AGrPerson

Thank you for your guidance! You are right! I should trust my insticts more from now on!

I see! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with me 🙂

I understand your concerns. I got really put off by his behaviour too, but thought I'd give it a try. I'll be more careful from now on about who I choose to communicate with.

I understand. I'm not quite sure either. Maybe he had built an ideal image of me inside his head and when he saw that it didn't match with the reality he lost interest.

I get what you mean...

You're right, either way it's not a situation that would benefit me. What do you believe was the reason he behaved that way?

Maybe he got too excited because his last relationship was 3 years ago. He might have desperately wanted to find someone.

I get your point. I just think that maybe someone is exhibiting a bad behaviour and is not aware of doing so. That's why I prefer to discuss what is bothering me and if they don't recognize the problem and don't try to change, stop seeing them. I don't know, it might be wrong. That's what I tried to do with that person too.

And what do you recommend I should do if I get myself in a similar situation in the future? I mean if I see that our values or goals don't align, or we're incompatible? Should I discuss it or stop seeing that person?

Yeah, I know it sounds silly that I'm thinking that I could change someone's behaviour.

Ok. I think I get it now.

Exactly! I'm afraid that this will keep happening in the future and I'm trying to find if I did something wrong, or if I could change something in myself to avoid something like that in the future.

I see. So the problem is the inconsistency he showed from the start. That is what should have been bothering me and not how I could have acted to change his behaviour, right?

You mean that if he was interested he himself would try to be consistent with replying to text, or keep up to his promises, without always making excuses?

Well, I'm sure he has positive parts too, but how he treats you is what matters. Do you feel happy when in his presence? Does he value you? Does he treat you as an equal? That's what matters. A good technique is to get a notebook and write down all his positive and negative qualities and all the positive and negative interactions with him. This will make you understand if he is worthy or not.

Well, I didn't want them to change as a person, but I wanted us to find a way to more effectively communicate, cause he was more into phone calling, while I am more of a texting person.

Yeah, I haven't dated much. But, I used to have the same habit with friends too, where even if we were not compatible with a friend I'd try to overanalyze where I was wrong, or what I could have done differently.

You are right. There's no point in being in a relationship where we have to change in order to be compatible with the other person. I mean everyone makes "adjustments" to themselves in a relationship, but I think in this case we both needed to be different people in order for a relationship to work between us.

I have read your story and I have to say that your "friend" doesn't seem like a person worthy to hang out with. I have too been in groups of friends during my university life and I can assure you that the people who wanted to ostracize other people from the group ended up being the worst people I know in terms of their character and personality. You are really young, you will have the opportunity to make plenty of friends. Have you tried making new friends at your university? I know that a lot of people may already have their groups of friends, but the trick here is to focus on people individually and try to make friends with each one of them. Just be polite, open to having conversations and be the one to suggest going out. You don't want to spend any more time around a person who doesn't see the value in you. Instead you should invest that time into forging new relationships.

Yeah, it might be my ego that's been bruised. I have a habit to always take the blame and think that I might have been wrong or that I could have somehow change the relationship dynamic.

I just keep wondering if I could somehow keep him interested in me. I know it's strange since he showed me that he's not a great match for me.

Thank you for your reply and I'm sorry that you've been in a similar situation. I like your perspective! This situation has definitely make me wiser in terms of human character and dating in general. I've already deleted him on social media and when I told him I would he got bothered since he wanted to keep in touch with me. I'll take your advice and focus on myself for a while.

I'll keep in mind your advice! I'm just disappointed and sad on how easily someone's behaviour change over such a little time... I keep wondering if I did something that pulled him away, or asking myself what if I had done something differently...

Yes you are right in that. I got attached to him and his "future-faking" pretty easily...

Exactly! And I understand that he has his life and everyone is busy sometimes during the day, but we would start a conversation, he would answer 2-3 times, he would disappear and then reappear after hours, answer and then disappear again. And this happened every single day. There was literally no way to make a decent conversation, only via phone during the time it was convenient for him, and he would normally do something else at the same time, like watching tv, reading the news, searching on the internet for something etc.