Dear Lea:

You shared that you are 25 year old woman, a student living abroad in your own apartment, with 3 or 4 years to go in your five years university program. You had three long term relationships in the past and currently you are in a relationship with a 23 year old man who lives at his parents’ home, planning to start the same five year university program that you are in, this coming September.  He “never properly dated a girl.. is extremely shy.. suffers from anxiety.. some depression.. and he has some gender identity issues (identified as cis-hetero queer male but many people think he’s gay)”.

The two of you met at university a few months ago, “a few weeks before the confinement”. It was “love at first sight.. literally 10 seconds staring at each other in the eyes the first time we saw” each other. You proceeded to talk a lot, have a date, and you “slept together for the first time”. A week afterwards you asked him if he wants to meet again, and he said: “yes, but as a friend, if you don’t mind”. At one point he told you that “he panicked as when things could get serious he instantly thinks about wedding”, but the two of you decided to give the relationship a try, “nothing complicated, without any pressure”.

Next, “as everyone knows, the pandemic started to hit and we found ourselves locked in our places.. we live in a country which didn’t practice a real quarantine, therefore we were still able to meet”. Before and after your mutual decision to try an uncomplicated, no pressure relationship, he experienced complicated, long-term family issues. These issues reached a peak about a week and a half after the decision to try, and he chose to stop the trial. You supported him in his choice. Next, he initiated a meeting with you and he told you his family issues. Two weeks after that meeting, he told you that he valued your conversations a lot, but “he wanted to stop everything and he didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of being in relationship” with you.

Next, he told you that you that you were “the very first person with whom he really wanted to be with for a serious thing”. Next, “he became distant again”. You are confused: sometimes he shows a lot of interest in you, at other times he is distant and wants to end things. He is the one who brought up the word wedding and .. scared himself with the idea, you didn’t bring it up. A dating relationship didn’t even start, as you  only met 3 times. You are wondering “to which extent his anxiety and his probable depression played/ play a part in this story?”. You asked “the big question: is there any chance we could, not even get back together but start to give a real try?”

My initial input is regarding his identification as a “cis-hetero queer male”. “cis” is short for cisgender; a cisgender male means a person  born male and identifies himself later as a male (as opposed to a transgender female who is a person born male and identifies later as a female). This man you are referring to was born male, identifies himself as a male, is heterosexual (“cis-hetero). He also identifies himself as a “queer male”. A queer gender means that the person fluctuates between male and female, being in between the binary gender categories of male and female. All together, these 4 words cis-hetero queer male mean, as I understand it, that he was born a male, that he most of the time identifies himself as a male, that he most of the times identifies himself as heterosexual, being attracted to women, but sometimes he identifies himself as a female and sometimes he is attracted to men.

It is possible that he never had sexual experiences with women, or with men. It is also possible that he had some or lots of sexual experiences with men, and/or with women outside of the context of long term relationships (which you say he didn’t yet experience).

You met him only 3 times and the two of you don’t have mutual friends, so you don’t know how he spends his time outside of online classes and living at home. He may be your only romantic/ sexual interest, but maybe you are not his only romantic/ sexual interest. You wrote that he is not a player- maybe not with you, maybe he is a player in the context of sexual activity with men. I don’t know, but you don’t know either. If he is a player in that context, it could explain his changes and unavailability to you, as he is otherwise occupied.

What do you think about what I wrote here?

anita