Hey everyone. I'm looking for an outside perspective on a situation I've been trying to make sense of for almost two years.
I became close to a guy at university shortly after he left a toxic four-year relationship. His sexuality seemed to fluctuate a lot: sometimes he identified as bisexual, sometimes straight, sometimes he talked about being curious about sleeping with men, and at one point he described himself as a “straight Christian- none of that is inherently wrong, but it was so confusing? the hell man?
Our friendship involved what felt like ambiguous flirting. He constantly compared me to his ex, saying my humor, interests, and personality reminded him of her. Things got even more confusing when he slept with a mutual female friend after flirting with both of us, albeit differently: he was more openly sexual with her, while with me there was a mix of sexual insinuations and emotional intimacy. He eventually rejected me and started dating her, only to break up with her over text two weeks later and immediately start messaging me every day again.
In private, he was emotionally vulnerable with me and seemed to seek me out away from his other friends. But whenever I tried to discuss the flirting, the comparisons to his ex, or even a night when we shared a bed and he rubbed himself against me and touched me, he became defensive and changed the subject in a passive-aggressive way. Eventually, we had a major argument because I couldn't understand what I meant to him or why he treated me so differently in private and around other people. I decided not to attend a group trip because I couldn't bear spending several days in the same house with someone who was treating me so badly. He messaged me first, we argued again, I called him a coward, and he blocked me on WhatsApp. He didn't block me on Instagram, though, and his behavior there continued to confuse me until I eventually sent him a long message explaining how I felt and blocked him to get closure.
Since then, his behavior around me at university has often felt deliberately hostile. Even mutual friends have commented that he goes out of his way to make things uncomfortable. We're now in our fifth year, and I finally decided to approach him privately and ask for something simple: we don't have to be friends, but could we at least be civil around each other?
His reaction was unexpectedly aggressive. He repeatedly insisted that he wanted nothing to do with me, never wanted to see me again, and felt absolutely nothing toward me. He said I had hurt him deeply, and that he had chosen to prioritize himself but then kept emphasizing how indifferent he was to me, even though I hadn't asked whether he cared about me and 'wouldn't care to say hi if it makes me feel good but he won't even care about me', to then say 'greeting me would be an enormous effort he will never do'. Whenever I asked what I'd actually done to hurt him so badly, he changed the subject. When I pointed out how passive-aggressive he was being, he laughed and sarcastically agreed that he was “the most passive-aggressive person ever.” The whole interaction felt less like someone calmly setting a boundary and more like someone trying to hurt me. A friend witnessed part of it and later agreed that he'd gone too far.
Recently, I also found out that he'd apparently been talking to another friend about how stressed he got over the fact that I'd called him a coward. She was tired of hearing him go on about it. This confused me because, during our conversation, he'd insisted over and over that I meant absolutely nothing to him. Yet he apparently kept bringing me up to other people, focusing on the insult without discussing the complicated history between us.
I understand that he doesn't want to be my friend, and I'm not trying to change his mind. What I can't make sense of is the intensity of his hostility, his insistence that he's completely indifferent to me, and the fact that he apparently remains so bothered by what happened.
Am I reading too much into this, or does his behavior suggest that there's something unresolved here? I'm not necessarily asking whether he was attracted to me. I'm more interested in understanding why someone would react so intensely when... we used to be friends. I mean. Even if you don't want me to be part of your life anymore, why would you be so cruel?