A strange, long and messy story

Hello everybody, I’m a man (31) who has been living a very weird story for years. I don’t really understand what I have lived so I wanted to share it here and maybe some of you can give me some insight. I’m really confused. Excuse my English because it is not my first language. My story is strange, completely atypical and is going to be long:

2020. Covid times. I was locked up and had lost my job, I decided to try language apps and I met a girl. I ignored her for most of the year, because I found her way of addressing me a little strange, her direct questions and so on. I also noticed an unhealthy obsession with me that began after a few months. She did things as strange as dedicating a song to me (written and sung by her) with dirty lyrics. She even asked me if she could fantasize about me. I didn't give it much importance because, as I said, I was talking to a lot of people. However, I eventually fell for it and we sexted several times from the summer onwards.

2021. Her intensity increased. I began to open up to her more because we were still locked up and in my case without a job. I realized that she was a girl who lacked any kind of social skills, introverted, didn't know how to react to others’ bad news, didn't calculate her comments if they hurt others or not, etc. She didn't have hobbies or anything, just being at home. I don't know how it happened, but we ended up falling into a maelstrom of cybersex through videocalls, calls, audios, photos, etc. which lasted from May until almost the end of the year. I don't know how to explain to you what I experienced, but it is not at all typical, I can’t compare it to other experiences with women or my exes. It caught me, it’s like a thing which reached directly to my most primitive part. Her ways of cumming or shouting my name, her indescribable messages (where she specified what I was to her, how much she desired me, what she would do to me) surprised me, even. I'm not exaggerating if I tell you that it was a daily thing, she came looking for me even when I was busy and used to send me photos or audios of herself touching. She even missed meeting some friends or was late because she was masturbating with me. But I don’t want you to think that what we had was strictly this. We basically became partners. We did all together: we watched movies, we made playlists, she used to joke with me, we had plans together, I even gave her French classes... We even talked about getting to know each other. We completely opened to each other, telling a lot of stuff about our lives and character. I was completely captivated by her but suddenly, at the end of the year, overnight, everything changed. I have memories of talking to friends (they already knew her by then), telling them that I didn't understand the change. She was acting different, and she no longer wanted to do anything intimate with me, she said she didn't feel like it. The only difference that I can recall before that is that I spent 2-3 weeks at the beginning of December very busy with work for a Master's degree. This girl used to get nervous when I didn't respond for hours.

2022. I learnt that she has barely had any relationship with men (she is 28 years old), only one of about 6-7 months and it was the same as with me, ‘intensity’ and then it stopped. The guy used to tell her “You have changed” and she would get mad. Without realizing it, I was becoming that guy, I started telling her that she had changed, that I noticed her more distant and colder, and in my mind I couldn't understand the change. She continued to talk to me day after day, taking refuge from everyone with me (she even downloaded Telegram to talk to me there and “escape” from the family), everything remained more or less as before...except that I no longer noticed that ‘intensity’ with me, it is as if something would have switched off. I started to think that I might have done something wrong because, why would you continue talking to someone so calmly, as if nothing had happened, after radically cutting off so many intimate things? Even in camera she seemed off, like she didn't recognize me. This is the most interesting thing, I had the feeling that it’s like her mind had erased everything that had happened, as if 2021 was a dream. Even to me it seemed that way, I was definitely talking to someone totally different. She started to act strange, acting more bitter with me, when I told her about the changes she reacted badly, getting angry and saying that I didn’t understand her, that she was sad and depressed, and that she was not just an object. I told her that I was there for her in those bad times and she got angry too, saying that I didn't have to constantly remind her. She would undervalue me being there for her, I couldn’t even make jokes anymore like before because she would get mad at me. Suddenly, one day she had a fight with her sister and spent 2-3 days acting erratic, without communicating anything with me. Apparently, her sister made her cry because of a comment, a thing which surprised me because it sounded like a kid thing...but she's a woman. I started to notice very strange things, but I was unable of stopping our conversations. I was still completely trapped in the memory of ‘21, I thought it was going to come back, that it was just a phase, that she was really sad. I even felt guilty for overthinking and saying that she was treating me differently. 'It must be my fault', I used to tell myself. I kept showing my support as always, with affection and my presence. She reacted cold, bitter and like detached. In the summer, however, I exploded, fed up, and made her see that there were many changes that made no sense. She said the exact same thing as before, that she was sad and had to focus on herself, think in her future; that she was young to focus on me and that I wasn’t helping her by bringing up the subject so many times. The funny thing was that she continued to talk to me daily, she didn't want me to leave. I was shocked, I didn't understand the attitude. I took her words literally and started going out more, forgetting my cell phone and focusing on the ‘real’ people. Well then, she got mad at me for not responding within hours. She would say that I had never acted like that before. We had several arguments. Gradually, an idea was growing in my mind: she might not want anything to do with me (where was the girl from 2021?), but at the same time she didn’t want to let me go. I didn't understand, who would do something like that? At the end of the year, on one of my nights out I met another girl and we started going on dates, getting to know each other. I felt bad, but I decided not to tell anything to this girl online. My mind was still confused and trapped in our story, but it's like one part of me wanted to run away and start a ‘normal’ life outside.

