I’ve been lurking here and finally need to lean on all of you Queens to be strong right now. I met a guy who seemed to be a HVM online a month ago. He said he was looking for something serious from date one, and consistently asked me out and planned dates with me for 5 dates. We seemed aligned in everything we wanted in life, at similar stages, and intellectually super compatible.

I went over his place twice (I know, not ideal) but he never tried to get me to stay over or sleep with him and actually would basically send me home after some making out. I finally started to get excited and want to open up to him more. We went on a double date with a friend of his on Friday, and when he had to leave for a work trip on Sunday he texted me to say he wished I could have stayed over that night.

Cut to today (3 days after he texted me all day): Sunday night was the last time I heard from him. I sent him a meme on Monday night and he didn’t reply. So I sent him a text today when I knew he was coming back to say that I hoped he had a safe flight and couldn’t wait to hear about his trip. No response for 9 hours, just to get:

“Sorry for taking so long to respond, I've been inundated with some things. I think you're an amazing person OP and I don't think I'm ready for a relationship. I really liked spending time with you though and appreciate you spending time with me.”

I was blindsided (in general, I started expecting it when he took 9 hours to respond today) because everything seemed to be working out. I sent back “It’s okay I was starting to pick up on that, I had a nice time and wish you the best.” To which he replied “Thank you.” in some weird desire to have the last word??

The one red flag I saw was last week he got drunk and made a joke about me “sitting on his face” which I felt was distasteful and may have been grounds for a block/delete but he seemed genuinely embarrassed the next day so I let it go.

I guess I’m here because I’ve been lurking for a couple weeks now and feel like I shouldn’t be crying over this dude. I’m attractive, smart, make my own money and have been in therapy working on myself for two years now. But I still got that anxious sick feeling today when I didn’t hear from him and knew this was happening. And I sat there and wondered what I did wrong, who he picked instead, and started blaming myself for not showing enough interest. Did I miss some red flags? It seems like there were barely any signs he was going to drop me. I don’t want LVM to make me feel this way anymore and just don’t know what to do, as I feel like I’ve done all of the “work” on myself everyone always talks about. I’ve read the handbook and am struggling to capture that Queen energy.

It feels like I always get to the one month stage and then men decide they don’t want to be serious with me. I’m 30F and he’s 36M, btw.

TL:dr: 30F needs help not getting caught up so fast, not blaming herself, and generally getting confidence back after allowing herself to be consistently let down by LVM.

Edit: I realize I didn’t include the fact that we never had sex, which confuses me even more.