Here is my story. It’s not dramatic but it has gotten me quite confused. I’ve talked about it to friends who have given me various pieces of advice, but in the end I feel the need to share with outsiders who don’t know me. I’ll try to give an as honest account as possible, and I feel that already publishing this story here will be a relief.

It starts last summer, when in a whim I decided to go on Tinder. I wasn’t looking for a relationship per se, but I have been single for quite a while and figured it would be a way to meet new people. Soon I had a couple of matches, and one of those was a girl that I really hit it off with through chat. After a week we met up for drinks and that was a lot of fun. We settled on a second date, and here I must already confess that for all the positive, there were some warning signs right away. She mentioned having an “anxiety”, she didn’t specify however and I didn’t pry. Also, she called me right before the second date on account of going through my Facebook page. It turned out some things were just wrongly interpreted – she saw my list of “followers” which contained a few spam accounts of scantily clad girls (I never checked my “followers” before). Second date was also great and we really seemed to hit it off. The week after that we chatted regularly and did some innocent flirting. I invited her over for diner at my place that weekend, which she gladly accepted.
Now here’s the part where I should’ve known better. The evening was pleasant enough, but by that time I’d already developed some feelings, so there was a little tension. We ended up on the couch, and at a certain point I decided to go in for a kiss. I did so rather clumsily, but she responded to it & we spent the rest of the night (until 6am in the morning) kissing and cuddling. In the end she went home, nothing else happened although at a certain point she debated staying over. I did not push her on that, in fact I distinctly remember telling her a few times we shouldn’t do anything she wasn’t sure of. The day after I sent her a text, and she responded (I still have that text) that she didn’t mind us having kissed, that she actually had enjoyed it but still thought it was too soon and we should slow down. I agreed on that in a follow-up text, after that she went silent.

When I contacted her again a day later, she was suddenly very aloof, and after a bit of back&forth she asked me to meet up with her because she wanted to talk. That didn’t end well – she suddenly acted very suspicious of me, and I wasn’t prepared for that so I made light of a couple of her remarks, which she called me out on. Still, we ended that meeting just talking on a bench, and at the end I told her that if she still wanted to hang out and see where it would go from there, I was all for it. I reiterated that statement the next day in a chat message, and she totally blew up on me. She called me an untrustworthy liar and an a*hole, and told me she didn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore. I immediately called her and while she wasn’t nearly as furious on the phone, she was very cold and restated she wanted to break all contact. She did so immediately after I hung up (defriended me on Facebook, deleted me as a Tinder match). However, that evening she sent me a text attacking me once more and accusing me of playing games with her emotions and not caring myself. That hurt me quite a bit, so over the next couple of days I defended myself in a couple of messages, and for a moment she was responding in a more calm and reasoned way. We agreed to meet up again and talk it out. That meeting was disastrous – she started suggesting I had some unresolved psychological issues and accused me of crossing her boundaries and forcing myself on her during our date the week before. I have a tendency to bottle up in emotionally heavy situations, so I tried to apologize as well as I could but she interpreted my aloofness as me not being sincere and actually not giving a f*. After this meeting I decided that this would not help any of us, and after she sent me a couple more insulting messages the conversation stopped.

A couple of months went by, but the whole episode left me with a knot in my stomach. I realise I should have been more careful on that night, so I had sincere regret over that. Still, she had also retaliated in a very mean way saying some nasty stuff about my character. In the end, I sent her a message again expressing my regret, basically saying “I’m sorry I made you feel this way.” She first reacted positively, and agreed to hang out as friends to normalize things between us. But when I got back to her a few days later to set a date, she was back in cold mode again, saying “if I want that, you’ll hear from me and not vice versa.” I left it at that, and decided to not bother her again.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue she sent me a message on Facebook. She told me she had been in a burnout, stopped working, had been going through emotional issues starting soon after the period we had our dates. She told me she actually had some fond memories of the few times we had hung out, and that she thought a friendship could work. I replied that same day, wishing her well on her illness and agreeing to meet up. A day later in her reply she completely turned around again, saying she had thought about it but came to the conclusion she couldn’t yet because she was still angry with me. Since I still had feelings for her, this somewhat upset me so I told her this and kindly but firmly asked to only contact me again if she was resolved to see me. This led to a short back-and-forth which ended when she started to passively aggressively imply that I had been responsible for her burnout (“I was already on the brink when it happened and you pushed me right over!”). I didn’t reply to that, and a week later she sent me a message apologising for “projecting” some of her own issues on to me. I accepted the apology, and we left it at that.

Finally, last week I ran into her at a concert of a mutual friend (actually the only connection we have). I waved when I saw her but didn’t walk over. I met up with some friends, but after about 20 min she came over to say hi, and we talked quite extensively that evening, just getting up to speed with how we’d been doing over the last few months. We didn’t mention the stuff that happened in the past, and I actually found it a very pleasant evening. She was being friendly and interested, we even had a few laughs. So when I left, I kissed her on the cheek and said we could hang out anytime she wanted to.
Two days later she contacted me with a short message, saying she wanted to see me. Once again I was lulled in a sense of comfort by our meeting, so I agreed to meet up the next day. She entered the café, almost immediately said “I’ve thought about this and I’ve come to the conclusion that we really shouldn’t see each other at all anymore. I’m still angry at you, I blame you for a lot of my hardship over the last few months, and you’ve done something to me that I can’t forgive. When we met earlier this week I tried to be friendly but I felt very bad about it afterward. Also, I think you should really have a good look in the mirror because I still think you don’t realize your responsibility in this”. I could only say “I’m sorry you feel that way, and I really don’t think having this anger inside you does you any good.” We didn’t fight but she left soon after.

So that’s quite a write-up, I’m sorry but it already feels good to have it off my chest. I actually don’t know what to ask about all this either, but it has left me with many questions. I know I should have heeded the warnings she gave me & the gut feeling I had, but I was not playing around when I tried to kiss her.
Also having her squarely put the blame on me, first for that moment and then for all that happened to her, makes me feel a weird mixture of betrayal (bc I’ve actually made myself emotionally vulnerable too) and guilt (bc it has made me doubt at times if my own memory of that night is reliable enough).
And finally, I’m confused as to her constant warnings of not contacting her again, and then approaching me herself, if only to warn me not to contact her again. It’s almost funny as I write it out here, but it makes me fear that at one point she will contact me again even if she now tells me to stay away from her. I know it’s not a psychological terror story -yet!-, but I do actually have sincere feelings for her which doesn’t happen a lot. It makes me a bit worried that I’ll allow her to keep playing with my mind, even if she doesn’t do it intentionally.

So yeah. Thanks for listening, and anybody who can give me some insight in her behaviour will be greatly appreciated. I’ve handled some pretty delicate chracters in my time but I can say this is uncharted territory for me.