The classic avoidant "switch up" after a $3k trip. I (32M) feel completely discarded and gaslit.
I’m a 32-year-old Arab man, and I’m posting here because I just experienced the most mind-bending, painful discard of my life, and I need to be heard.
Our mothers recommended us to each other as suitors for marriage, which is a very common tradition in Arab culture. We texted non-stop for two months and built what I thought was an incredibly deep bond. She used to tell me the nicest things—saying nobody had ever touched her heart the way I did. Because we were both adults mutually looking for marriage, I assumed we had enough life experience to know what we wanted. I wanted to make her feel special, so I was extra caring, emotionally available, and intentional.
To take things to the next level, I traveled to her city to see her for 10 days. The trip cost me around $3,000 including all travel expenses. I met her mom, and she told her entire family about me.
Then, toward the end of the trip, the energy completely flipped.
The Red Flags & Conditional Love
Looking back, the signs were there, but I was too invested to see them clearly. Once the reality of the situation set in, I received nothing but conditional love. If I didn’t say or do exactly what she wanted, I was punished with a terrible attitude.
What makes it so infuriating is that she genuinely views herself as highly mature and emotionally evolved, completely blind to her own childish behavior:
The "Suitor" Bragging: She constantly bragged about all the men who wanted to marry her (a significant part of her discussions was her telling me about the suitors that entered her life/dragging their name through the mud), and how she would reject them after a few dates.
Constant Negativity: There was always someone in her life she was hating on or who was getting on her nerves—her cousin, her close friend, her sister, her exes, and she even talked down about her own father.
Hypersensitivity & Tantrums: For someone who claimed to be so mature, she would have full emotional episodes and start crying over the pettiest arguments. She literally cried over anything.
The Projection and Gaslighting
She was a master at making everything my fault and completely shifting the narrative. During the few arguments we had, I always somehow ended up on the defensive.
A perfect example of this happened on the trip: she was constantly picking at me, and I finally calmly told her to stop critiquing me over the smallest things and to just focus on enjoying our time together. We had a very short conversation about it, and she actually apologized. Later that day, after she finished hanging out with her friends, I brought it up privately, wanting to calmly finish the conversation we started.
Instantly, she flipped the entire script on me. She turned cold, attacked me, and told me that I was the one being "very dramatic." The whiplash was unreal. Her lack of accountability and complete absence of emotional intelligence was appalling.
The Discard and the Ghosting
Not even two days after the trip ended, she shut down completely. When she ended things, it messed with my head the most. It felt like I was dealing with a completely different human being. I meant absolutely nothing to her. The warmth and care vanished, replaced by an icy, disrespectful coldness.
Exactly one month after seeing her for the first time, she blocked me on absolutely everything. When I reached out just once during no contact to calmly ask why I was blocked when nothing bad had happened between us, she had her mother text me telling me not to talk to her. Getting her mom involved to fight her battles felt incredibly childish for a relationship that was supposed to be leading to marriage. What are you, 14?
Looking for Answers (Avoidant vs. BPD?)
I’ve never dealt with an avoidant before, so I was entirely unprepared for how quickly they can forget you. Part of me still wonders what I did wrong. Did I stress her out? Was it because I didn't rent a car in her small city and we took Ubers instead, getting caught in a tourist trap? I went to a city where I knew nobody, did my absolute best, and did nothing wrong—yet I was treated like a criminal.
Maybe she’s not just avoidant. With the constant crying, the need to always hate on someone in her circle, and the total flip in personality, maybe it's Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), or just extreme narcissism. She took all her past trauma out on me, made empty promises, and treated me with pure cruelty. I know she is likely dragging my name in the mud to her family right now, and probably already talking to someone new because she can't stand to be alone with herself.
I know it was short-lived. I know I dodged a bullet. But the psychological whiplash of watching someone go from being so warm to utterly heartless hurts so badly. I just want to know if anyone else has experienced a switch this fast, and how you coped with being called "dramatic" just for setting basic boundaries.