u/Timberline147

I recently ended an on/off online relationship with someone I had developed strong feelings for. We are both Scorpio moons. And despite all the chemistry, affection and countless hours talking on the phone, there was always this strange feeling in my body that something was off with him.

I could never quite explain it.

He could be incredibly sweet, funny, affectionate and intense. He told me he missed me, couldn’t get me out of his head, had strong feelings for me etc. But emotionally, I never felt completely safe with him. I always felt like I couldn’t quite reach him.

Whenever things were good, they were really good. But whenever I brought up something difficult or told him I was hurt, I felt like I hit a wall. He would become defensive, focus on explaining himself, ignore parts of what I was actually saying, or simply try to move past it and return to normal conversation.
That pattern was actually what triggered our final argument.

Something had happened that made me uncomfortable, and I tried to address it. Instead of engaging with what I was saying, he essentially skipped over it and tried to continue as if nothing had happened. When I pointed out that he was ignoring what I was trying to communicate, he did it again.
And I snapped.

I got angry and spoke to him disrespectfully. I’m not proud of that, and I genuinely take responsibility for it.
But what happened next was almost the perfect illustration of the feeling I’d had about him all along:

He became completely focused on the fact that I owed him an apology. Meanwhile, he called me childish, incredibly self-centered and narrow-minded, told me apologizing was something you learn in kindergarten, and said I needed to “show a hint of being an adult.”
“You’re a big girl, figure it out” etc. He was so mean in his tone. Even when I told him he was hurting me.

I repeatedly tried to get us off text and onto the phone. I told him I wanted to move towards him, not away from him. I wanted to apologize for my part, hear his side and actually repair the conflict together.
But it felt like none of that registered because I hadn’t yet said the specific word he wanted: sorry.
He was like a child.

Eventually I did say sorry. I gave him a genuine apology for the way I had spoken to him and acknowledged that my frustration didn’t justify it.
His response was:
“Thank you. That was all I asked for.”

And that was the moment something in me went completely quiet.

Because throughout the entire conflict, he had demanded that I look at myself, take responsibility and understand how my words affected him, while showing seemingly no curiosity about how his words or behavior affected me.
No apology for calling me names. No “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that either.” No acknowledgement of the fact that I had repeatedly been trying to reconnect with him. Nothing.

I almost wrote a huge final message explaining everything I thought about his emotional maturity and lack of empathy.

I didn’t.

I went to sleep.

At 6am I woke up with one of the strongest gut feelings I’ve ever had:

Get him out of your life.

So I blocked him everywhere. Finito. Never again.

And what I can’t stop thinking about now is that this feeling wasn’t new.
My body had been telling me something was off with this man almost from the beginning, even during the really good periods. I just couldn’t explain what. There was chemistry, affection, hours and hours of phone calls, strong feelings, yet something in me never fully relaxed around him. I never felt like I could truly reach him emotionally.

For a long time I questioned myself because I couldn’t point to one huge obvious red flag that explained the feeling.

Now I wonder if intuition isn’t mystical at all. Maybe sometimes it’s simply our brain noticing hundreds of tiny patterns, inconsistencies and signals before our conscious mind has found the words for them.

Have you ever experienced that with someone? Your body kept saying “something isn’t right here” long before you could logically explain why and eventually something happened that made it all click?

I recently ended an on/off online relationship with someone I had developed strong feelings for. And despite all the chemistry, affection and countless hours talking on the phone, there was always this strange feeling in my body that something was off.

I could never quite explain it.

He could be incredibly sweet, funny, affectionate and intense. He told me he missed me, couldn’t get me out of his head, had strong feelings for me etc. But emotionally, I never felt completely safe with him. I always felt like I couldn’t quite reach him.

Whenever things were good, they were really good. But whenever I brought up something difficult or told him I was hurt, I felt like I hit a wall. He would become defensive, focus on explaining himself, ignore parts of what I was actually saying, or simply try to move past it and return to normal conversation.

That pattern was actually what triggered our final argument.

Something had happened that made me uncomfortable, and I tried to address it. Instead of engaging with what I was saying, he essentially skipped over it and tried to continue as if nothing had happened. When I pointed out that he was ignoring what I was trying to communicate, he did it again.
And I snapped.

I got angry and spoke to him disrespectfully. I’m not proud of that, and I genuinely take responsibility for it.
But what happened next was almost the perfect illustration of the feeling I’d had about him all along..

He became completely focused on the fact that I owed him an apology. Meanwhile, he called me childish, incredibly self-centered and narrow-minded, told me apologizing was something you learn in kindergarten, and said I needed to “show a hint of being an adult.”
«You’re a big girl, figure it out”. He became so mean in his tone, and I thought “who are you?”.

I repeatedly tried to get us off text and onto the phone. I told him I wanted to move towards him, not away from him. I wanted to apologize for my part, hear his side and actually repair the conflict together.
But it felt like none of that registered because I hadn’t yet said the specific word he wanted: sorry.
It was like speaking to a child.

Eventually I did say sorry. I gave him a genuine apology for the way I had spoken to him and acknowledged that my frustration didn’t justify it.
His response was:
“Thank you. That was all I asked for.”

And that was the moment something in me went completely quiet.

Because throughout the entire conflict, he had demanded that I look at myself, take responsibility and understand how my words affected him, while showing seemingly no curiosity about how his words or behavior affected me.

No apology for calling me names. No “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that either.” No acknowledgement of the fact that I had repeatedly been trying to reconnect with him. Nothing.

I almost wrote a huge final message explaining everything I thought about his emotional maturity and lack of empathy.

