Hi Christie,

It does sound like a “revenge of the nerds” type of situation. I don’t think it turned out how he expected. When you have a crush on someone you build them up in your head and its not the same when you date them.

I had almost the exact same situation,guy liked me for years so I went out with him and now we don’t talk. They enjoy the fantasy version of you.

I think that’s all it is but he seems immature and has used this scenario as some kind of revenge. Don’t believe him he may just be embarrassed he couldn’t follow through with the relationship.

He’s not a friend either. I’m wary of befriending people who have crushes on me. Once again it’s an idealistic version of me they like and how can you be an honest friend when you’re trying to win someone over? Might of just been your friend because he liked you.

I’m glad you see you don’t deserve this treatment and maybe you’ll miss the attention but don’t wait for him to decide to be in your life. You’ll be wasting your time.

Hope that helped. And it sounds like you have a good set of better friends.

It’s going to take some time to get over him. Maybe write him a letter you don’t send and get everything out about how you feel. Don’t stop writing until you have nothing left to say. Then put the letter away. Think about what you would tell a friend in this situation to motivate your decision to move past this. A year or two from now u might find the letter and have no idea who it was about. Time is funny that way. You’ll be okay

Dear Christie

sometimes it ‘s more painful to be in a relationship than to not be in it.I would be dubious about the revenge aspect; what for, if for three years he accepted you as nothing more than a friend? A three year crush is pretty hard to imagine and if he still befriended you after those thre years it would seem clear he does really have feelings for you , perhaps more than you know.as far as I am concerned if a person cuts you out of their life it’s more out of sadness than wanting to get back at you- if he wanted that he would have found someone else to flirt with in front of you or try to make you jealous in some way.How many relationships has he had before anyway? before you?

In so much as not meeting expectations quite possibly he is not up to the task but perhaps being with you in the end made him feel like as second choice, perhaps he saw you happier with someone else, your previous relationship and was not prepared to feel like at any moment it could end again, perhaps he was just saving himself from some hurt, obviously his decision was not whimsical but he had reflected upon it until he was ready to act, even if that meant losing you as a friend as well, clearly you cannot be both it seems

Hi Christine, thank you for posting. I came to this page to look at another topic and saw your post title, and decided to read as it’s something that happened in my life recently. In my case it was a friend of 20-odd years. During that time, I had no idea that he had a crush on me, and it wasn’t until after we discovered our feelings for each other and started a relationship, that he confessed to being in love with me from the moment he first laid eyes on me, way back when we were teenagers. It was a blissful relationship to begin with, but ended very badly after almost a year.

He was very angry at the end, and i suffered abusive treatment from him for several months, believing that I could make him happy if only I did things differently, and i have had to work hard to get my self esteem back. With the distance and healing that only time can give, and from reading the posts above, I can say that it seems to be true, that false expectations had a big part to play in what went wrong..

He also told me that he didn’t want to speak to me again, which hurt a lot at the time, as we had created a strong bond with one another. I do also believe that he was afraid that he wasn’t good enough for me, so putting me down and pushing me away was one way for him not to have to deal with his short-comings.

It’s been several months now and I am so thankful that i am no longer living my life trying to be someone i’m not, to make someone else happy. It’s sad to lose a friend who you have shared a lot with, but if they are a true friend, they will find a way back into your life. And if they don’t, try to remember only the good moments and the other things that they have shown you, which you would otherwise have not had the chance to experience.

Luke helped you through many bad moments including the death of your ex, something that must have been very difficult for him and for that you can be forever grateful, and I am sure that you can think of many other reasons.

For me, for example, the abuse that I have suffered has helped me understand other people close to me who put up with it, something that baffled and upset me terribly before, unacceptingly trying to help them to ‘see the light’ whereas now, i can give them the space they need to live their own lives and make their own choices. It wasn’t all bad, far from it- there is also the tenderness of the good moments and the intensity of the love we had for each other at the beginning, that will always stay with me.

You haven’t lost him as he will always be part of who you are, part of your life experience, And the space that he has left in your life will hopefully soon be filled with loved ones who care about you for who you are without false expectations. You will miss him, as you have become dependent on the support and care he has given you, but you can let him go for now.

Wishing you all the best.

Hi again, thank you Celina for elaborating on the order of events that happened in your relationship, as they parallel what happened in mine in many ways; I’m just not as good at organising my ideas! For me, for example, I received regular love songs and emails that spoke of a lifetime together, something that freaked me out at first as it was so early on and I had become comfortable being single and independent, but I yielded when i felt safe with him, as i had never really let myself be loved in previous relationships.

