Really needing some insight. Wondering if there's any hope to salvage or repair this relationship and what next steps should be.
I (27F) been talking to this guy (27M) for about a year, it's been kind of a roller coaster, and has been very confusing. We often circled around the "we're just friends, but more than friends" thing.
We've talked for the past year, but despite him living less than 3 minutes from me, I'd only seen him maybe twice in person, and each time I did, it left me questioning things more. We never did anything romantic, aside from cuddling the first time we hung out. This was back in November of 2024, and after we had hung out he ended up going radio silent on me after I went home, and we I didn't hear from him again until sometime in December of 2024.
We talked everything out, things went pretty alright after that up until May of this year. We'd gotten pretty close, talking everyday, playing games, falling asleep on the phone together at night, basically edating even though he again, lives less than 3 minutes from me. In the same neighborhood. The way we talked often left me feeling very confused, because we spoke in a way that a boyfriend and girlfriend would, but didn't really have that title. I honestly couldn't tell at times if he liked me, or if I was just good company to him. But at this point I had grown an attachment to him, and though there were some red flags and issues, I did really want something more with him.
And then the blow up happened. He went to a Rave festival one weekend, and I had talked to him up until he left for that event. I texted him throughout the weekend, but he didn't respond to a single one of my texts. During this time I also noticed he had unfriended me on discord, so I was already kind of preparing for a "breakup" of sorts, if you'd call it that. Once he finally returned from his event, we did end up talking, but I noticed it wasn't as frequent/vibes felt off.
On May 5th of 2025, I had tried texting him throughout the day. First text I sent was in the morning, around 10AM just asking if he wanted to play games, texted again a few hours later after no response, again met with silence. I finally just sent him a sad faced "):" message around 11PM after not hearing anything from him all day, and he finally responded "what's wrong" I said "you've just been ignoring me. I was hoping we could play games or something today since I know your work week is about to start"
and he blew up. He responded "I don't have to spend everyday with you all day like wtf, you saw me in discord with my friends like idk what to tell you bruh it was my day off I've been chilling and you were at work." So I took that hint to just stop trying to contact him, and he ended up removing me from all social spaces, and we went no contact basically without a word. Went completely no contact.
I was hurt, having spent all this time feeling confused on where we stood, and after everything, I honestly just wanted to feel good about myself/thought about trying to date. So a few days later I joined a dating server, mostly as a means to be a distraction for myself since I was feeling pretty down, and who doesn't love some shallow flirting? I interacted and spoke to a few guys, laughed at the outlandish dms I'd get, but pretty quickly decided I wasn't really interested and it's probably be better if I just spent time to myself. So I cut all my connections rather quickly. I just wasn't ready and was honestly still hung up on the guy I had spent several months with.
Now, come May 23rd, he resurfaces. Acts as though everything is fine and normal, and we start kind of talking again. At this point though I was seeking clarity, was tired of questioning things, and ended up having a conversation with him to ease my mind, and he said himself "we're just friends, I just wanna chill and game" okay, perfect. Finally the clarity I needed. So I started treating him as such, a friend. I didn't bother texting him all throughout the day and we didn't sleepcall like we used to, and while it was an adjustment I thought I was doing what was healthy for me at the time. Creating distance and a healthy space for my own sake, because I couldn't keep acting like a girlfriend to him. Of course I still had feelings for him, but I was willing to just let it go and be friends. But he made that task hard.
I had stopped flirting with him, because again, we were; in his own words — just friends. But he didn't. He'd continue to make suggestive comments and jokes, and again just confused me the entire time.
I know this is getting to be a long read, so I'll kind of skip over the next couple months and get to now, but am going to note a few things.
First: While we never held titles to one another, we did agree that we wouldn't entertain others while we were "talking" to one another. Very "situation-ship" but also only online because he'd flake any time I tried making plans to hang out, and I eventually stopped trying.
Second: He has always been very jealous, and would even basically put me on a "time-out" and not talk to me if he thought I was hanging out or talking to a guy when he wasn't around. I'm a gamer, and in an online space dominated by males, so of course I have guy friends.
Third: just noting from May – late October we went through at least 2 other periods of no contact. One sometime in June, him returning in July, and then another in late August, this one being the longest with him not returning until late October.
Now. Getting to the recent. He came back late October and we started really talking again, and this time I noticed he was kind of.. different. We got close again, talking all day, gaming together, falling asleep at on the phone, ect ect. Ended up even making our own plans to do stuff for thanksgiving, and he didn't flake out on me this time. He came over not just once but two days in a row, and we did more than just.. cuddle. Since late November now he had been coming over frequently, it was like a 180 switch in him and things finally seemed to be going somewhere. When he spoke to me it was kinder, he was more understanding and making more effort than I'd ever seen previously.
But thennnn, of course, small things started happening. First, he found an old Birth control pack when he was helping me clean up my room and immediately jumped to conclusions as to why I'm on bc. I had to explain I've been on BC since Highschool and I use it predominantly to help regulate my cycles and help manage my pain/cramps (because it helps me a lot, I have pretty bad periods — haven't been diagnosed with PCOS but do harbor some of the symptoms)
We got into a few other tiny spats here and there, but we resolved those pretty quickly and they weren't so serious.
He came over on Christmas Eve, and I had planned a cute little night in for us and baked lava cakes, we ordered some pizza, and I got us some matching sweaters and we exchanged gifts. The day was going well, up until a friend messaged me, who happened to be a male. And he got upset, and at first it was a small thing but ended up escalating, and he scrolled through our dms back to May of this past year, where I had shared screenshots with my friend of me talking to a guy in dating server I joined. And he of course, got really upset. Ended up storming out, and saying he wants to end things and can't trust me now and I'm at a loss. I've tried explaining my pov, the timeline of it with him, but he still sees it as me "hoeing myself out online" — even though, the messages are all very tame, flirty, sure. But very tame and no explicit or even showy photos were ever sent. Never met anyone, like I said it was very brief and I merely talked to a few guys, and but ended all that pretty early on/quickly once I realized it wasn't really doing me any good.
I know a lot of the comments are going to ask why I'd even want to salvage this, or why I keep allowing him back. Truth is, I do really care about him, and I think this time just hurts more because I did notice tremendous change, and it hurts even more now that we've been intimate and actually spent real time together. But I don't think I did wrong here and I wish he would see my pov.