he fed me just as many breadcrumbs as he needed to in order to keep me coming after him, without actually making any sort of promises, commitments, or chasing me himself. He literally never fought for me.

We had been friends for 13 years, meeting online through a photography website. He had flirted over the years, but one of us always had a significant other, not to mention I'm in Michigan, he's in Tennessee. In 2016, we talked more earnestly about trying to make something happen. For a few reasons, it didn't, and it ended in us not talking for a while. Cut to this past November, and we started what I thought was online dating in earnest. He came to see me while on a business trip, immediately made plans for him to take time off for me to see him, a trip which I just came back from this past Tuesday. We explosively ended it during that time...........a week prior to coming to TN, and he begged me to come...................there are a few things I said to him which brought him to the brink of tears

We'd had a specific fight, about a week and a half prior to my coming down, during which he made the statement, "I'm your last resort, but you sure as hell aren't mine." That's nasty in its own right, but given my fears about other women, it was specifically nasty. And also not true--there are other people here.

I cannot stop ruminating on how bad a person I was to him, how he has a gazillion friends and I don't. How I have been such a bad person in the past that I've pushed even my family away. How people hate me. I'm so alone, my life is falling apart, ......

What makes me sad is that, when I still thought J cared about and wanted me, I felt like a normal woman. Like, I had career and relationship goals. He reached out to me and made me feel wanted.