he lied to me, he's not a nice person

hi all

I honestly did not want to have to do this, especially since it's a new year. I don't want to focus on things that already happened, and from the past. But it's pretty recent, and I don't know who else to talk to aside from calling a line or going in the chat rooms. I had been complaining about this for some time, so I am going to try to keep this short, if possible. It's a bit weird because I am old enough to know that I deserve so much more I guess from someone than what has been happening, and I am trying to be fair and see where my fault lied in the whole thing, but what it boils down to is that:

-about two years ago this guy was at an outdoor event. I happened to be standing in front of him, it was not deliberate; he started talking to me, and I didn't want to ignore him as I was talking to other people, and why wouldn’t I? I didn't really have a reason at that point. He was intoxicated and I was trying to do my best to be gracious. I had absolutely no physical attraction to him or psychological/mental at that point. I acted normally and didn't do anything abnormal. I left the event, and guess what, he somehow found me on ***. He started messagging me privately, commenting on pics, liking pics publicly; this went on for an entire year, somewhat at the start and then later on, mostly without any response from me. I ignored all of that, I did respond as he would write a comment, how are you etc. but I only responded or waved maybe twice back at him because I felt bad, and I also thought it would be rude to ignore him all the time, and why not, it was just social media. He also at some point messaged me that there would be an event again, asked me if I would go and then when I didn’t respond I later got a message that he bought me tickets to go. He messaged me his phone number, to call him. I never did.

Anyway, after about a year of being home alone I had had enough. In 2021 he sent me other messages for the new year. I was at home alone for months, and at that point I decided to respond to him. I figured what's the harm, what is he going to do. However, I already noticed how inconsiderate he was just because he kept messagging me over and over, although I never responded to him, both at night in the morning, asking how my day was etc. and we were not even friends, a very long overly romantic message about the way I looked and my personality again which now I think was all BS. I bumped into him by chance in my area as he was working outside in the Spring.

I knew this was a little weird, and I thought it would have been nice if he really did like me that way the way he said in his message like with all that passion...or interest. I kind of thought maybe he fell in love at first sight… But I also thought that maybe he was just looking for an easy way to get involved with me so I wasn’t sure.

Well, some time in 2021, I bumped into him more than once, and both in person and online, he kept asking me out, and I kept saying no. I was actually involved with someone else briefly in the Summer... in September 2021 I was at an outdoor event, ceremony, and he was there. He came up to me again, very pushy. I tried my best to mind my own business but then he walked up to me. I was sad as it was a ceremony. Anyway, I felt sad and lonely, and decided I wanted to be around other people, and I needed a friend or friends. I decided to go out with him as a friend. I know this was a mistake. I was not comfortable but I was so isolated and alone. I know he didn't see it that way but I actually said to him we could go out as friends and he accepted.

Well, it didn't take long, maybe another week before things went from friends to more than that. We got involved on a physical level because it was clear to me that he wanted more, and we were both just hanging out again, and having a little “fun”… which I thought would all be harmless or maybe the start of something, I was trying to go with the flow. I still did not feel very good about everything, not comfortable etc. didn't really know him well enough. I was actually scared of him. I didn't know how to turn him down at that point, but I actually later did, and told him I didn't feel comfortable. I told him I didn't want to see him again after the first date.

Unfortunately the situation continued because he lives in my town. He was showing up at the events, calling and texting me after this. I couldn't say no to him because at that point we had already been involved. I wasn't thinking straight from all the weirdness, back and forth and the fact that I had already made my decision but now, I had been involved already. By the time November came around we had already had a few arguments, mainly stemming from the fact that I felt disrespected. He crossed my physical boundaries. I asked him not to touch me, I asked him to please respect my space. Whenever I would see him, he would end up touching me anyway, and I again, I couldn't turn him away because I was so lonely and isolated, and I wanted someone to love me. I know this sounds like an excuse but it's really not. I live alone and work from home, everything was weird during the pandemic and I never went out. My family lives abroad so it was hard to turn away some company. The prior person left a bitter taste in my mouth.

