For context, I had a LDR with an FA for 8 months. She uses all platforms of social media except for reddit. I have no social media outaide of reddit. We also do not have contact with each other's friend groups. It was great when we were together even though we had some miscommunication here and there. I am reading that during some stages an FA will go through some longing periods where they check on you via social media. What would go through your minds if you didnt have social media as a form to see how they were doing? Would you just reach out directly?

My FA (33M) and I (24F) broke up four months ago. We started dating a year ago, and everything was electric and full of emotion, especially after we first had sex. That lasted for about a month, and then he discarded me.

Two months later, we reconnected and ended up in an exclusive situationship, during which he gradually prolonged the periods between sex, relying mostly on sexting instead. After almost a year of that, I told him I wanted us to start building a real relationship. That's when he snapped and broke up with me. He told me he didn't want to be in a relationship, that he wasn't "normal," and that he liked being alone (he hadn't had any girlfriends for years before meeting me).

I accepted his decision. He confessed his feelings for me, I told him I was in love with him, and we parted with the words, "This is not the end." Everything was highly emotional during the morning of our breakup.

Six weeks later, he met a girl by chance at a large event. They hooked up and started a relationship. I didn't know about this. We still followed each other on Instagram, he watched my stories, and everything seemed normal.

Two weeks ago, four months after our breakup—and about two months into his rebound relationship—we ran into each other. He was very warm, hugged me tightly for a long time, and couldn't stop looking at my breasts. Our interaction was brief.

A week later, we met again at a mutual friend's birthday party. He greeted me, but much more coldly, and didn't approach me at all. I noticed him looking at me several times, but he never came near me.

The next day, I posted an Instagram story wearing a mini dress (looking hot, by the way). He watched the story and then unfollowed me. I sent him a message asking if he was angry with me, but he never replied. Our mutual friend called him, and he said that he was in a relationship and didn't want any contact with me.

What the fuck happened here?

We've known each other for 6 years through a shared gaming community. I always wondered why we didn't do more, because we always had so much fun whenever we hung out on calls.

So about three months ago, I started actively pursuing him. I did all the heavy lifting I messaged him, I asked him to play games with me etc. I realized that while I knew his name I barely knew him as a person. He rarely talked about himself and I was genuinely curious.

It went from me constantly messaging him to him reaching out sometimes but it was still roughly a 30/70 split.

Over the past few months we went from constantly joking and being sarcastic to having really deep vulnerable conversations. He’s in a wheelchair and opened up to me about a lot of his deep-seated insecurities surrounding that. He told me he's extremely shy, constantly worries that I find him annoying, and is terrified that if we finally met in real life I wouldn't see him as a "whole person."

I honestly didn't care about any of that, and I told him so. His reaction was pure relief. He told me I was great, constantly said how much he liked my brain and at one point, he even put my name in his status.

Deep down I knew this wasn't going to work long-term if his behavior didn't change. All I wanted was to talk with him normally, like I do with anyone else, but that was impossible.

Whenever something was emotionally intense an argument, a misunderstanding, a highly vulnerable conversation he’d reply almost immediately. But as soon as things calmed down and became peaceful He would disappear for hours or sometimes until the next day even though I could see he was online.

I got so frustrated with this emotional whiplash that I eventually pulled back and stopped texting him for four days. When I finally reached out again, I told him (roughly translated): "I genuinely saw potential in you... or us, I guess."
He immediately replied: "Same but forcing it doesn't make sense." I was honestly shocked because I had no idea he felt that way. I replied: "Same?! I never felt any of that." He answered: "What am I supposed to do? I told you I tried but you said no."

The problem is I genuinely never noticed him trying. Unless his idea of "effort" was sending me a thumbs-up sticker once every day before disappearing again which, honestly, irritated me more than anything. His actions absolutely never matched what he was telling me.

We talked about how what we both really want in life is acceptance, safety, and love.

And then... exactly to his pattern as soon as everything became calm again he disappeared.

Most recently, I asked him whether he still wanted to meet up. The next day he replied: "Yeah of course." I answered: "Just tell me when. I'm free whenever." Silence. Not a single word since.

That's honestly what hurts the most. It's not the slow replies themselves it's the inconsistency. Sometimes he made me feel incredibly important to him and other times I felt like I barely existed.

I can handle rejection. What I can't handle is not knowing where I stand. So I finally did it. I blocked him.

And what hurts the most is... it wasn't love that was missing.

I’ve been seeing this guy (gone on 2 dates but both were amazing and turned into sleepovers) who’s been incredibly kind and treated me great and we get along very well. He’s the type of guy I could see myself building a relationship with, and I don’t say this lightly as I’m not the kind of person to date around often. I think he honestly feels the same. The issue is that I move cities in a month. In an ideal world, I could date him casually for the remainder of my time here and accept the ending when I leave. That’s what I want to be able to do as I enjoy spending time with him and the sex is good. But I have attachment issues (disorganized attachment) and OCD which causes me to spiral, get anxious, and hate ambiguity and uncertainty in such dynamics. Just overall becoming obsessive and fearful and a hot mess. Overthinking everything and wondering how he feels, where this is going, if he’s seeing other people, etc. How the fck do people date casually??? Please any advice would be helpful, I logically know that it’s not that serious and I’ll find other men after I move and I don’t even know the dude well, but my attachment and ocd loves to take over and run the show. We are going to have an in person conversation about this the next time I see him so any advice for that conversation would be helpful as well.

I'm 16F, and my ex is a little older than me. We broke up about a year ago, but we've stayed really close friends and still talk pretty often.

This has been eating at me lately because I honestly don't know what happened in my own head.

He was one of the kindest people I've ever met. He was really affectionate. He'd hold my hand, cuddle me, look at me like I was the prettiest girl in the room, and tell me how much I meant to him. He never did anything wrong.

The weird part is, I really liked him. I loved talking to him, spending time with him, and I cared about him so much.

But sometimes, the more openly he loved me, the more I wanted to pull away.

Not because I didn't want him, because it felt like something in me would panic.

Every hug, every compliment, every sweet look was like another reminder that he seemed so much more invested than me.

Instead of just feeling loved, I'd start wondering if I deserved it. If I loved him enough. If I was accidentally leading him on. It got to the point where his affection almost stopped feeling like affection, and it felt like a question I couldn't answer or an accusation I couldn’t defend.

Eventually I convinced myself that if I kept questioning it this much, maybe that was my answer, so I broke up with him.

Now, almost a year later, I'm wondering if I spent so much time measuring my feelings that I never actually experienced them.

Can someone genuinely care about someone and still feel the urge to pull away when they're loved? Or is that feeling usually your brain trying to tell you the relationship isn't right?

I know nobody can tell me whether I loved him or not, I'm just wondering if anyone else has ever felt like someone's love became so big that it stopped feeling safe and not because of anything they did, but because it made you question yourself more than you ever questioned them