My aforementioned "crush" and I have become closer within these past few months. Early last month he opened up to me over text about his suicidal ideation and hinted a bit at some self confidence issues. I texted him for hours that day, asking him questions, offering suggestions, comforting him, and just listening. At that point I had also been trying to help him find a therapist that took his insurance. His vulnerability felt like a breakthrough. About two weeks later I texted him and asked if he wanted to hang out soon, and we made plans for him to come over the following thursday. On the Tuesday before our plans, he texted me and asked if he could come over after his shift the next day (Wednesday) and just spend the night since he wanted to binge Star Wars with me. I told him that was fine and asked if he wanted to game whenever he was free, and we called around ten. But the game we wanted to play needed to finish downloading on my consol, so we settled for something else. It was laggy and difficult, so eventually we got bored of it kicking us off the server and unspokenly decided to stop playing. Still on the phone with each other, we talked for a few minutes, and then both fell asleep. The next morning when we woke up we had been on call for 11 hours. We decided to game a bit more and then hung up at 12 hours. I was very happy, since I still had a crush on him at this point, and it felt like maybe there was a chance he liked me too, since he was comfortable enough to fall asleep on a call with me. But a few hours later he texted and told me he was just gonna come over the next day (Thursday) like we had originally planned instead of spending the night that night. I was upset but said okay and didn't ask what made him change his mind. That day I was sad and confused, the next morning even more so. I waited for him to come over, despite how depressed and down I felt, and eventually, around 2:30 PM with no text or update, I decided that he was probably blowing me off. But an hour later he showed up. I was still feeling really down, plagued by his decision to not spend the night, as well as my current self-harm recovery struggle. As soon as we were alone in my room he apologized for the call two days before, and said that he didn't mean to fall asleep or for it to last that long. This made me sad. "I wasn-" he tried to say but I stopped him from rambling and assured him that it was fine and I didn't mind, since I've been on calls even longer on multiple occasions with my other friends. But internally I was sad that he seemed to regret it and regard it as a mistake, and assumed that it had made him uncomfortable. My depressed state was obvious that day and after about an hour and a half while we were outside he asked if I even wanted to do anything that day, and that if not I could tell him and he would just go home. I didn't want to do anything, but I didn't want him to leave either since I knew it would just make me feel worse. So, I decided to test the waters a bit and asked him hypotheticals about how he would react if approached with a serious situation like suicidal ideation and depression, similar to how he had approached me. Since he opened up to me I was curious to know if I could trust him enough to reciprocate, and finally tell someone about my cutting. Not "trust" as in trust him not to tell, but "trust" as in trust him not to invalidate me or give me a response that would make me feel worse than before I had told. I also wanted to make sure that he wouldn't feel burdened by my confession, and once he assured me otherwise I asked him if we could take a walk since I couldn't tell him what I wanted to tell him right there outside my own house, where potentially anyone in my family could hear. So we walked to the school down the street from my house- the elementary school I went to when I was young. Even though it seemed like he wanted to continue walking, we sat down at a picnic table since I didn't feel like I could say what I needed to without seeing his face. I didn't know where to start, so I decided on the beginning, opening with a seemingly mundane story about how I'd even begun to possess a razor blade in the first place. Then, I told him about how I started cutting, when I realized I was forming an addiction, when I relapsed, and how hard it had been to stay clean for the past four months. Unfortunately throughout my story he made multiple comments to me that made me feel uncomfortable in our conversation, such as "I've never cut myself before, but I don't think I can since if I did it would be too deep," and "I think for men their last resort it suicide, and for women it's cutting." He also interjected once to say that he was having deja vu even though it was completely unrelated to what I was saying, and once to compare my expressed feelings of post-cutting guilt to post-nut clarity. Lastly, he never offered any words of comfort, such as saying he was sorry for what I was going through or that he was there if I needed to talk. He hardly even made eye contact or botheres to face me during the conversation. I just told him, and that was that. And unfortunately, just like I had feared, I felt worse after doing so. Ever since that day I've seen him in a different light. My feelings for him dissolved for a bit afterward, and I even neglected to text him for a whole week, until he reached out to tell me that he'd bought a new camera, and I gave in and responded. In therapy my therapist mentioned that he may have felt like he didn't know how to respond, since that lack of comforting and some of the off-putting remarks (I neglected to tell her about the one regarding post-nut clarity). This was a bit eye-opening to me, and gave me hope that he wasn't completely dense and free of empathy, but rather just stuck and trying to navigate a difficult situation as best he could, which obviously included a bit of humor. So, I decided that we could still be friends, and my romantic feelings quickly returned. It's been a month since that conversation, and I haven't been in a room with him since. I've only invited him on two late night drives, which included other passengers, and went to his house the night of his birthday to hang out for a bit and give him his presents, but of course there were other people there, including his parents, siblings, and cousin. But, he has called me twice, once at 2AM, which ended with him falling asleep on call about 3 and a half hours in. This time, I learned from my mistakes and hung up. But, it gave me hope that maybe he did like me after all, since he was yet again comfortable enough with me to fall asleep on call. Unfortunately, this hope was shattered a few days again when he told me on our latest late night drive that he was considering asking out one of his new coworkers. Ever since then I have had no feelings for him, and I haven't texted or responded to his texts (which only included photos updates of his recent animations, so it didn't really warrant a reply.) Even though I feel guilty about this, and a bit desperate to see a notification from him on my phone, I'm still sad about what I would basically consider to be him rejecting me, so I'm trying to take some time to get over him completely so we can still be friends.
