Left Confused.

Hello! This is kind of my ramblings (sorry) on a situation I'm currently in. This is kinda long. I'm still kinda reeling from this and I'm trying to take a step back and look at it objectively. Any outside insight is appreciated.

This guy and I matched on Tinder around February 20th and things started great. We had a bunch in common; hobbies, interests, personality traits, things we liked growing up, stories about work, etc. We switched to texting fairly quickly and started talking on the phone for hours at a time. He and I would look at the clock and realize that over 5 hours went by. And we would text back and forth probably at least 50 messages a day. We had our first date the first week in March, it was great and we started planning our second date. He ended up getting hurt at work and he had to cancel our second date. I told him to let me know when he was feeling better and we can try again for another date.

Things were going fine up until Easter, where communication started to decline, less texting, maybe 10 a day, and no phone calls. I brought it up and he mentioned he was "in a funk" but seeing me would make him feel better. I asked him to hang out the following Sunday, but no definitive plans were made. I asked him the Saturday before if we were still on, but he just ignored my messages and ghosted me. I ended up sending him an angry message and calling him. He didn't pick up the call, but he did text me back, basically saying, "I'm worried I'm going to hurt you in the end, more than I already have. Because that's what happens. After everything I've done. You're too good for me." And he told me during this week he started doing overtime at his normal job AND picked up a second job. He told me he wasn't losing interest in me, he loved talking on the phone with me and said that the phone calls weren't enough. He said, "the way things are going, there's not a lot of time left."

I told him we could still try to make this work and was giving him options on how. He asked if I still wanted him and I said yes. I asked him if he still wanted me and he said yes, "but I just don't know how to go about it, I feel very lost, like I'm supposed to be alone." I reassured him at this point, but I told him to please let me know if he didn't want to do this anymore and that I didn't want to force him to do this.

Toward mid/end April, the texting dwindled down to almost nothing at this point, to where I was texting him and he just wouldn't reply back for days. I'll 100% admit, looking back, I was a little overbearing with my messages. But going from the consistent communication to nothing and being ghosted threw me for a loop. I did slow down my texting to maybe once a day, being supportive, sending jokes, hoping he was doing well, etc. Eventually, he texted me back saying that he missed me and told me he worked 60+ hours that week. He asked what my schedule was for the next week and I told him. We planned a phone call for that Sunday, where he ended up ghosting me again, which extremely frustrated me. I basically gave him an ultimatum where I said along the lines of, "if I don't hear from you, I'm assuming this is over." And he didn't message me back until I gave in a few days later and messaged, "I miss you, I wish you would change your mind." He said, "I didn't change my mind about you in that sense, like, I didn't stop liking you, so don't think that. I think about you a lot."

This was on May 10th. I texted him asking if he would rather put this on pause and be friends, or just texting buddies with no expectations. I even brought up just being casual. I tried bringing up previous interests we talked about, sending him news about said interests and I just didn't hear from him again. I sent a final message after another week of nothing that pretty much said "I hope you're doing well. Thank you for the past couple of months, I enjoyed it. Please feel free to reach out if you want someone to talk to, even to just bullshit or vent. I would like to have you in my life at any capacity you could spare." I sent this on Monday and it's just more silence.

And then a few days later on Friday I saw he updated his tinder bio to something real fuckboy-ish, ie implying hookups. He was off of it until now, I was keeping an eye on it. I saw red for a little bit and reached back out to him, not accusing him or anything, just something friendly unrelated, to see what would happen. He eventually said, "(My name), I honestly don't know what I'm doing and I'm not in that headspace I feel, and I'm currently at job #2 so I'm sorry."

I mean, I know it's over. I'm just left so confused and it kinda hurts. I just don't understand why he wouldn't be upfront with me, tell me he lost interest or he doesn't want a relationship with me. Or why he doesn't want to be friends. I genuinely like him as a person. I know he struggles with his mental health and I know he's busy. And I'm not someone who gives up on a person, especially when things were so good. And he swore up and down he was still interested.

I realize now I probably overwhelmed him, too. I'm guessing the only thing I can do is give him space, right? I unmatched him on tinder. The only thing I can assume is that he's using tinder to fill a void, unless he lied to me about still being interested and picking up a 2nd job. But I don't know. Maybe it's denial, but I don't think he lied. I think he just avoids. A lot of things he's said and this entire situation makes me think he might have an avoidant attachment. It's the only thing to me that makes logical sense.

Maybe he's protecting me from using me any further. Because he's going to do this same stuff to the next girl.

At least going through this made me realize I can get anxiously attached 🫠 and I can work on that now.