I didn’t.

I went to sleep.

At 6am I woke up with one of the strongest gut feelings I’ve ever had:
Get him out of your life.
So I blocked him everywhere.
Never again will I let someone treat me that way.

And what I can’t stop thinking about now is that this feeling wasn’t new.
My body had been telling me something was off with this man almost from the beginning, even during the really good periods. I just couldn’t explain what. There was chemistry, affection, hours and hours of phone calls, strong feelings, yet something in me never fully relaxed around him. I never felt like I could truly reach him emotionally.

For a long time I questioned myself because I couldn’t point to one huge obvious red flag that explained the feeling.

Now I wonder if intuition isn’t mystical at all. Maybe sometimes it’s simply our brain noticing hundreds of tiny patterns, inconsistencies and signals before our conscious mind has found the words for them.

Have you ever experienced that with someone? Your body kept saying “something isn’t right here” long before you could logically explain why, and eventually something happened that made it all click?

This is an online relationship/connection, just to give some context. We are both Scorpio moons.
We’ve known each other for quite a while and have had periods of very close contact, followed by periods of no contact. We haven’t met in person, but this hasn’t just been occasional texting or flirting either. During the periods when we’ve been close, we’ve spent a lot of time talking on the phone, sometimes for hours, as well as messaging throughout the day. We know a lot about each other and there are real feelings involved on both sides.
We recently reconnected after about a month of no contact.

He was the one who reached out. He told me he’d been thinking about me a lot, that he couldn’t get me out of his head, and that he’d dreamed about me the night before and took it as a sign to contact me. He said he wanted us to have some contact again, but without letting the intense feelings between us get so overwhelming that everything boils over like it has before.
I was actually quite direct with him and told him that I didn’t want us to just sweep everything that happened before under the rug. There were reasons we stopped talking, and I needed us to be able to acknowledge and talk about those things.
To his credit, he was receptive and humble about that, and we had really nice conversations yesterday.
But now that the initial excitement of reconnecting has settled a little, I’m noticing the same thing that bothered me before.

**He is very responsive, but I’m not sure he is actually very curious about me.**

If I introduce a topic, ask him something or start a meaningful conversation, he’s engaged. He contributes, shares his thoughts, jokes with me and can genuinely be a great person to talk to.
But I feel like I’m usually the one who has to *create* those conversations.

He rarely seems to spontaneously wonder about me. He doesn’t ask many questions that open me up or make me feel like he actively wants to discover what’s going on inside my head or in my life.

Sexually, however, he has endless initiative.
He very easily tells me he wishes he was lying in bed with me, what he’d like to do with me, how attracted he is to me, etc. That part of the connection never seems to need any help from me.

So this morning I jokingly suggested that we try going an entire day without saying anything sexual.
And almost immediately, I felt the difference.

The conversation seemed to lose momentum unless I introduced something new.
It’s still early in the day, so I’m obviously not drawing a conclusion based on a few hours. But the reason it caught my attention is because **this is an old feeling with him.**

I’ve felt before that if I stop asking questions, introducing topics and creating emotional connection, there suddenly isn’t much happening between us.
And that confuses me because this is someone who says he couldn’t get me out of his head for over a month.
If I had missed someone that much and suddenly had them back in my life, I feel like I’d have a million things I wanted to know.
How have you really been?
What have you been doing?
What happened while we weren’t talking?
What have you been thinking about?
What’s going on in your life?
Tell me things.
Not as an interrogation, obviously. I don’t need constant texting either.

I just want to feel that someone has an **active interest in my inner world**, rather than simply enjoying my presence when I provide the content.
And that distinction is becoming increasingly important to me.

I’ve also told him before that this is something I struggle with in our connection, so I don’t really want to explain or teach it to him again. This time I’m trying to resist my natural tendency to carry the conversation and instead just observe what happens when I leave some empty space for him to fill.

So I’m curious:
**Can someone genuinely miss you, think about you constantly and have strong feelings for you, while still not being naturally curious about you?**
Is that simply a difference in communication style/personality?
Or would you see a lack of curiosity as a deeper emotional incompatibility?

Because I’m starting to realize that **being wanted, being desired and being known are three very different things.**

I could really use some outside perspectives.
I’ve been talking to a guy online for a while. In a few days he’ll be working near my town and has asked me to meet him for dinner and a fun activity so we can finally get to know each other in person.
Here’s why I’m hesitant.
He initially used a fake first name.
He later admitted it and said he keeps his real Snapchat private, using a separate account specifically to meet women.
Early on he was very sexually focused, which completely turned me off.
I told him I wanted emotional connection and to actually get to know each other before anything sexual. To his credit, he respected that boundary and completely changed how he communicated after that.
Still, the communication sometimes felt inconsistent. We’d have a great conversation, then barely talk for a couple of days, while I knew he was active on that Snapchat account.
Eventually I deleted him.
Actually… I deleted him more than once.
Every single time he added me back, wanted to understand why, and was willing to have honest conversations instead of getting defensive or disappearing.
His argument is:
“If you know what would make you feel safe enough to meet me, why won’t you just tell me instead of making me guess?”
My argument is:
“I don’t want to give someone a checklist. I’d rather see who they naturally are and decide if we’re compatible.”
So now I’m torn.

On one hand:
fake name
separate Snapchat account for meeting women
early sexual focus
inconsistent communication

On the other:
he respected my boundaries
he kept coming back after I deleted him
he’s been open to difficult conversations
he’s making an effort to meet while he’s already in my area for work

Would you meet him? Or would you trust your gut and walk away?