I got rejected by someone I was talking to recently lol, while they didn't tell me the exact reason, cause they thought it'd be disrespectful, they said you look like a child. Do I look too young for my age?
I had been talking to this guy for the past 3 months, he studies at a college adjacent to mine. We shared a lot of common interests like anime, taylor swift, conan gray, etc. We met on grindr initally, and exchanged contacts and everything, and in these past 3 months we developed a very deep textuationship. We messaged each other for hours everyday, told each other things like trauma from our past, even the basic mundane details of the everyday life like if we had lunch or whatever. It got to the point that I'd wait for his message notification to appear. I know a textuationship doesn't mean a lot to a significant majority of people, but the very nature of conversations that we had blurred the lines between reality and fiction to me. So much emotionally loaded messages, flirting, caring for each other, it just pulled me in.
Now, there was a huge problem with this. We have never exchanged pictures. About 3 days ago, we did and, when I asked him if he liked me based on the picture, he started deflecting, saying things like i should probably not discuss this for the time being etc. I got hurt and a day later I asked him to make it clear as to what his position is, as i don't prefer ambiguity. It was very long heartful message. He apologized for hurting me and admitted that he was not physically attached to me and that I wasn't his type. He said he's selfish but that I am a really great guy and he feels wrong and self indulged that he's asking me to still be friends with him. He even admitted as to how shallow he felt preferring aesthetics over emotional connection. Now obviously I respect his decision, and I can not force someone to be attracted to me. What strikes me as odd and disheartening isn't the rejection, but the fact that it's so sudden, because our whole dynamic wasn't a grindr swipe and reject. There was a lot of build up to and a lot of shared feelings. Based on just one picture, he rejected me is what feels odd. Again, this may just be an assumption from my side, but I had strong reasons to believe that physical attraction wouldn't matter much to both of us because of simply how deeply we connected these past 3 months. Anyways, i can not do anything about it now. I cry about it though, it sucks. It hurts a lot to share so much of your heart to a stranger only to bite the dust. I was so vulnerable to him and he to me.