2023: Everything was going smoothly with the 'real' girl. There was no intensity, no obsessions, nothing weird. She was a very good girl and showed interest in me. Meanwhile, the online girl continued to talk to me daily. She had become some sort of a ‘ghost’ who was there day after day, showing me her stuff, living locked up in the house without doing much. She talked about crying a lot and having problems with her parents here and there. She is very close to her father, who works away for weeks and when he comes home she is happy and goes running to him, like a little child, and he is her refuge (the one that I used to be). Very occasionally we had sexting (2-3 times in all of 2022, which would basically be a couple of days in 2021) and one day she asked me if I was dating anyone. I lied and said no. She told me that she had noticed that I had taken a step back and therefore she had done the same. Imagine my reaction! I only started to act like this because she had been treating me for more than half a year as if 2021 had never existed and especially because the summer before she had told me to live my life. Anyway, the worst comes next. The real girl saw one day notifications on my phone from this girl and asked me who she was. I didn’t know what to say, it caught me by surprise, so she started overthinking. I finally admitted everything to her... I would never forget her reaction. She disappeared (and rightly so). Totally broken inside, I decided that I didn’t deserve anyone, I felt guilty about everything and I admitted it to the girl online. She reacted with great intensity: she cried (she sent me audios and I could barely understand her, her voice was broken by tears), she insulted me... I remember the confusion in my mind: if we were nothing, if she had spent basically more than a year ignoring me and treating me coldly, having fights, why did this bother her so much? Well, here comes the most surprising thing: she sent me an e-mail a day later where she said that she couldn’t separate herself from me, that she knew she should, but that it felt like a piece of her body was being torn away. But what completely destroyed my mind was the following: she became the same person from 2021. Suddenly there was no depression or sadness, nothing. That desire for me came back again, not as strong as before but still surprising. She said things like 'I had forgotten how good you make me feel.' We went back to watching things together, having audio calls, masturbating together, sending me way more photos of her day than before... I didn't understand anything. But I fell again for it, basically because I had never gotten out of the hole. Everything changed at the end of June. One day I received like 4-5 calls on my cell phone and I couldn't answer. She wrote to me that she had left her house because of a problem with her mother and that she didn't know when she would be able to talk again. She acted extremely strange for a few days, then she returned to the previous 'normality': a deep sadness and detached from everything. She continued sending me some nudes here and there, scarcely, but she began to create what would be the new narrative: that she couldn't forget what I'd done and didn’t know if she could ever forgive me. I was getting Jekyll and Mr. Hyde vibes with so many changes. Anyway, it was summer, and I was going to the beach for a few days, I wanted to disconnect from everything and not use my cell phone. She exploded and said that I was probably not going to the beach but with another girl and that I was lying to her. Despite wanting to disconnect from everything, I gave in and wrote to her a little every day, showing my daily life on the beach. That didn’t fix anything, when I came back, she continued with the same narrative. We had a big fight, I told her that I didn't understand so many changes. She said that it was me who didn't understand her, that she was depressed, that I should live my life, that we were nothing like we said, and she admitted to me that her parents did not want to leave her alone and used to watch her because they were afraid that she would do something bad to herself. That scared me a lot and made me think that there were many things about her daily life that I didn't know. Who knows what stories happened at that home. From September onwards my mind began to come out of the hole. I started to think that nothing made any sense, that I was trapped in a loop, and I searched on the internet about these behaviors. But in reality, I felt guilty, I thought the problem was mine, I was completely lost in overthinking, toxicity and so many changes. I used to think that because I hid the real girl from her, it was all my fault, that I deserved to do something to make her forgive me because she was the one who had always been there for me. In a matter of months, I tried to cut our conversations 2-3 times, all to no avail. I always softened at the end. She had a fixed pattern, she would tell me ‘I accept your decision, you will always be in my heart, you know that you can write to me whenever you want, sending all my love’, but I was unable to leave. Whenever I saw the final goodbye getting close, something stopped me, I thought about the years gone by, the energy invested, the possibility of seeing each other in person... One day I gathered the courage and finished it all. The next day she wrote to me as if my message was not clear, asking me what was my final decision. I softened again. This happened for months, it was really taking a toll on me. I was mentally tired and would wake up in the middle of the night, thinking in the story. She was mean to me, acting cold and saying she didn’t trust me to tell me about her life decisions (new job, etc.), saying ugly things like I never really helped her and that my advice had always been ****. At one point, I even asked her ‘what's the point of talking daily to someone you obviously don't want in your life?’. She said that she wanted to change and become like before but that she didn’t know if she could, and that she desired me and wanted to have intimate things with me but that it was hard for her because of what I had done and repeated again the forgiveness narrative. I was completely fed up of everything so I spent a few weeks responding at odd hours. She bursts out one day and told me that she didn't understand my new behavior, why was I acting like this. My mind was literally going to explode: she didn’t want anything from me, treating me like ****, but if I detached a bit she complained. I started getting into more forums, I was totally sure what I was experiencing (for years now) was not normal. I have had several relationships before, two of them long ones, one 3 years and another 4, I have never experienced this madness. I even felt toxic, having come to do stuff I’ve never done before like controlling this girl, asking why she didn’t respond to me, why she had changed, why this, why that. I didn't recognize myself anymore, I've never been like that. I am the calmest guy, when my exes would go out with friends or dancing alone, I wouldn’t have any problems. It was the lack of logic, the lack of consistency, the continuous nonsense, the carousel, that was driving me crazy. To make matters worse, she accepted that I sent her photos of me masturbating, but she wasn’t prepared to do anything because she still remembered what had happened. At the end of the year, however, she suddenly changed again. She was nicer, she talked to me more, she sent me more photos, she even called me using affectionate names that she used in 2021. I felt good, I thought that the girl from before was going to return. I start talking about plans to send her a box of gifts, to go visit her in 2024. She always reacted coldly, she said that she did want the box but that she didn't want to get her hopes up in case she didn't like what I was sending her. About me visiting, she said that I was going too fast, that she still didn't know if she was going to forgive me. Since summer, every time we had a fight (every month) she would say 'in a few months I will know if I can forgive you or not, but the sooner I assimilate that I won’t be able the better'. However, it seemed like sometimes she forgot this and acted like nothing had happened.

