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Thank you so kindly Anita! You are a wonderful, encouraging person. 🙂 I love the English language, but with time pressures from being a working mother, my writing can get a little hasty and fragmented. I am sure any person with a young child will understand this remark, although I have tried my best to write clearly. 🙂
I think you have really gotten to the heart of the issue, in that he is after the whole fantasy world and prefers to numb out any feelings of discomfort or pain, seeing as he has serious issues stemming from his childhood. Being real with me is not what he is after, and that has become painfully clear going by his actions, or more precisely, inaction!
Something prompted me to write him a short message yesterday, even though I understand you don’t always get the closure you want from doing that. I went with that instinctual feeling, as I felt the need to ask him why he had avoided answering important questions I had asked of him, which he had raised in the first place. And how if he had answered those follow-up questions of mine, it would have helped clarify my understanding of his situation, life, character, and his values better. Sadly, yet again his response was all about him and he left me to draw inferences, because he never directly addressed my latest question! The inference I gathered by the information he gave, was that he was busy at the moment concentrating on finishing a new vocation course, and even though he had decided it was not for him (yet again I see another sign of unstableness, as he always seems to switch or quit jobs!).
I get that though. At that moment in time when I messaged him yesterday, he was busy attending a course and had little time to reply to me. That is fair enough. However, as I see it, there are 24 hours in a day. And he is not busy enough to find time to sleep or eat, and certainly not busy enough to interact with other women online, but busy enough to build trust in our re-forming relationship and communicating with me on unanswered questions that would have cleared up why he was fired from a previous job, and whether he truly meant what he said about really liking me, to the point of him revealing his sexual attraction to me.
He never offered me an apology, or expressed any dismay about me telling him I had removed myself from his friends list on social media. I figured he was giving me the blow-off, but it gave me some measure of closure in knowing that I tried my best to communicate with him, in part to give him one last chance to explain himself. He was not willing to be mature enough to respond as one would in a two-way friendship that they really cared to try and save.
I don’t plan on reaching out to him again. It’s time I think about moving on, since with guys like him there is always an excuse why they are not present in your life, and someone else is always to blame while they are the hard done by victim in it all. Yes, he did have a bad start to life in some respects, but if he is reforming himself today like he claims he is, then he still has quite a bit of work ahead of him. Life is too short to over-analyse someone’s every action or inaction towards you. They either step up and meet you halfway to do whatever it takes to make it work or the relationship cannot survive.
Thank you once more Anita for all the valuable advice you have given. 🙂
Hi Anita,
It is exactly like that. Even though he is now a grown man, his maturity is stunted, clearly evidenced by his penchant to engage in a sea of shallow online relationships. He has deep-seated psych issues that likely prevent him relating to another in a healthy way, and those issues of his are not something I am able to fix, nor should I want to fix.
I held him in fond regard from our childhood, even though I hold some bad memories from that time, too. Instead I choose to focus on the good memories, which included him. He, on the other hand, focusses on the trauma he experienced. I’m not blaming him for that, because that it his decision on how to view his past. He did reveal that whenever he went through dark times, he would think of me, as his time spent with me when we were children was a lovely time for him. That news definitely did touch me, however, I think he is also associating me with the bad memories of the town we used to live in, and subconsciously that is pushing him away. The chasm that is forming again between us is wider than just this one issue. He has a seemingly unhealthy addiction to women that prevents a meaningful connection from ever happening with me.
I don’t agree with the notion put forth by some here that he has a right to keep adding and interacting with these other women (some who are of questionable character), AFTER he admitted to me he was attracted to and ‘valued’ me. By continuing to interact with and divert his attentions on females elsewhere, he is sabotaging any chance of a genuine relationship happening with a real-life soul, namely me. Someone who cared enough about him to listen during his soul-baring conversations, whereas I doubt many of these other women would give a damn about his real-world problems! It does show me though that he does not have the necessary drive to pursue me, and is easily distracted by the plethora of online temptations that exist. If he doesn’t have the self-control and maturity to moderate his online behaviour when an opportunity is handed to him to advance a real friendship, then again, the connection between us will not be able to withstand that.
Social media for all its merits, causes significant problems for decent women like myself, because it enables men like him to treat women in a disrespectful or disposable manner. But I, too, am part of that problem if I enable the guy through accepting his substandard treatment whilst he chooses to flirt with a horde of other women.
And going back to what Wanki mentioned about how is the guy supposed to know he is meant to be monogamous? I guarantee that even if this guy had already met up with me and we ended up dating, he would have an exceptionally difficult time giving up his much-loved hobby of digitally stamp collecting other females, because this activity of his is bordering on addiction.
If it’s too much trouble to even send me one quick “Hi, how are you going?” message, and that is perceived by him as a tedious obligation or something ‘forced’ and not worth fighting for, well he can continue to knock himself out with his 1,000,001 cam-whore “friends”! He seems to get some perverse pay-off from these other women that I don’t fulfill for him, so I guess it is for the best I find out sooner than later how insincere he has been.
Michelle,
I just did that. I have deleted him from my Facebook profile. What prompted my sudden decision to just go ahead and do it was that I noticed he’d posted this quote: “The biggest lesson I learned this year is to not force anything; conversations, friendships, relationships, attention, love. Anything forced is just not worth fighting for, whatever flows flows, what crashes crashes. It is what it is.”
I don’t know if that post was personally directed at me, but nevertheless it is a huge slap in the face and kick in the stomach! That post just makes him seem so full of himself and his own self-importance. The nerve of him!!