So, in March we once again have a fight, prior to that I had been ignoring him for 3 months. At that point, I had created a distance, the reason I felt is I couldn't trust him. He lied to me about drinking because he said he knew it upset me, so he would say he was not drinking or drunk when I asked; I honestly did not know he had a drinking problem, I was just guessing; I also asked him if he had just got out of work and he said yes but that also was a lie so that is why I stopped talking to him for 3 months. I hung up the phone and then he called back saying nasty things in his voicemails. When we had a fight which was all because I was nagging him about these same issues, he actually wouldn't talk to me. I would try reaching out to him and even prior to this, he would do the same thing, and not respond to me and disappear. I had actually asked him in the past to never contact me again on more than one occasion after he would ignore me like this because it upset me so much. This never happened to me with other people.

For some reason, he kept trying to contact me if I had blocked him by phone, then he would through social media for example (since I hadn’t yet blocked him there)

Instead of talking to me like a normal person, he would wait for 10 days or more to get in touch again, but he put no effort in trying to resolve the issue when it actually did occur (see above). So you can imagine why this would make me angry. I mean, I never wanted to be involved with him as more than a friend, and he ended up crossing my physical boundaries; I had rejected him multiple times, and he still wouldn't take no for an answer, so I uncomfortably still ended up getting involved with him even though I had already basically made my decision.

I noticed that whenever we would fight he would go online and flirt with this one very attractive woman who is in his circle and he calls her his friend but I am sure he likes her because he doesn't do this a lot with other women, but he would do this on and off regardless during our time together. I thought this was very disrespectful especially recently due to other things that happened again over the summer.

I really didn't like all this game playing and I felt disrespected, so it never worked out. Now, I am trying to move on, and I think that if I hadn't given him the other chances in recent months, I could have moved on before, and not fallen for this. I want to move on, but I get so attached to people, and even if I didn't like him, I ended up developing feelings for him anyway. I got angry that he ignored me, and he ended up hurting my feelings. For a long time I was just angry and didn't care, but recently I started caring and wanted him to care back the way he said he did for months. He said he loved me and was in love with me. I take those words very seriously when someone says them so the first few times I ignored him and figured he didn't really mean them, however he kept saying them to me, he said he wanted a serious relationship with me so I let it slip out a few times that I loved him.

I ended up hating myself because he misjudged me, didn't really know me, and did everything possible to sleep with me and be in my physical space, but he made no effort in our relationship to get to know me, to make up for his disrespect, and he ended up being cold, mean and cruel, and recently he seemed to be critical of me. He was mostly never there for me when I needed him, if I asked him for a favor it felt like I was bothering him or that he was too lazy to do anything. He has been over my apartment countless times, and started bringing things here without asking me. At some point we talked about moving in together, he was already talking like he wanted to introduce me to his family right away the first year and which I wasn’t sure about, but then when push comes to shove, he hasn’t done really all that much in terms of actions and never had the time to respond to me, he kept me hanging and not answering my calls, texts for days and didn’t make time for me after we argued or if I was upset and for most of the relationship. He admitted he didn’t put the effort, and also that he took me for granted but he hasn’t done anything to make up for it.

He was not honest with me and open, he was very guarded, didn’t really share a lot, I hardly ever knew anything about him, about his day, what he was up to or what he was thinking since he doesn’t open up to me.

I just want or wanted a normal relationship, where I am interested in talking, getting to know someone and we are having an equal exchange, and resolving conflict, not running away from it.

I am just wondering what did I do wrong, is this my fault for not putting up boundaries? Was I expecting too much from him? Did I cause him to run away? I would get very angry with him to the point that I was very mean and nasty because I felt so disrespected. I tried to tell him why and that I wanted him to treat me like an equal. Instead of talking to me, he would shut down, flirt online with this other woman and take me for granted.

Most of all I would like to know how to deal with this, since we live in the same town, I would like to avoid bumping into him, so I don’t know if I feel comfortable going to certain places, but I really want to go out. I have suffered enough and I need to have a social life also. I don’t want to be tiptoeing around, but lines I have talked to have advised me to stay away from him as much as possible or he will try getting “back together” with me.