Dear Anna,

now that you’ve provided new information about him spending quite a bit of time during April and May in his room, and you hardly seeing him (or not seeing him at all) during that time, I am re-arranging the “story” that I’ve created in my mind, through which I am trying to understand what happened. So this is the info that you’ve provided so far about the months of April and May:

The two first weeks after the breakup he was always around me and if during our first 5h of conversation I didn’t insist of the two of us taking our distance for my own sake, he would have kept being around me. I was the one who insisted to keep our distances in a first place, he didn’t take it well at all.

During the rest of April and May, we kept bumping into each other because we belong to the same student associations

I know he shut down many times in April and May (didn’t get out of his room for two weeks until end of April, two weeks and half in May he did the same pretty much)

So, in the first 2 weeks after the breakup, from April 3 to April 17, you were bumping into each other often and he sought your company. You insisted on keeping distance to make things easier for yourself, but he didn’t take it well. Then, about 2 weeks later, about the time he started seeing the other girl, you stopped seeing him around because he was spending most of the time in his room. I don’t know if you communicated via messages during that time?

Then, he popped up again in early May and you started bumping into him again. On May 10, you bumped into each other and you told him “yeah, it’s stupid to avoid each other“, to which he responded “yes, I was kind of hoping that you would come and talk to me”. The friendship was reinstated and it was like in the good old times:

From this moment, we started to talk again, be around each other, bursting out of laugh as we used to do. During an event, he even said to one of his friends that he was going to stay with me and one of my friends instead of going with his own friend to join other people. At another event, we stayed talking for somehow 1h just the two of us and when a girl came, he ignored her. Finally, during a ball, I was ignoring him but when he saw that I wasn’t going to talk to him, he literally grabbed my arm to start a conversation with me.

This is just my interpretation, but during that time, you probably started hoping that he still has feelings for you, while for him, it probably meant going back to being just friends, which is the arrangement that he liked best.

Then, after the ball, which was sometime in mid May (after May 10), he disappeared again and spent 2 weeks or so in his room again. Next you saw him was May 26, at a pub event, when the incident with the other girl happened:

On the 26th of May, we had a pub event, I wanted to talk to him but since the moment I asked him if we could talk, he was being distant. … Later in the evening I think my world crumbled. I saw him going outside of the pub to meet with a girl, not a random girl, but the girl he told me nothing happened. They didn’t stay long together, she didn’t get in and at the end he.. PAT PATED her to say goodbye. But it was already too much for me, I stormed between the two of them, he got mad, I got mad and then I left.

I must say that when looking at the events now, I realize that I’ve made a wrong conclusion in my last but one post. He actually wasn’t pursuing you during the entire April and May, as I thought before, but only in the first 2 weeks after the breakup, before he started dating the other girl. Then he disappeared – maybe to be with her? (just a thought). When he reappeared in early May, he was friendly, but he started communicating with you only after you gave him the green light. You told him (on May 10): “yeah, it’s stupid to avoid each other”, to which he responded “yes, I was kind of hoping that you would come and talk to me”.

He might have thought that you don’t have a problem being friends with him anymore, that you “cooled off”, and so he went back to his usual style – being friendly, talking and laughing together (I don’t know if physical touch was present too?).  You probably interpreted it as “he still cares about me”, while for him it was just friendship. When he grabbed your arm at the ball, he might have wanted to talk about some practical issue, since you said he used to ask for your advice?

Then later in May, after the ball, he disappeared again for 2 weeks or so. During that time, was he in touch with you via messages? Was that when you sent him a supportive message, to which he hasn’t responded? (How can you feel that it would not bring any good to answer a simple supportive message yet thinking that staying around each other in real life was less dangerous?)

And then May 26 happened. First you wanted to talk to him about something (perhaps about his real feelings, i.e. the game you felt he was playing with you?), but he avoided you. And then you saw him talking to the girl you knew he fancied, and you stormed between them. That’s when he got angry with you and isolated himself for 2 hours. Later that evening he was just staring at you. Here I can see how he could have been angry and offended at what you did, and that’s why he didn’t even utter a word.

The next day the two of you had a conversation. He told you he doesn’t want to hurt you, but that he owes you nothing and that he doesn’t want to talk about the past any more. A week later, at another party, you confronted him about the girl, and it turned out they have been dating since April 17/18 and that he has feelings for her (although he didn’t know how serious it all is). He also said he doesn’t have feelings for you anymore. The next day you sent him a message, which you shared here, and then you blocked him.

Now viewing it through this new prism, I must say I’ve changed my opinion once again. If this is how things happened, I don’t see that he was pursuing you and leading you on with his behavior, because a) he wasn’t in touch with you when he started dating her, b) when he reappeared, he was friendly and sought out your company, but only after you agreed that there is no point in avoiding each other. In May he disappeared again and wasn’t around much, so again you weren’t really in touch. Unless he was trying to contact you via messages?

So all in all, I don’t think he behaved selfishly, except in the beginning, before he started dating her, when he told you that he didn’t want to lose you and that he still has feelings for you. And that you may even end up together in the future. Maybe he said those things to make you feel better, but in fact, it gave you false hope, to which you held onto ever since.

He in the meanwhile has moved on, started dating someone else, and distanced himself from you somewhat. But you haven’t really noticed it, you kept seeing his friendliness as a sign that he still wants to be with you. When you wanted to clarify it, he refused to talk about it and avoided you. So yes, this is another problem – that he didn’t clearly told you “no, I don’t have feelings any more, sorry”. He was probably a coward to admit it, and only did it when you confronted him about the other girl. So in a way, by refusing to “push you away”, i.e. say clearly that he isn’t interested, he left you hoping all this time. And it caused you pain.

I am sorry, Anna, that it ended like this, I truly am. I hope you can move on from this, and in the process heal from the false belief that you aren’t worthy of love. Because you are worthy, Anna, and you deserve a guy who will say a clear “YES, I want to be with you!”, without second thoughts and lame excuses…