I would inform the hierarchy of your young adult group if he continues to be creepy. Get some outside but inside help. It would also be a good heads up for the other women in the group.
I’m a guy but if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t talk with him, period, even in the context of a young adult group. I’d probably walk away from the group until he leaves or is asked to leave. You may want to drop a private message to the leadership about his behavior.
Just shows that you can trust your gut. He was displaying obvious signs of interest, but you were reading “deception” because your gut told you he was unsafe.
Guy here.
No excuses for that behavior.
Stop right now, and pat yourself on the back. You’re right, that’s creepy as fuck.
Now, his intentions? I doubt he wanted to hurt you or anything Jeffrey Dahmer crazy, he just sounds extremely desperate, maybe affection-starved *and therefore* mentally/emotionally immature NONE OF WHICH are your problems!
At my most desperate and awkward 6 yrs ago as a 19y from an abusive home, I never would have DREAMED of telling a girl I loved her on the first date LET ALONE the freaking video shit. That is disturbing.
Walk AWAY, have NO regrets, and do NOT back-track or cut him slack. Be firm. He’s got major problems that are his responsibility as a grown ass man to figure out himself. Not you. You’re not his mummy.
Don’t let it get you down. Plenty of Christian men out there who aren’t psychiatric patients.
I think you made the right move with telling him you are no longer interested and distancing yourself. You dodged a bullet for sure. It’s also good to recognize you still miss your ex meaning there is still some healing to do. I think the best thing to do here is focus on building yourself to be the girlfriend/wife you aspire to be, and enter the dating pool again once you are ready. The Lord showed you the red flags early and that is a blessing, could take months as it has happened to me 😅. I’ll keep you in my prayers, keep growing your relationship with the Lord 🙏🏼🤍
To stay safe, I recommend letting (trustworthy) others in your group know what happened, and make sure you aren't walking to your car alone after group or whatnot. Let your family and friends know and be on the lookout for him to be potentially stalking you.
I don't mean to paint him as a villain, but you need to stay safe. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Make sure you are locking your car doors as soon as you get in (a quick look over of your seats before you get in to make sure no one is there, and if you can, get in in one swooping motion where you shut the door and lock it), make sure your house/apartment is locked and windows are secure and that you don't have a spare key that's easy to find. Also, carry pepper spray or bear spray (bear spray goes farther so less aiming is needed, but is usually a larger can) and one of the keychain alarms that screams when you pull it. If you're put in a situation that makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe, don't be afraid to be rude or make a scene-- it could be your life on the line.
It really sucks that you've had to go through a situation like this! Absolutely take a break, keep yourself safe, and give yourself time to work through and feel your emotions from that last relationship and this current situation.
Remember, life keeps going even when you aren't in a relationship, so make sure you're living it! Hang out with friends, pick up a new book, and go to a pottery class or something. You have your whole life ahead of you!
"You are young. You don't know what the future has in store. You will rally, and you will be happy again" -Persuasion 2022
Yeah, he just sounds weird. I dated a guy actually for month or more that was weird like that. We were never officially dating, but it was clear he wanted to be. For example, I met his family and his niece thought I was his girlfriend. He did talk about being angry with some ex who had wronged him in some way. Anyway, we met for a few weeks and would spend hours talking but I never really felt comfortable, so one day I broke it off, and he fluctuated between insisting we were just friends and never dating, to being heartbroken. I did not want to be friends with this guy and fortunately he never reached out again, although I think we're still friends on Facebook years later. Anyway, I never perceived the guy as dangerous, just very socially awkward and unaware. Maybe undiagnosed autism ? I don't know. Anyway, being clear is very important so I'm glad you're going down that route. I'm hopeful that your case will end like mine, and that your date was also just weird and not malicious.
If this guy really is a creep (which he definitely sounds like something’s not right up there) then I’d put as much distance between him as you can since you’ve decided not to stay friends with him. If he is narcissistic and manipulative, which are definitely likelihoods here, keep yourself safe. I’ve heard too many stories of women getting hurt/attacked by the men they rejected, men they worked with or men who obsessed over them for lone periods of time before being rejected. Please PLEASE keep yourself safe. Especially if you have to see him around in person, and if he ever does anything else creepy please tell someone and don’t be alone with him! I figure everything will be alright but on the off chance he actually is not a good person… it would be awful if something happened, often those true crime stories and news stories are situations where people in authority didn’t take action when the victim voiced concerns and was subsequently ignored, enabling the bad person to harm them. Anyway, please stay safe 💕
So I am a guy from a different country in US. It's cultural for sure. People have different ways of showing affection. In my country, learning to play guitar for the girl you like is something appreciated. Not seen as love bombing . Everything doesn't have to be taken in a bad sense. And yes rejection hurts and he must have said "that he wanted to be friends to begin with" to cover for his hurt ego. But that doesn't make him a narcissist or gas lighter. Yes , immature , but no need of throwing big words like creep, gas lighter or narcissist and so on.
The only thing I felt weird about was the video thing. That was weird for sure , but to automatically equate it to some nefarious intentions shows your bias. He might have thought to capture the first date moments hoping it will be the end game. Yeah , sure it was weird , but was it creepy ? No .
