I have no idea how to feel about this situation. I went through a really hard breakup after over a year of being together and was having a hard time healing as an anxiously attached person. Im working on rebuilding myself without needing to be dependent on someone (important for later). I had a school trip coming up where I would be away for two weeks which I figured would help since I wouldn’t need to see him everyday at school. Right before I left I made friends with this guy Danny, at first I was becoming really good friends with him, It had been about 5 weeks since my breakup and Danny knew about it ( we go to a small school.) 

I was leaving for my trip the next day so any talk we had was online. It started with just joking around and getting to know each other and I didn’t know if it was flirty or not. Eventually it became definitely flirting and we both liked talking a lot, I updated him on my breakup and how I was feeling about it and that I wasn’t ready for anything serious but I was okay with hanging out as friends with some benefits here and there as long as he was okay with it not being a relationship or anything more than just fun. 

We talked and flirted through the entire two weeks and things escalated to sexting and a lot of flirting, but I just kept checking in to make sure he was okay with just some fun. He also knew that I wanted my ex back and that if he came back chances are I would get back together with him, and he said this was okay and he understood. The part that I didn’t see as red flags at first was him saying things like “ill do anything for you” and obsessing a bit much but I figured since he was aware of my healing and how I didn’t want something serious so it was okay. 

When I got back we started hanging out mostly at his house which is when I really started to notice some weird things. It became very obvious this boy liked me a lot, he would talk about how he wanted all of me no matter the pain, that he would be there when I was finally over my ex even though I said I just didn’t want a relationship after him and just little things that were very odd. There were more things he did that scared me a bit too:

-The door was covered in marks from him punching it, I asked about the hole in the wall and he said the door didn’t hurt enough anymore?

-He was accused of s/a at his last school and texted the girl who supposedly false accused him after her house burned down in the LA fires and just said, “karma a bitch huh?”

-His parents never checked in on him, like at all. He’s stupid rich and would just buy the weirdest things and his parents didn’t pay attention to anything. 

-Said things like “its harder to control my jealousy around you, but closeness helps”

-Knew how to hack people and find out really personal information with almost no info

I ignored this because he seemed like good hookup material and something to distract me from the pain for a bit (foreshadowing yes I know this was a bad idea). What really freaked me out was when we began doing sexual things. We didn’t get much further than kissing until this one particular day when he finally did stuff to me with just his fingers (I didn’t really enjoy it but I knew he hadn’t done this before so I wasn’t going to be all over him for it), the issue was when I went to give him head and he lied… about his … size. I know how shallow this sounds and I feel like the worst person for saying this but he told me he was 5 inches and this couldn’t have been more than 3. I would have been less freaked out if he hadn’t lied about it but I did it anyway. But after only a minute he became very aggressive with my head and we stopped. 

Anyway the next day we went off campus for lunch and he the way he had been talking to me was feeling a lot more like fwb or a hookup after I explicitly said that’s all I wanted. Later on after school I brought it up to him and he went off on me about how much he loves me, and wants to spend the rest of his life with me, and how he would treat me so much better than my ex. I was dumbfounded, we had been talking for three weeks at this point btw ( two of which were literally online ). I told him we could talk tomorrow and he refused three times before finally accepting it. Except he didn’t. 

I went to shower after that and clear my head knowing I had to break this off for morality reasons, and I came back to a new message. This man came to my house. He left an apology note completely about his feelings, flowers, candy, and a drink. Which seems sweet but this just felt insane to me and I felt so overwhelmed. It had only been three weeks, I don’t like this guy like that. 

He continued to text me throughout the night about how he missed me, and said goodnight and I ignored it. The next day at school I talked to him and he just kept saying “its fine if you don’t feel the same, ill just take care of you” and I told him repeatedly this is not healthy and I’m not doing that. I said It was okay for us to hang out in a group with our friends but 1 on 1 is not okay anymore and I’m not comfortable with it. He tried to argue for a bit and I walked out. 

He left school early that day and texted me huge paragraphs which I’ll include above, this is the one that starts with “(my name) Im hurt, you hurt me.” Eventually I told him this was not okay and I wasn’t changing my mind, mostly because this is not okay for his own general wellbeing. let alone he had freaked me out enough to loose any attraction to him at all. Anyways by the end I told him this was not because of feelings for my ex (I do still have feelings for him but that wasn’t the reason I was breaking it off) or because im trying not to hurt him but I just don’t have those feelings anymore and I need space and I felt suffocated. He finally agreed and asked if it was still okay for him to join a group hangout at six flags with all of our friends that was previously planned and I said it was okay. 

We all drove to six flags the next day and the entire day he was attached at my hip and it was driving me crazy. He kept texting me saying we could step aside if I needed a minute ( a lot of memories from my ex were there so I had some down moments but nothing extreme ), asked to sit with me on rides, and followed me super closely. He even cut people off just to get closer to me. All of my friends are guys and they were trying to help me get some space because I was getting really uncomfortable. I began hanging out with this guy (Ill call him Joey) I had met on the trip from before, we talked a lot and got pretty close ( nothing romantic, very platonic at least from my side ). But he talked to me about his girl troubles and I talked to him about my breakup. 

Joey noticed Dannys weird behavior and pulled me aside to ask about what he was doing and I explained my situation. He tried to help me take some space as much as he could. There was a moment where he asked me to take a snap to send to his friend so I did and handed him back the phone. Joey ran ahead to talk to my other friend and I was a bit confused on what that was and turned to Danny who was right there and as a joke said “hope they’re not calling me ugly” and Danny said, “no he likes you. Ive been watching him.” I was a bit weirded out but denied it. I noticed Danny get quiet and I didn’t wanna be a jerk so I sent a message just to make sure but It escalated a bit. 

Later on after six flags everyone was getting picked up from my house and of course Danny was the last one and we were left alone. Nothing happened except for him hugging me at the door (this is important for the message above). This guy went off about how jealous he was seeing me talk about my breakup struggles with another friend and it went on for a very long time. Just to be completely clear I told Joey about these messages and he was just as confused as I was. Eventually I put my foot down and told him that he needed to stop, we were not going to be together and I needed him to respect my space and he agreed. He sent one more apology the next day and deleted all those messages (I already had ss) and that was all. He even said no to playing a video game as a group when he knew I’d be there so im really hoping he backs off now. He’s been skipping school since (except for the day I had a field trip so I know its because of me).

Basically I’m asking if I’m in the asshole for this, to me it felt like love bombing when I was clear about what I wanted from the start and frequently checked in about it. Because of my last relationship I constantly feel bad for people for everything which is why I checked in with him that last time btw. I didn’t mean for it to be an invitation to more. (The images are numbered in the order they happened, idk why he uses discord so much)