TL;DR at the end.

My boyfriend, let’s call him R (M30), and I (F28) hit it off immediately. Our first date is magical, in a story-book kind of way. He’s very kind and intelligent, and we could joke with each other really easily. I meet his friends, and thankfully, they all seem to really like me, including his best friend A(F36). Apparently, he hasn’t dated in 5 years, and they’re all really happy to see him with someone. Many dates later, I eventually feel comfortable, and trust him enough to have sex (this was more significant for me than usual - I was SA’d a few months ago and it’s been hard for me to be sexual with anyone).

Afterward, like immediately afterward, he starts asking me hypothetical questions about time travel. I just figured —- boys are weird and I guess this is him just being his full nerdy self with me at this moment. The more he talked about it, the more bothered he seemed, though. I asked him if these questions were building to something.

I am still actively straddling this man when he looks me in the eyes and tells me…he’s been receiving secret messages from an anonymous source from the future, for years.

Once he was convinced that these handwritten messages were from the future, they sent him a photo of two children and said that they were his future kids. R immediately falls in love with the idea of these children. He even wrote letters to them so that one day they could have a whole stack to read from him when they get old enough. He’s still wearing me, by the way.

He then tells me that one day, the anonymous future person sent him information of really bad things that were going to happen. Trade wars, cages, fascism. He tells me that he broke the rules and acted on the information. Using disguises and clever timing, he made small changes that snowballed into bigger ones — and the bad things didn’t happen. The next message told him that the bad things would still happen in a few years time, and this time it would happen worse. But worst of all, that he would die in the next 5 years — keeping him from ever meeting his fictitious kids.

He says I’m the only person he’s ever told, but I can’t help but wonder if this is why he hasn’t had a serious girlfriend in so many years. Is it because he tells them this and they run? I told him that I believe that he believes it, and that he doesn’t need to worry about me. I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself. We enjoy the rest of our evening, and I go home.

The next day, he became very cold with me. He wasn’t sending me romantic emoji’s like he usually did, and he wouldn’t acknowledge any texts that referenced our relationship. He was behaving like a completely different person. I asked him what was wrong and he kept dodging the question. By the end of the day, I was getting a little angry. Had he lost interest in me now that we’d had sex?

I asked him if he was off work, and I drove directly to him when he said yes. I told him that I needed to talk to him and I didn’t want to do it over the phone. He didn’t want to surprise the older family member that lives with him with a tense situation, so he met me at a park a block away and got in my car.

I told him that he had no business being cold to me. He tells me that he’s doing it to protect me. I say that I never asked him to do that and that I am responsible for myself. He breaks down, like fully sobbing, about how he mourned his kids that he’ll never have. And how he doesn’t think he can go through losing another person he loves.

After over 2 hours of me crying to him not to do this to us, he makes it clear that even though he really likes and wants to be with me, he’s breaking up with me because of his situation with being a secret time agent. He can’t handle the heartbreak of losing me when “they” come for him one day. I asked him what he’s going to tell his friends, especially since we had been planning the next time we would all get together. I told him that I should tell his friends the truth. They had done an incredible job making me feel welcomed and part of the group and I didn’t want to lie to them. He told me that I could tell them whatever I wanted, that he didn’t care. I told him to get out of my car.

I have an audio recording of this. Thanks to the abuse in my childhood, I have a severe dissociative disorder. Because of this, I record any potentially tense or important encounters to make sure that I don’t forget something, and to keep myself safe.

I got home to cry myself to sleep. I felt violated and used. He had been nothing but great until we had sex, and now he’s tossing me out because he’s burdened with glorious purpose?

I’m terribly worried about R. Clearly, he wants to be with me, but this…idk, delusion(?)...is going to keep him from letting himself be happy. I had already been texting A about him a little before all of that, so I told her that I didn’t think our future plans were going to work out since he just broke up with me. I told her the truth, and that I had a recording if she didn’t believe me (because I sure as hell would need some kind of proof).

The next day, A texts me back asking what I meant by “time agent” so I elaborate. After she talks to him, she tells me that he’s saying he broke up with me for a totally different reason (something he made up so he wouldn’t have to talk about the time travel stuff). I told A that he must be telling us different things, so I called him.

We have a 3 hour conversation about how I still really like him, but I think he needs help. I tell him that even if he’s right, he still deserves to be happy for however long he’s got left on the timeline. I asked him directly whether he wanted to be with me and whether the feelings I believe he had were real — and he said yes. I told him that I did indeed tell A the truth, and I asked him if the other reason he told A actually plays into all of this, and he said no. I tell him that if he wants, we can still be together on the condition that he seeks professional help.

To my surprise, he agrees! He even follows through by the end of the day. Things got better between us again, and I had a lot of hope about him and our relationship. His friends, including A, stopped asking about me though.

A few days ago, he hung out with A late into the night. He and I had plans the next morning, but when I woke up I found a text from him saying that we needed to have a talk. In the morning, he comes to pick me up from my apartment. I ask him what’s wrong and he says that A told him that I told her about the time travel stuff. He was livid. “How dare you!” “How could you do that?” I told him that not only did I tell him that I was going to tell A the truth, but that I had already told him that I did the day after, including how he said he didn’t care what I told anyone. R tells me that he never dreamed that I meant the truth about everything. I was like…??? It was the only reason you gave me for breaking up, what else was I going to say? A lie?

He tells me that I’ve betrayed him and that he can’t believe that I would do this to him. He’s angry with me because now A thinks he’s crazy. He said that since I vented to A about feeling used by him, he’s mad at me because now she thinks he’s capable of getting close to a woman just to have sex with her. And I’m like, it’s not my fault it looks that way! I told you I was going to tell the truth, you said you didn’t care, I even told you that I told her (and he forgot???), and somehow telling the truth about your actions makes me a monster?

He took his car out of park and started to drive. I tell him I don’t want to go anywhere and to park again. He refuses and starts to drive us downtown (our plans were originally to go have lunch together). This freaks me out and I ask him why he won’t take me back home – he says because we planned on having lunch, so that’s what we were going to do.

He drove us into town. I asked him if he lied to A when she confronted him about it and he said, “Of course I lied!” Apparently, he made up some lies about me instead. This feels particularly weird because he knows I have proof, so calling me a liar feels like a waste of time? IDK. I told him that I didn’t tell her because I wanted to hurt him — I told her because it was the truth and I didn’t really know what to do. He’s clearly unwell and I thought his best friend in the world could help.

Then I asked him to please turn around and take me home. He said no. He said that we were going to have lunch and then whatever happens after that, happens. I told him that I’m so sorry for hurting him – and that we both would need to put in the work to regain each other’s trust if we wanted to move forward. He said that he didn’t think it was going to be worth it and that he doesn’t know how he feels about me now. I asked him again to please just take me back home. He took a really deep breath and said fine.

So he drives me back in silence. I ask him to at least text me sometime later as I get out of his car. Which he eventually does, but the text mostly just does a lot of comparing me to A?? And he kept claiming that he can’t believe I would tell A what I did just to share gossip — which is not at all what I did. He claims that he saw me and A’s convo, but if he did, he would know that I was telling her how much I care about him and that I thought that he needed genuine help.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure he’s never going to talk to me again. Am I the asshole here?

TL;DR My boyfriend broke up with me because he thinks he’s a time agent and I told his bestie because he freaked me out.