he left for college, I was completely in love with him.
We stayed super close over long distance and talked every day, multiple times a day and flew to visit each other. But when he’d visit home, my friends didn’t like how he treated me. He could be really sweet, but also really mean, making comments about my body, comparing me to his other girl friends, saying he’d date me if I lost weight, etc. He also would be sometimes playfully physically aggressive but to a point of concern to my friends and he never really listened when I said stop. Even with all that, he was still my best friend and my person.
He ended up moving back home after one semester, and things felt good again for a while, more like a normal friendship. Then in January, I found out he did something that really hurt me. He never took accountability, blamed me instead, and we went from spending every day together to completely no contact overnight.
After two months of no contact, I reached out and we met up. He said he was still angry, mostly because he thinks I talked about him to people I shouldn’t have (I did talk to people about the situation, but not to anyone that I think would be bad to talk to about him). He wouldn’t tell me who he was referring to. At the end, he said he only agreed to meet up one last time because he still loves and misses me and needed to make sure I was ok and had people in my life still who love me like he does. It’s been a month since I broke no contact and we haven’t spoken since.
I know it’s over, but I still think about him every day. I feel a lot of guilt and can’t shake the feeling that I ruined something good, even though everyone around me says he treated me badly and it’s for the better.
Has anyone experienced anything like this? Or have advice on how to actually move on from something like this?