He made minimal effort towards building our friendship, and consciously chose to interact with other women over connecting in a genuine manner with me. He never stepped up and I was the one having to initiate the conversations. If I never contacted him, there would be no communication with him other than FB ‘likes’ here or there. I am so angry and hurt right now that I can’t even think straight. You just don’t realise how much crappy behaviour you tolerate from others in order to keep the peace.
Thank you Anita, Ben, and John.
The post that was intended to provide an opposing view certainly made me pause and consider the situation further.
The question whether he already knew a bit about me: no, he knows very little about my adult life, nor in the time I have kept in touch with him online has he ever tried to get to know me better, other than asking in our last message exchange if I have been with many other guys. We have not seen each other in-person since we were kids, so the constant one-sided conversation from him struck me as unusual and self-centred. No balanced, give and take communication was occurring.
When he asked to meet with me, I was not rude about turning his request down. I did ask him nicely to be patient with me, and agreed that I would love to meet him at a future point. I was buying time, and did not want to rush into any real world contact, as it was literally put on me that he would be in town several days after we talked about liking each other, and after he told me he would like to get physical with me! I was still digesting that significant confession and it was definitely a lot to process!
Despite turning his request down to meet, I would like to think there is no room for confusion in his mind that I am interested, seeing as I told him directly I fancied and valued him, and wanted to meet in-person someday. As much as I badly may have wanted to sleep with him too, I wasn’t going to put myself in a position where we had sex so soon before even really knowing much about each other. I would have only gotten more attached to him, and been devastated when he left town and distanced himself from me like he seems to be doing now. At least I suppose I spared myself even deeper emotional grief by having the sense to temper the pace of his sexual interest in me.
I did/do enjoy attention from him, but I guess my expectations are at odds with his, as some posters have rightfully pointed out. I care about him and want him to be a better man who wants just one girl: me! I can’t compete with a gazillion other girls on his radar. And I understand guys who thrive on ego boosts from many women paying them attention will seldom give that type of activity up.
I wanted to be the one he gives all these other girls up for, but can see I am kidding myself with that irrational expectation (love is not rational). I most definitely don’t want to be the backburner girl, which is the only sign he is giving me now. 🙁
As for the ‘sketchy’ definition, for a number of reasons I see this behaviour in him, and not just to do with his questionable adding of women who are strangers to his social media accounts. For one, he never addresses certain questions I put to him. For example, he got fired from a job last year, which he claimed wasn’t his fault. I questioned what exactly happened, but he never explained himself. I also asked if he seriously meant what he said about fancying me. Again, I was met with no answer from him, which seemed weird. When someone you are interested in doesn’t respond to what I thought were legitimate questions, it surely indicates something is being hidden? He adds very young girls and dubious characters to his social media accounts and has multiple accounts, which resemble a sleazy harem! It is insulting to me as his real-world school friend who has only ever had good intentions with him, to be sandwiched in amongst these sorts of people! And last but by no means least, I find him sketchy because he ‘likes’ and pays attention to other females, after telling me he fancies me and has had almost like a crush on me (whatever “almost like a crush” means?). That is upside-down logic to my mind and extremely arrogant to think I will stand by lovestruck, waiting until he is finished showering attention on other women!
If he is too busy ogling other females, when will he have the time and energy to get to know me better? He clearly makes time for other females, but has no time to talk to me and has let things stall. I don’t want only a virtual connection based on shallow ‘likes’. This is quite central to my problem with him. As a man he is not stepping up and pursuing me, and is easily distracted by the online temptation scores of other women provide. I would have thought if he truly cared for me and meant what he said, he would leave no doubt in my mind that he is keen on me?
Thank you to all of you who have helped encourage me to see the cold, hard truth of the situation. It has helped me immensely reading other views and verbalising my own thoughts on the matter. Good luck to you John if you end up back in the dating arena! 🙂 I understand that for decent men it is a scary new world out there with the possibility of misinterpretation and sexual harassment at the fore.
Hi Airene,
Thank you. You are right. Truth is, I am hoping to make a bold statement when unfriending him in a last-ditch effort to resurrect a failing connection and see if he cares enough to react and make amends. But the thought of unfriending terrifies me. The last time I unfriended him I sent him a nice message of closure, which he just accepted willingly, hardly said a word in response, and sent me a ‘thumbs up’, which incensed me! The ‘thumbs up’ picture he sent made me lash out at him, as it showed how casual he was, and that he would not apologise or fight to keep me in his life. 🙁
When he spoke to me again after our second FB friending, he said that he was hurt when I unfriended him, because he had felt a connection and then in his words, I has ‘bailed on him’. He said he didn’t want to get emotional over it back then, and didn’t want to hate me for it, because he didn’t think I was a deliberately hurtful person. He did apologise saying he would never intentionally hurt me. Thinking about this now, I just don’t know what to believe, or if any of it even matters anymore, because nothing connection-wise seems to have improved.
I have unfollowed him on FB and am contemplating changing his access to my profile to a restricted view. I figure why should he have the right to view my personal content, when he doesn’t even make any effort to communicate with me anymore, other than by using lazy ‘likes’ sprinkled here and there, in-between ogling other women’s bikini photos!! Some of those women are attainable too, and live in the same location as him, so it is not just gorgeous models he follows, who wouldn’t give him the time of day. The available ladies are the threat to our connection, and he is choosing to pay attention to all these other women over advancing anything more with me. 🙁 It’s so weird that a guy would do this after they tell you they are attracted to you, but I suppose that is how the mind of a ‘player’ who is looking for no-strings attached works?
I like your idea of giving it time to settle, then quietly unfriending him in a few months. I think I will follow that idea, but maybe aim to unfriend him a little sooner.
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