I met this guy online at the end of August/early September and we hit it off pretty well. We exchanged number and started chatting via text everyday. We then began FaceTiming and talking on the phone quite frequently. He lives a little over an hour away from me and has 50/50 custody of his 4 year old daughter, so we didn’t get to hang out in person as much as I would have liked. However, we did start hanging out casually, usually at my place or at his brother’s house because he is currently living with his parents.
He split with his wife about a year ago and they are, according to him, close to finalizing their divorce. He says he is still living with his parents because he wants to save up money to buy a house for him and his daughter. He also claims that he needs to be there to help out his dad, who lost his foot last year to diabetes. I didn’t buy that part from the beginning since his mom is no longer working, and they live in a small one story house.
So, we have been talking and hanging out frequently. We even waited a few months to have sex. He was a complete gentleman and didn’t even try anything for a while. He’s very old school. He says he “courts” girls first and then, if things work out, they go “steady.” We never ran out of things to talk about and on the weeks when he had his daughter he would call and FaceTime a lot.
A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, he asks me if I want to spend it with his family and meet his daughter. I said yes. I then asked him if this meant that we were officially going “steady” and he said yes. A few weeks later I’m at his brother’s house with his entire family, including his daughter, and everything went amazingly well, from my perspective at least. His mom, brother, and sister-in-law sent me friend requests on Facebook that night.
After we left his brother’s house, we went back to his parent’s house. I was there for a few hours with just him and his daughter. She and I did arts and crafts together for a long time, until she got hungry and tired and then she started acting out a bit towards her dad, which is as expected for a 4 year old.
I left around 7:00 pm because I had a little over an hour drive back home. He walked me outside to my car and started kissing me. I then just casually asked him if I could change my relationship status on Facebook from “single” to “in a relationship with…” and he said yes. On my drive home, I got a notification that he had changed his relationship status from “single” to “in a relationship with me.”
Everything was normal the next day. I had stuff to do and so did he so we didn’t talk too much, but we talked before bed and everything seemed fine. His last text to me that night said, “Goodnight beautiful.”
The next day, we were just chatting like usual in the morning via text. I had a zoom call early that afternoon, and during that zoom call I got a text from him saying, “Hey, we need to talk. Call me when you can.” I was like you’ve got to be fucking kidding me! What happened?! Everyone knows what “we need to talk” means.
So, after my zoom call I am getting ready to call him, and he sends me a text saying that he just got home and his mom accidentally ran over one of their dogs so now he has to dig a grave for him and stuff and didn’t have time to talk so he was just going to text what he wanted to talk to me about. He said that ever since we became “official” he has been having a ton of anxiety and was feeling overwhelmed. He said, very coldly which I was not used to, “We either need to go back to being unofficial or you can have nothing to do with me if you want. I just really need to figure out my mental health.” I was very confused. I told him that was very sorry about his dog, and that if we needed to go back to being “unofficial” (not even really sure what that means at this point. Weeks prior to this we decided that we were in a relationship. I even asked him, teasingly, if he wanted to be my boyfriend and he was like yeah you want to be my girlfriend like we were in high school) that it was fine and that if he needed space I would definitely give him that. He didn’t respond, so I texted him out of pure confusion, “Are we broken up? Still seeing each other?” I honestly was so confused because his text implied that he didn’t want a relationship with me. He never replied.
I didn’t hear from him for the rest of the afternoon. He gets up super early and usually texts me, but the next morning he didn’t. He left some stuff at my place, so I texted him, “what is your address so I can send your books back to you?” He immediately texted me back with the address and we haven’t spoken since.
Back when we decided to go steady he started talking about how he was doing Christmas shopping early and he had already ordered my gifts and was getting me something else too. He also invited me to Christmas and at thanksgiving his mom kept asking me my favorite colors. He told me that she was getting me a Christmas present. So, naturally, I got him a few things and something for his daughter.
The day after he “broke up with me” and I texted him asking for his address and he sent it, I immediately packed up his books and included one of the cheaper gifts I got for him, something personal and from the heart, and his daughter’s gift too. I returned the more expensive gift I got him. I tracked the package and know it got there last week.
Haven’t heard from him at all. Complete radio silence. I haven’t reached out to him either because, as far as I know, he dumped me and doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. I was kind of a wreck about it last week and still don’t understand what happened. I got back on the dating site we met on and have started talking to some guys, but I’m having a really hard time moving past this guy for some reason. I mean, he invited me to thanksgiving with his entire family, introduced me to his 4 year old daughter, bought me Christmas presents, gave ZERO indication that we were going to fast or that he was struggling mentally in any way at all whatsoever. All he would ever tell me was how happy he was that he met me and that he’s so glad that I’m in his life.
I’m trying to move on, but I was just completely blindsided by all of this and don’t know if I will be able to trust anyone I meet online again.