a healing borderline

The second he sensed that he started being distant but still asked me to hang out and hooked up with me. When we eventually had an earnest discussion about it (that I initiated because I felt him pulling away) he told me after the last time we had sex he hooked up with 2 people in the same week since then. It immediately set off alarm bells in my head that he did this as a way to take back his autonomy and independence because he fears the prospect of commitment.

Whenever I would express that I missed him or told him that I love him as a person (not in love) he couldn’t reciprocate even though he clearly frequently wanted to see me and spend a lot of time with me sometimes even without sex, he would always just respond with - “I really value our friendship”. He said yes when I asked him if he’d want to sleep over some time and even said “it’ll be fun” and then when we ended things he said “I guess I don’t know how to say no”.

It doesn’t make any sense to me why someone would people please that much and I can’t help but think he just deactivated when he realized I wanted a little more intimacy simply because he fears commitment and the care and stability that I would offer him. He claims I’m one of the only people in his life that he can be really real with and said “I wish we had met another way and became friends” as in without having sex first and said he doesn’t have romantic feelings for me.

I don’t understand how you could initiate hanging out with someone so frequently to talk and spend quality time together while also having sex without any attachment. I’ve been left so confused and I feel so disrespected that he’d do all of this and agree to more intimacy just to turn around and say he doesnt know how to say no to people.

8 months is a long time to have a fwb situation and spend that much time with a person without having any attachment. He also claimed he “ruined a beautiful friendship” because he didn’t express how he was feeling when in fact this was never just a friendship to begin with.

It’s left me so heartbroken and confused and I know it’s for the best that we aren’t talking for a while, but I just miss him so much and want to keep screaming at him for how awful he made me feel even though I know it won’t help me heal. And I said I would reach out when I’m ready and I don’t want this to be goodbye forever but at this point I don’t know if I can be friends with him because I don’t know how to trust him or how long it’ll take me to heal from this. And for him to ask me if it would be okay for him to reach out because he still really wants to be friends makes me so ridiculously angry.

Like fantastic for you that you can just jump into being friends because it’s comfortable for you but I can’t fucking do that and it’s ridiculous to expect that I could. This shit has fucked me up so much and I can’t stop thinking about it and crying and I honestly and selfishly just want him to keep feeling awful for how he made me feel. I want his friends to call him out and tell him that he’s lying to himself and how good I would’ve been for him and how badly he fucked this one up and the reason he pulled away is because he won’t even open himself up to the possibility of having feelings for someone because of his past toxic relationship and the fear of having a stable, healthy one.