Just to preface, there's a few facets to this obsession so I'll try and explain them as objectively as I can but I apologise in advance if it gets convoluted or confusing.
I (26F) have been friends with this guy (28M) for a few years now, but these feelings seem to have caught up to me out of nowhere. We live in different cities and he'd come visiting recently, during which I offered to be his guide and show him around. Important context, he's working but due to a few unfortunate reasons, I am not and I am functionally unemployable for the next year. It has been hard coming to terms with my own helplessness and having to live with my parents as somebody who values her independance, and the weight of my own actions that led me to this situation have really done a number on my self esteem. I'm doing my best to stay motivated and start over, but it's this feeling of vast difference in our lives in all aspects that both sparked this obsession and prevents me from doing anything conclusive about it.
During the visit, he'd booked a hotel nearby and I'd meet him there frequently to pick him up for the plan of the day. There were a couple of times we just stayed in instead, chatted and relaxed, even though I felt like that may not have been his preferred way of spending the day owing to his active personality. Think the kind of guy who goes hiking and trekking on weekends and cycles miles every day. I'm the opposite, being much more sedentary, and I really look up to him for a lot of factors, including but not limited to the activity, his professionalism when it comes to work, his general personality of just being a kind, patient person, and much more. Throughout the entire visit, he'd been a perfect gentleman, being so respectful of my space and feelings and getting us out of a few strapped situations I landed us in (tour guide is not my professional calling, clearly!)
Towards the end of the visit, once we'd settled into each other's company, our interactions took a hesitant, flirtatious tone, as though we were teasing each other with a constant undertone of 'haha, unless…?' On one occasion, he pulled me into a tight embrace and bit my neck, and seemed like he wanted to do more since he grabbed me by the wrists, but ultimately paused for a long moment and let me go. I had been the one to tease and egg him on into doing this, but once he actually did this, and moreover let me go without further escalation, I got embarrassed and dropped the line of conversation too.
Ever since then, as he's gone back home, our texts have taken on a more openly flirtatious tone, with both of us promising/threatening to bite each other and such. I guess part of my obsession is being fueled by my raging crush on him now, but the reason why I call it obsession instead of a crush is because it's less fueled by cute warm fluffy feelings and more overthinking and analysis of every interaction we've had. While our conversations are more flirty, he's also become dry in the sense of ignoring things like me sharing how my day went or talking about book recommendations. We also used to do online activities prior to this meeting period like watching movies or playing games together, and he's been consistently missing all our appointments, leaving me hanging and frustrated and wondering if I did something wrong. He's been citing work reasons and sometimes just plain forgetting, which makes me feel even worse and as though he's just flirting with me for the 'feel-good' factor of doing so, and not because he necessarily likes me back the way I like him.
I haven't been upfront with him about how I feel because the situation looks quite hopeless in my eyes. He's gotten drier and less active/available, but the flirting makes me believe that maybe I didn't do anything wrong and I'm still in his good books. I did some self-reflection and realised I couldn't stop fantasizing and idolising him because of his financial freedom and independance, as well as his personality that sees/makes every problem feel trivial and easily handleable. It's a mixture of I want him, and I want to BE him. It's resulted in this odd situation where I'm thinking about him all day, trying to make sense of half information and past conversations and trying to figure him out like a puzzle, turning all our interactions over to try and see them in different angles and see if they somehow come together to create some kind of solution. For example, he'd mentioned he barely had close friends and didn't confide in them often, choosing instead to confide in random strangers instead, which aligned in my head as an avoidant attachment person, which would sort of explain what he's doing in terms of pulling back after a moment of closeness. In contrast, I have a small but very tight-knit group of close friends that have had each others' and my back for years, which feels like yet another opposition to his personality.
I do unfortunately think any kind of confession from my side would be quite hopeless; in comparison to his personality, I feel far more boring and quite frankly, not spontaneous or interesting enough to hold his attention (besides getting us in trouble lol) Meanwhile, he's the kind of person who thrives in chaos and can't sit still, making him a real go-getter in calm situations and an oasis of calm confidence in chaotic situations. I admire him so much for all these traits. But this does also mean that he's always chasing the high of the next interesting thing, since I've watched him do things like sign up for events and then forget about them completely, or one that hurt more personally, invited me to go on a trip with him but upon asking further questions, became clear that he had no plans or ideas on where to go or even when. He had just been thinking out loud perhaps, but I'd jumped at the idea and ultimately felt disappointed and let down that there was no effort behind the suggestion.
Trying to be objective like this has helped me in terms of maintaining my composure (so I don't come across as a total desperado in front of him lol, if he's an avoidant I have no intentions of becoming the anxious piece of the puzzle) and distancing myself to regular friends-but-we-flirt? levels, and even helped me do a few things to improve my current condition (in terms of health, unemployment and thinking) but if I'm honest, I'm thinking about him all the time. Always wishing he were here, always wishing I were more like him, always thinking I wouldn't be in my current situation if I WERE more like him and chosen differently. I don't have any kind of bipolarity or other disorder to clinically explain any obsessions (as far as I know ðŸ˜) but it does align with the way my personality is – I'm a very all-or-nothing kind of person, always tending towards the extremes, and in this case its some kind of odd hyperfixation on this guy that doesn't feel like a crush but some kind of all-encompassing, burning curiosity.
I assume this kind of obsession will die down over time (although how much time, I'd love to know, I've been nursing these damn feelings for over four months now ugh) and once I've been disappointed or let down enough to finally stop idolizing him and putting him on a pedestal. But until that happens, I'm also looking at how to manage these feelings or maybe even a new perspective? I'm not sure. I've been trying to direct all this energy into other ventures, like I mentioned, in terms of exercises that I can do or small side-gigs that I can do to try and earn some money and my freedom back, one step at a time, but any sense of fulfilment from those is drowned out by the sheer scale of my incessant thoughts about him instead, about what he might have thought about our interactions, about if what I did was right or wrong, about if he'd be proud of me for doing these things (he would, maybe not the overthinking but the gigs, he would) and more importantly, would I scare him off if I share what's on my mind? I've been told I experience emotions very intensely (Scorpio brain heyyy) which does encourage me to keep my thoughts on a very tight leash when it comes to sharing, but I'm also afraid that I'm both experiencing obsession intensely and when/if the time comes, I'll experience disappointment or sadness equally intensely. Looking for all kinds of thoughts, feedback and advice, and thank you for reading all this!