Well, K207, assuming that you're not planning to turn this into a career, I would say the main lesson here is to be on guard, so to speak, for potential pitfalls like this that may present themselves in the future. And recall that, in the beginning, you weren't aware this person was going to turn out to be so young, so needy & so manipulative. You may not be able to recognize this in the next one who comes along either (if there is a next one... & there may well be because you're probably the type of person who wants to help.)

So, if you plan to continue to try to be a life-raft on the on-line sea, so to say, you're going to have to learn to look for signs that the situation may be potentially troublesome. Personally I feel that on-line relationships must be, by nature, so necessarily limited that it's best just to not allow any on-line relationship to develop to any significant degree (unless a deeper relationship is what one is seeking such as in an on-line dating service or some such thing.)

For lack of a better phrase to use, I'd say the "hit-&-run" method is the way to go. I know there is a strong allure to the notion of saving some struggling young person, on-line or IRL for that matter. However, my experience has been that it is fraught with potential dangers &, more often than not, is best avoided. I think one of the insights you can gain, from re-reading all of the posts that were written regarding this thread, is that once you were into it, there was never a point at which you could have bowed out gracefully. It was always going to come to a "messy" conclusion, which it did. So it's best not to allow yourself to get into this kind of ongoing relationship to begin with. My best wishes to you, K207...