Unexpected goodbyes

I have an online friend named J whose friendship I absolutely treasure because he is a very sweet, caring person with always a lot of support and discussion online about things. We have a lot in common, like the same sort of movies and games. We've been good friends for two years.

About a year and a half ago, we began to feel close to each other intimately. It didn't really last though because it didn't make sense to us to have something on the Internet. He backed off, and so I did too, but we still stayed friends.

Last summer I drove across the country, and I got the chance to see him though, and we had a great time togther. At that time, I was in a relationship with someone else, not a serious one, but one that I liked.

In September my friend J and I were talking about things, and he admitted to really liking me and wished he would have done something like kiss me good night when I visited. We started to get closer again, and that lasted a couple months before he backed off yet again. No real explanation for it at the time. We still talked at times, but by this time I was untrusting of his motives and his realibility.

I ended up being with the other guy again after that, but it wasn't serious. Just fun, I guess.

Well in January, J and I once again got close. He apologized for distancing himself. His explanation was that he hasn't dated in six years and he doesn't know how to be close to anyone. He said he likes to be alone and that he has terrible trust/intimacy issues. By this time, so did I when it came to him because of his previous backing off. I adored him though and was willing to sacrifice and give up things to try to be with him. He became willing to do that too.

In the past few months, things were really looking nice. I planned to move to a city two hours from him (which I'm still doing, because plans are already made and involves a job and family), and I broke up with the guy I was not-seriously dating. J invited me to go visit and stay with him this coming July 4th weekend. We had a couple arguments, nothing major, but after each they seemed to bring us closer. He said we both need to be patient, and that he just wanted to work on things with me. He said he would never back away again. I felt like we made enormous progress with each other and were trying very hard to do the right things.

Friday night we were talking (instant messaging) and he had been acting distant for the past couple days. Out of frustration I said something to him about it. Maybe I should have held my tongue, but there really were times I was afraid that he'd back off again and I guess it was fear talking or something. Rather than recognize this, and us just dealing with it or even laughing about it, he told me that he couldn't handle this anymore and we couldn't be friends.

It was pretty blunt. He basically said that this time he wasn't just backing off. He was saying goodbye.

I had no warning this would happen. I am a reasonable person and know that my little frustrating remark was so slight and unmeaningful in the big course of things that it was not enough provocation to going away.

So I figured that maybe he really wasn't as into things with me as he claimed? And that all his talk about being patient, working on things, wanting so badly to try with me, wanting me to visit, etc., all in the past few weeks was just a lie? Because why would someone say a goodbye to a friend like that? Right on the heels of acting like they wanted so much to work on things?

We did e-mail each other after that, and the only excuse I got was that he doesn't know how to be in a relationship, and he feels he can't make me happy and that I should go find someone else. He is, frankly, so cold about it that it hurts very badly. I realize that's there's no more discussion to be had with him about it. He said goodbye, so I had to say goodbye too.

It's really tough. I still don't want it to be over. I had been planning to move to a city that's two hours from him, and I'm not going to back out now because the plans are all in shape. I still think that if we hung out in real life, it would be different. I just don't know how to love someone across the internet without being frustrated at times. There's such a limitation to that.

This guy means what he says though, and so I'm not going to push it or contact him ever again.

We do have mutual friends and I want to at least get word to him in a few months once I get moved and settled that I'd like to see him. Who knows, maybe I will feel differently by then, but I really think we built too much together for that sudden goodbye. I'm hoping it's just frustrations on his part and that maybe he didn't mean a goodbye forever. I'm sort of clueless about what to do at this point, other than just concentrating on my move, my life, and other things like a job. I'm having trouble adapting to the sudden change of things though, like losing J as such a good friend and realizing that he really doesn't seem to ever want to talk again--and after all the progress that we made I am very let down. Tweet