2024: At the beginning of the year a huge change happened again: she detached, she acted cold, she wrote me late even though she was just lying in bed not doing anything. We had another fight because I pointed at these changes, and she said the same thing: ‘We’re nothing, you do your life, focus on yourself, we tell each other if we meet another person and that is.’ ‘I don’t know if I can forgive you, I’m going to wait a couple of months to see if I can, then I’ll walk away but no matter the decision I still would want you in my life’. My mind couldn't take it anymore. I exploded and sent her a message summarizing all the changes and everything she's put me through all along the years, since ‘21. I did not insult her but I was harsh, describing her emotional changes, the behavior ones and the effect they have on others. I said I'd been putting up with it for a really long time, and that it was over, that I had to think about myself and look for my peace of mind. I blocked her everywhere. A week later I felt bad. How could I act like this to someone who has problems, who used to open to me and find refuge on me, who until the last moment was next to me and writing to me day after day? I decide to unblock her, but without writing to her. Within hours she wrote to me. And she acted as if nothing had happened, the strangest thing of all. She told me that her messages were not being sent, but that she saw my photo. I said that I understood how hard it is to be suddenly blocked (I wouldn't want people to do that to me). I said that she had the right to express herself about the message or whatever. She said that she 'is constantly thinking about me', that she 'misses me a lot', that she 'does like me and cares about me'. That it was never her intention to hurt me. That she had accepted that she is a person who will always hurt others and that is why she shouldn’t have any close relationship with anyone. That she will respect my decision and stay away from me. I tried to make her see, with examples, that some behaviors and changes affect her close circle (family, partner) but she didn't want to respond to any of that, she just said ‘okay, thank you’ and that she didn't think she needed therapy, that 'it is just my way of being'. She said that a psychologist is not going to tell her 'how to act'. She said goodbye telling me that I am and will be very important to her, that she is going to miss me a lot, that I can write to her whenever I need something, be it now, in 5 or 30 years, that if by then she has changed her number at least I have her email. She sent me hearts and all her love. My mind exploded again and I was about to give in. If she had been talking about forgiveness for months and acting mean, cold and detached, so on, why was she acting like this now? I wanted to stay, I wanted everything to turn out well, to finally get to know her. I just wanted normality! I managed to control myself and closed the story by wishing her good luck. Before finishing the conversation, she asked me if I had met someone, she said that if she didn't ask me, she will always be doubting. I didn't understand why was she asking that, when I had been showing her for months that I was interested in creating something with her, showing affection even while being mistreated. At the same time, I realized that my mind was completely stuck in a loop, what did I really want to create with this girl? My feeling of guilt made me want to fix everything, completely forgetting that the problems had been coming since basically the end of 2021!

