Wanted to toss a quick personal experience out there after seeing a few stories on the seddit about people being led on or played.

tl;dr: Trust your gut-feeling

Towards the end of last year this girl I go to school with (who has always had questionable morals, but has been a friend of mine nonetheless) told me randomly during an off hour in the library that she had feelings for me, and had felt this way for a while. THIS WAS AN IMMEDIATE RED FLAG, but I decided to proceed cautiously and see how this would play out.

I gently prodded with some general questions, some along the lines of why she had suddenly decided to say this now, as well as what she wanted as a result of telling me this.

The end result was that she was looking for a friends with benefits kind of deal, didn't want the strings of a relationship. This was another minor red flag just because she's been known to be manipulative in these kinds of interactions.

I was perfectly fine with this because with my athletic schedule I just don't have the time for a relationship, but I was still wary of her intentions.

A few weeks go by and we hook up once, but the vibe I'm getting from her is a bit bizarre. All these "I love you" snaps almost nightly, and it seemed to me like she was trying to get me to become more invested (quick background, in the past she had jumped into relationships with guys, gotten them emotionally invested quickly, and then ended things shortly after. In my opinion, she likes the attention and control she gets from doing this) in the interactions. There was no way I was going to allow this to happen, but I'll admit it I was really tempted to reciprocate.

Fast forward to winter break, and I'm over at her house, and out of the blue she says "am I not good enough for you?" That was the final red flag. I asked what she meant because she had initially told me she didn't want a relationship but wanted hookups, and I didn't have time for the whole relationship gig. She then got pissed off because I was "playing with her emotions" even after I had made it very clear and had frequently asked if she was comfortable with how things had been going, and she had always insisted that everything was great. I told her that we were going to end things because I didn't like the direction this was going, and that it wasn't healthy for either of us. She angrily responds that she didn't even have any feelings for me to begin with, that she had been consistently hooking up behind my back, and that this was a waste of her time. I responded "if that's how you feel (probably a little too smugly)" and was screamed out of the house.

She avoids me at school now which I'm perfectly fine with, but I'll admit that it did sting me for about a week after the whole thing had ended.

The morals of this story are: A) Trust your gut feeling from the very beginning and B) Try to identify toxic people in your lives and keep them away, they only drag your goals and focuses down.

Sorry for the long read, hope this helps someone because I nearly became too invested and it's a very slippery slope from there.