Trying to decide if I want to break things off with a mutual who's been "weird" for a long time.
I need outside opinions because I genuinely can’t tell if I’m overreacting, being too forgiving, or ignoring obvious red flags.
So I’ve been mutuals with this guy since around February. We met online through one of my best friends, who calls him her “brother” (not biologically, they’re just really close). From the beginning, he messaged me constantly, like genuinely all day, every day, to the point where it felt like he had nothing else going on.
At first I just thought he was socially awkward. But over time, the way he talked to me started making me uncomfortable. He constantly said stuff like “licks you,” called me cute over and over, used weird nicknames, etc. I didn’t really say anything at first because I thought maybe he just didn’t understand boundaries or social cues.
But then it kept escalating. One day he randomly sent me a typed-out moaning sound completely unprompted, and that was the moment I went “okay, nope.” I put him on ignore for about a day. When I came back, he apologized, and I ended up forgiving him.
Then he hit me with “I’m upset because this happened again,” which obviously confused me, so I asked what he meant. That led into a huge info dump about a past friendship he had that went like this. He kept saying things like “I’m weird,” “I’m a bad person,” “you should probably block me,” etc. He was being extremely vague about what happened between him and that old friend, but it was more than enough to make me concerned.
Eventually, through a few screenshots he showed me, I found and spoke to another person involved in a previous situation with him. Apparently, there was literally an entire document made about his behavior for Discord server moderators because he had been acting creepy toward someone else, things like pressuring them into borderline sexual conversations (forced sexting basically), forcing relationship dynamics, crossing boundaries, etc.
The person I talked to seemed just as conflicted as I am. We both genuinely couldn’t tell if he fully understood how inappropriate he was being or if he has some kind of serious issue with socialization/maturity. I’m trying really hard not to sound cruel here, but I honestly don’t know how else to explain it.
And somehow, despite ALL of that, I gave him another chance. I know that sounds stupid.
Current day: he still says weird/questionable things, has extremely concerning perspectives on certain topics, acts immature constantly, and I’m getting more and more fed up. At this point I can’t tell if I’m making excuses for him because I have a huge “I can fix them” problem, or if I’m ignoring genuinely creepy behavior because I feel bad for him.
Literally while writing this post, he’s been texting me at 1:30 AM. We had a short joking conversation where I called something he said “emo,” and he responded with “Die.”
And then right after that, he started aggressively offering to “defend me” from a crazy ex and got really pushy about it.
He’s just incredibly hard to read. Sometimes he seems harmless but painfully immature, and other times he genuinely freaks me out.
The thing making this harder is that if I block him, he’ll probably go talk to my best friend about it, and I’m anxious about causing drama or making things awkward. I don’t THINK my friend would be mad at me, but I still feel nervous about it.
I feel like I know the answer to this, but I think I need some outside validation...