So I 26F have been friends with 27M for around 4  years, we both took classes together at college and remained good friends after.

 For most of the time we've known each other, we've both been in relationships with other people and our relationship was purely friendship and nothing else.

After my last relationship ended, we began to get closer and closer. He was extremely loving and kind and I began to develop feelings for him.

 Eventually he told me that he loved me and I was so happy, we agreed to start dating after I moved cities (We were living a fair distance from each other at the time)

At this time we were talking all day every day, laughing together, making plans for our future, supporting and encouraging each other, it was so happy and I felt so in love with him. 

I did notice some red flags that suggested he might be looking at manosphere content, I would sometimes catch him saying things like 'If I cry in front of you, you won't respect me anymore', 'women don't respect men if they make money than them'

I just brushed these off as him being insecure and hoped that he would get over it over time.

I was planning on moving to be closer to him once I'd finished at my job in the city I lived in and he became increasingly frustrated with the distance.

He suggested that we stop speaking until I moved cities to be closer, and I was completely heartbroken.

I worked extremely hard hoping to finish my placement sooner and we re-established contact a couple months later.

For a while, it was back to how it was, talking every day and planning for our future, until he suggested we stop speaking again as the distance was bothering him.

My reaction was much less intense the second time, I just agreed and that was it.

Several months later I moved to the same city as him.

I knew he'd watched Andrew Tate before, but he always claimed that he just thought he was 'funny' and didn't take the manosphere stuff seriously. I membered a video where Andrew Tate suggested being cold and distant as a tactic to make women chase you.

He re-established contact with me but even then he was pretty cold and distant, he wouldn't message as often and if he did the messages would be much shorter.

He told me that he'd been on a few dates with someone else because he was 'tired of waiting for me' which was a massive turn off.

For a while, I felt pretty upset, I'd be constantly checking my phone, hoping to see messages from him, I'd respond right away if I did get a message… until I just didn't.

Something changed and I just stopped caring. 

I decided to call him out on it. He all but admitted he was trying to 'dread game' me.

When I told him that 'dread game' doesn't work, he responded that it 'worked on his ex' and I was absolutely beyond disgusted.

The incredible thing is, I tried to deconstruct why his 'tactics' didn't work and how his stupid manosphere beliefs are completely unfounded, and he just disagreed.

Somehow me frantically trying to get the 'loving and kind' him back, messaging him a lot after he became cold and distant is proof that 'dread game' works. Even though I then lost interest.

But me telling him I loved him a week after he cried in front of me when he was unemployed isn't enough evidence that women don't lose interest in a man who cries or makes less money than them.

I told him that his 'tricks' had completely ruined things with me and I was no longer interested. 

He started trying to reconnect with me, messaging me, asking me to hang out, I assume he thinks I'm just 'bitter' because his tactics worked and now I'm trying to prove a point by being distant with him.

But the problem is, the feelings just aren't there anymore.

The excitement, the hope for the future , it's all gone now. I don't bother checking my phone to see if he's messaged anymore, I have him on mute and I maybe respond once a week, if I can be bothered.

He says he loves me, he says he wants to marry me, to be with me and have kids with me, there was once a time when I would've done anything for this man, but I just can't bring myself to care anymore.

If I was married to this man and he divorced me, I wouldn't even bat and eye now. That is how much damage this bullshit ideology has done to our relationship, I no longer care if I lose him.