I left the UK when i was 23 to spend a year abroad, but enjoyed the freedom of travelling and the insight into my own nature and my world, and my new career path as a teacher, that i have been from continent to continent ever since and have now settled in a country close to my birth place in the UK, so me and my ex used electronic means to keep in touch and met when we could.

The original plan, one which was imperative when we made the decision to be together was for him to come and live with me here, as I have a home (he still lives with his mother), a lucrative business (he’s unemployed) and a network of good friends who support me:; he was deeply unhappy on all fronts.

6 months into the relationship, he changed his mind about coming to live with me, which to an observer would mean the end of the relationship, but being so deeply in love and having come to depend on him so heavily, I just couldnt see it. I was holding onto my idea that he was my life partner and that we could work around any adverse circumstances.

I think rather than being put on a pedestal, or as well as, it was more the idea of how he would feel when he was with me that was shattered when he began the relationship…yes, what i could do for him, as you said Celina. He discovered that he still had the same insecurities being with me as he had throughout his previous life and relationships, and he didn’t want to or know how to begin making the effort to work on them. so i was subjected to his eventual demonstrations of jealousy, possessiveness and spitefulness.

All that is in the past and I now see all the reasons why we wouldn’t be a successful couple. We have very little in common, and not good for each other.

One thing that has come up since writing my previous post, is the pain that was experienced when he began deliberately avoiding me towards the end of the relationship, pretending he was busy or with friends, and the refusal to keep lines of communication open since.

I found myself, this weekend, on pages related to fear of abandonment and have realise that i suffer most of the symptoms; my mother left us, to a violent alcoholic father (who won custody) when I was 2 and my brother a baby. I didn’t realise that I was carrying this around with me all these years, and am lucky to have my mother back in my life. I wrote to her about it yesterday and she has been very understanding (and i was surprised that she told me that she felt very upset about my pain, as she rarely shows emotion) and we have decided that we will work together to understand each other and what happened better and how we can try to stop old traumas from stopping us being able to have healthy, happy relationships. with love and without fear

thanks again for opening up this post as it has helped me along my path towards dropping old harmful habits, knowing i’m not alone in having these feelings and that i dont have to suffer in silence.

Christie, when he says he will decide when he wants to speak to you, this is exactly what was said to me by my ex on several occasions, especially on the days leading up to a trip for me to go and visit him. he would create an argument out of nothing and then refuse to speak to me for the days leading up the trip, not answering his phone, me lying in bed unable to sleep at night, going into work like a zombie, not sure if i would arrive and he would be there or not. I didnt know that there was a term for it, silent bullying; i was living in terror and his ego and sense of power was being fed. and this is also the manner chosen to end the relationship…

You dont have to go through this with Luke, by the sounds of things, he’s trying quite unsuccessfully to silent bully you, cos although he knows how lost you feel without him, he cant help calling you when he is drunk…

it does sound like you’ve been through a lot together and he has feelings for you still. i guess you have to decide whether he can handle a proper relationship with you whether that be as friends or something more, and if he can do that sober and on your terms, rather than him simply stating that you talk when he wants to. Sounds like he has a lot of issues (dont we all!), but if he’s willing to work through them, and trust you, and allow you to trust him again, then it might be worth a go.

and i just wanted to say to Celina, its not just the caring, insightful, kind words turned out to be meaningless, its the fact that that same knowledge could be used to attack and abuse you that hurts most. In your case, your guy didnt come back after the 2 weeks with you probably because he knew you wouldn’t stand for it! so count yourself lucky…i went along with it for months and it broke me down, a hard thing, coming from a woman who is used to dominating and feeling free to express myself and my joy of life, no matter how ridiculous i am or it is (miserable pauper does not become me at all!). It takes two to tango and there was I, allowing this ‘nobody’ to make a fool out of me. and yeah, i went over and over things in my head afterwards about what happened and what could have happened too, stuck in Groundhog days of pasts real and imagined.

now its a waste of time to go over the past when you could be dreaming of the future (yes, it turns out that there is one! 🙂 and that hot guy you saw the other day, the one with the sweet smile…he could probably help you forget quite a few things…lol) and even better when you could be living in the present, such a glorious place to be! good luck girls, may joy reign in all our lives.