I was with a guy that I really liked and I thought that it was going well. I mean, I was about to meet his best friends—that has to be a good sign, right? Apparently not. The day after he introduced me to his pals, he dumped me. WTF?
- Talk about mixed signals. This hugely messed with my head because I thought we were in one place as a couple, but apparently we were in a whole other place. I mean, having someone meet your friends obviously sends the message that you like them at the very least. More than that, it makes it seem like you’re interested in them sticking around… yet he went and dumped me the very next day.
- He said he didn’t want to cancel the plans despite his breakup plans. We had these plans to get together with his friends for a few weeks. Apparently he’d been feeling uncertain about the relationship over the course of these few weeks but just didn’t feel like canceling the plans with his friends. Obviously he hadn’t thought this through very well. If he had half a brain, he would have realized that me meeting his friends would be unfair given his confusion.
- He’d been dropping some hints that he was feeling weird. He did say a few things over the previous few weeks that sort of hinted at breaking up with me. For example, he said he wasn’t sure he was ready for a relationship in general but that he needed to think about it. Because of that, it wasn’t a total shocker that he ended things—it was just more of a shocker that he had me meet his friends first. He just didn’t think it through.
- His actions weren’t lining up with his words. Even leading up to this experience he was acting as if he was super into me. The way that he was presenting himself wasn’t at all lining up with how he was truly feeling. That’s what made this feel more like he was messing with my head. Like I said, he mentioned a few weird things, but aside from that, his actions were telling me he was happy with how things were going.
- His friends and I hit it off great. The funny part is that his friends and I really enjoyed each other—we hit it off really well! I suppose this is funny and pretty sad because I was under the impression I’d be seeing more of them and that this exchange was an investment in our future. Whatever. Despite being sad, I’m also glad that I got to spend the night with some pretty dang cool people.
- He eventually apologized and admitted that he messed up. Not only did he break up with me the next day, but even minutes after leaving his friends he told me that his gut was saying no to us being together. At that moment, I called him out on having me meet his friends and he apologized profusely. He apologized again the next day when he broke up with me. He admitted that it was a giant mistake and said he was sorry. That’s not really good enough.
- I felt really stupid. As much as I enjoyed meeting his friends, I felt stupid for precisely that reason. I had my best game face on and tried hard to show them who I was. I really put a lot of energy into interacting with them (I mean, I’m an introvert, so meeting new people is quite a task). I felt stupid that immediately after I was pretty much told I’ll never see them again and that interaction was pointless.
- It made the breakup sting more. The breakup already hurt like hell, but it stung more because I’d met his friends the night before. I just felt as if I’d been jerked around and then thrown away. It maybe wouldn’t have hurt so badly if he acted like he was going to break up with me leading up to it actually happening. Who knows?
- I’m still left pretty confused. I totally accept that it’s over, but I still feel pretty confused about how it all happened. Like, at what point did he start to feel it needed to end? What was his thought process those last few days/weeks? Why didn’t he cancel those stupid plans? I may never have the answers and I don’t even know that I want them, so I’ll just have to accept that it happened how it happened and there’s nothing I can do about it.
