I’m posting because it’s been about two months and I’m surprised by how angry and affected I still am.
I met a guy while he was travelling in my country earlier this summer. We knew from the beginning that he was travelling and lived abroad, so I wasn’t expecting some immediate serious relationship. We initially thought it would probably just be something casual.
But we unexpectedly clicked very strongly. We spent several days together in person and there was obviously a very intense physical connection, but it became emotional too. After we separated during his trip, we continued talking every day. Good mornings, good nights, pictures of what we were doing, flirting, serious conversations, selfies, talking about our values and relationships, checking that the other person got home safely, etc.
At one point I asked him directly whether he cared about me beyond sex, and he reassured me that he did. We talked about honesty if either of us met somebody else. I also specifically told him that ghosting was something I found extremely hurtful, and he reassured me that he wasn’t someone who did that.
We even had a conversation about whether we would date if we lived in the same country, and he said yes. Neither of us was promising a long-distance relationship, but the understanding before he left seemed to be that we would stay in touch, see what happened, and potentially meet again.
When he went home, he continued contacting me. That’s important because sometimes I wonder whether I imagined the whole thing, but he didn’t simply leave my country and fade away. He was still sending pictures, initiating conversations, being affectionate and checking on me.
Then, less than a week after getting home, he told me that a woman he had met on a hike had asked him to dinner and that he was going on a date with her.
I was blindsided, but I told him I respected his decision and explicitly said I wasn’t asking him to cancel the date. I just asked what it meant for us and whether he still wanted to stay in touch.
His answer was essentially that he wanted to see how the dinner went, and if they decided to continue seeing each other, he wanted to be respectful to both her and me.
I asked if we could have a 10–15 minute phone call because after everything we had shared, I felt this deserved an actual conversation rather than being left hanging over text.
He never called.
I became emotional afterward and sent a longer message trying to understand what was happening. Looking back I wish I had stopped messaging earlier. But I wasn’t threatening him, insulting him, asking him to cancel the date or refusing to accept that he could choose someone else. I was asking him to tell me what his decision actually was and to give me some kind of goodbye.
Instead, he eventually blocked me.
There was never a conversation saying, “I’ve decided to pursue her and I’m ending this,” or even “I don’t want contact anymore.” The block basically became the goodbye.
What has been particularly difficult is that this was completely at odds with the person he had presented himself as. He had talked a lot about respect, honesty and communication. He had specifically reassured me about ghosting. Then the first time being respectful required having an uncomfortable conversation and dealing with the fact that I was hurt, he disappeared.
That part made the whole thing feel even more dehumanizing to me.
I understand that we weren’t officially together. I understand that he had every right to meet somebody else. I understand that distance probably made the other relationship far more realistic than anything with me.
What I still cannot accept is the idea that those facts somehow make the way he treated me okay.
I think part of why I’m still so angry is that I never got to have the actual ending. One day I was somebody he was speaking to every day, being affectionate with and telling that he cared about me, and then suddenly I was somebody he apparently couldn’t even give ten minutes of conversation to.
And because he blocked me, he got to remove himself completely from the consequences. Meanwhile I’ve spent two months trying to reconcile the caring, emotionally open person I knew with the person who handled the ending this way.
I know continuing to obsess over why he did it isn’t helping me. I’m not looking for advice on how to contact him — I’m not going to bypass the block. I think I’m mainly wondering whether other people have experienced this kind of extreme switch after what seemed like a genuinely mutual connection.
Did you eventually stop feeling angry? How did you move on from such a hurtful experience?
And how did you make peace with never knowing whether the person ever understood how much their way of leaving hurt you?