u/FickleProgrammer3661

So to start off, this is a throwaway account as I’ve never posted on here before and I don’t really want this to be seen by her so I’ll keep things as anonymous as possible. I haven’t dated since Highschool, my Highschool sweetheart and I broke up a couple years ago and in the meantime I’ve been doing a lot of self reflection and haven’t put any thought into dating again until the new year hit in 2026. I wanted to get back out there and open up again because looking back I feel like I took a bit longer than I needed to (2 years just seems like a lot in hindsight) so anyway, I matched with this college girl on a dating app (her field is pretty stressful and difficult this will come up later) and I felt like we hit it off extremely well. We had a great first month of getting to know each other and had a few sleepovers and dates. I’m thinking now that I was probably just seeing things from rose colored lenses and maybe was just easily impressed idk what term to use. Anyway she’s been extremely depressed and had a falling out with a friend and basically has had a rough past couple months, this led to her being kicked out essentially and having to find new living arrangements plus finals and the start of an internship. All in all pretty serious shit. Well this led to her having a huge drop in anything relationship related. I completely understand what depression does to libido and emotions so I’m not taking it personally when she said that she isn’t interested in a relationship right now. I’m now feeling lost and like I’m holding onto something that didn’t have a chance to begin with. My instincts are screaming at me to run but I can’t seem to stop thinking about her and she knows I have feelings for her. I made the mistake of telling her I wanted to wait and see how things go and I have a bad feeling I’ve locked myself into this passive role of putting my emotions on hold. I know I wasn’t supposed to do this but I was caught up in emotions when we had this discussion a few weeks ago and it doesn’t feel right to bring anything up again with everything going on in her life. I’m lost and our communication has dropped significantly. Our schedules don’t really line up to begin with (I work overnights) but I felt the like the effort of us seeing each other at first was enough and I’ve mentioned multiple times that I wanna move to days but lately I feel like she’s lost all interest in me even as a friend and I just want to disappear but I feel like that’s unfair and emotionally reactive which I’m trying to avoid. What advice would you give young fool? I haven’t seen or heard her voice in over two months but we still snap each other on Snapchat daily but nothing with any level of meaning to my perception.