So I (28F) met this guy (28M) on a dating app two years ago. We hit it off, but then a month later he started acting distant. He finally told me he wasn’t ready for a relationship… weeks later he admitted it was because he was still in love with his ex, but still wanted to be my friend.
Fast forward two years, we’ve remained friends. The problem is, he has some weird habits:
• Constantly rudely rubbing in my face all the reasons he’s attracted to every other woman EXCEPT for me, and would go above and beyond for women he “actually likes”
•repeatedly recruiting me to help him pursue his ex or other random women, but getting butthurt when I even MENTION dating other guys
•wanting to spend every day at my apartment and even spending entire weekends with me.
•He calls me about twice per day and insists on making sure my family and friends like him
•starts huge fights with me if I call out his actions or admit I asked a loved one for advice about his behavior
•any time I do something that annoys him he says “I’d HATE to be your husband” or will angrily drone on about all the reasons he doesn’t like me and would never date me, even if I didn’t even ask
•he gave me hell about the new guy I was dating and accused me of “replacing him.” He even repeatedly got teary-eyed about it
•he keeps pursuing this one ex who constantly rejects him, but when she does give him 5 min of her attention, he reports all of it to me and goes on about how amazing she is and all the things he’d do for her that he’d never do for me because, of course, “he’s not attracted to me like that”
•dedicates sad break up songs to me and plays sappy romance movies around me and insists I pay attention.
•jokingly calls me his “wife” and wants me to act accordingly
At this point, I dont necessarily doubt that he has feelings for me, my question is, WTF IS HE TRYING TO DO HERE? Is he trying to position me as his backup wife? Or maybe he’s just taking out years of relationship frustrations on me. Help
But believe me, I’ve reached a breaking point with the nonsense and have learned a hard lesson from this.