Now she’s gone, for less than a week. My days are a mixture of sadness and peace. I feel calm, I no longer have to be checking the phone or get upset about her behavior. I've felt guilty for so long... I even feel disgusted at myself for reaching such a point of toxicity with her. But sometimes I miss her so much and I want to look for her, even though I have deleted her number from everywhere. I thought that it was better than blocking her, because if I block her, I have the number on my cell phone. Even the peace of my days has now become monotonous and boring. In my mind I repeat to myself, what if I had met her? What if everything had been different? What if she really was depressed and you are the bad guy who kept insisting in '22 and lied to her in '23? I no longer distinguish good from evil in recent years, but I go back to the starting point, Christmas of '21, and I see that I was happy there and that she changed suddenly, radically, sinking me into a hole of insane overthinking, obsessions, toxicity and pain. I even ruined something healthy and cute that was starting to blossom with a real girl here. I hope she doesn't write to me, because I don't know if I'll be able to resist. I hope to be strong and never come back. I rely on the fact that my other relationships were never like this. I rely on the fact that, despite my feeling of guilt, not everything can be my fault and that I have not been able to invent so many changes. It always seemed like I was the guilty one, the one who had to apologize, she barely did. Only in her final message.

If you ask me how I was able to endure so much (and in my case, with someone who doesn't even 'exist'), I don't have a clear answer. Normally I am sharp and I cut quickly what I don't like. She created something new in me. What I experienced in 2021, that intensity, that feeling of insane desire towards myself, I had never felt before. I thought and dreamed about what it would be like to be with her in person. After her change, I found myself trapped for multiple reasons: I felt sorry for her and I felt like I was her only refuge, we also had shared a lot of things, I had opened up to her a lot, she had become my daily routine and… I never lost hope that she would become again that girl who I had completely fallen for.

My apologies for the extremely long text but I needed to vent. If anyone makes it this far, thanks for reading.

With the covid lockdown and losing your job. you were probably looking for a way to fill the void.

Stay in the "real" world with "real" people, as much as possible. Less time online.

Stay grounded.

Unless you can actually meet her in person this relationship does not sound like it is going anywhere.

It’s a very toxic relationship.

A lot of up and downs and mixed messages.

I’ve read your whole post. I hope it made you feel better typing it all out!

You’ve made the right decision. Stick to your guns and don’t contact her, if this is what your gut is telling you to do.

Go out and meet someone in the real world, @CRSN

I’ll be blunt. Stop contact and block her on all platforms. Live in reality with real people

I understand how you feel, when you said “I don’t know how it happened”
It somehow happens, and I felt guilty too, to be so involved with someone, only to lose it all. And I wonder, what was that back then? What was it? Did he mean it? How do you feel about it. He doesn’t know what he wants out of a relationship and what his values are or if they are his at all.

You’ve been doing a lot of responding to old threads (sometimes 10 year old ones) or the ones where OP never even came back for months and years. I am just wondering why are you resurrecting old threads? Old threads don’t even show up anywhere unless you scroll far back? @Blah nlah

Yeah by mistake
But this one seems newer

True. The person posted only once in January. Several people responded but person never came back.

I am not saying it’s wrong to post on old threads. Sometimes other members could benefit from some good advice even if OP is no where to be found. I just thought I might be missing something because I don’t even see old posts unless I make an effort

Anyways it’s all good
@Blah nlah