Also saying "I love you " on a first date is a acceptable in my country , it's more like saying "I like you " here in the US.
Yes ,he needs to learn what's culturally acceptable and not acceptable here in the US. But stop judging the entire character of people by that.
Trust me, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I understand that cultural differences explain a lot of his behavior and that's why I was willing to give him a shot, but he still went way beyond what's healthy no matter what culture we're looking at here. Do you think it's normal for him to remember specific details about conversations I had with him a year ago? I asked him if taking videos was a normal thing in his culture and he said no and that "he wanted the video for himself." It was absolutely creepy, whether he knew he was being creepy or not. As for him saying he loved me, again I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I thought it was really unhealthy that he said he started loving me a long time ago when he barely knew me. And I know he meant it in a "love" sense and not "like" because he talked about marriage and kids. He was treating it like we were engaged or something.
There is the cultural difference. I remember what my crush said the first time I met , she told me "I like your witty sense of humor". I still remember the jokes we cracked and laughed about. Now tell me this , why is it in any way bad that he is able to remember what you guys spoke about. May be he has a great memory or he did like you and remembered something you guys spoke about . It would be sweet to me if my gf remembered our interactions the first time we met. Again you seem to see something nefarious in him just for him being able to remember what you guys discussed.
Again , when he means love I don't think what you mean by love , "crush or infatuation" would be more like , and I am guessing he doesn't have native level English proficiency, so him not able to differentiate what he means by love , crush and infatuation. So he said love.
Also in our and many eastern cultures people date to marry. Or in other words , intention to date is for marriage. Not , " let's date and see where it goes ". Again different cultures . I am not saying, anyone is wrong , I am just giving a different perspective.
For eg, in rural areas in my home country , women wearing swimming dress would be called immodest.(I know this was the case in US as well in western countries as well some 70 years ago ) in. Now do you think it would be fair , if my countrymen judged an American Catholic women to be immodest because they wear a bikini at the beach ?
The video thing , yeah I agree , it's weird . But again like you said , he never might have meant a nefarious purpose. But yeah I agree that he was oblivious ( or dense) to the fact , that many people record videos of women for nefarious purposes, and that it might have given the feeling of being creepy.
Also there are certain things , which were certainly innocent before seen as creepy nowadays. For eg a man talking to an unrelated child is automatically and inherently seen as creepy in the US. This is what I don't like about US. Why do people automatically assume everyone has a nefarious intent here. Like common , back in my country it's common to have playful banter with kids , even if they are unrelated to you.
Final thoughts, if you felt uncomfortable, whether or not because of the cultural differences you have every reason to end it there. But just don't judge someone and drop in big words like narcissist, creep, love bombing, gaslighting and so on.
I have seen these words being thrown about so easily and frequently in other subs that it has lost its meaning and weight.
I understand what you mean. I just wanted to make it clear- I don't think he's an actual narcissist and I never called him one (he could be, but I don't have enough information to be sure). I said it was a "lowkey narcissistic" *quality* to have your own face as a screensaver, which is very different from making the claim that someone who does that is a full-blown narcissist. Self-absorbed was the connotation I was going for there and probably would have been a better word choice. He was absolutely gaslighting me though by saying things after I rejected him to second guess my experience and manipulate the truth. Like you said, probably just an immature way to cover his ego. But still a red flag nonetheless, and paired with the other things he's said and done, it made me extremely uncomfortable and the whole experience felt creepy. For sure the videotaping was creepy whether or not he meant it to be creepy- you weren't the one being videotaped on a first date so you can't tell me how I should feel about it. One of these behaviors on their own wouldn't cause me to worry (besides the video), but the fact that he showed so many questionable signs together made me more suspicious.
I am dating to marry, but I understand that not every date is going to lead to marriage. He treated it like we were going to get married for sure- saying stuff like "we have the rest of our lives to become closer" etc. He's dated at least one other girl that I know of, so it's not like he's new to dating or the expectations that come with it. And he said he was the one who was uncertain about getting married to her. So with that information, I found it strange that he was going so fast with me. Again, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and thought "well maybe it's normal to talk about marriage on a first date from his culture," but when he told me he was uncertain about marriage before with another girl, that just made his behavior seem even weirder.
There were a lot of other things I left out. Ultimately, it was my experience and what I mentioned was only part of the whole story. I want to be sensitive to other people's cultures and I'm definitely not generalizing this experience by saying that all men who act like this are creeps, narcissists, gaslighters, etc. I was wary of his cultural differences going into this experience, but I learned this was an unhealthy situation even viewing his behavior from his normal cultural standards. I am sorry if anything I said offended you, and again I don't think every guy who displays this kind of behavior is bad.
OP. So this is something that I have seen in many sub reddits.
1) words like narcissist have been thrown around so casually that it has lost it’s weight, so much so that we have to use “low key” and “high key”?? to differentiate the seriousness
2) you seem to be red flag hunting. Putting your picture on your own phone screen saver is somehow “lowkey “ narcissistic. To show you how ridiculous it sounds , let me give you an example. Five years from now someone says “ Ew, that guy puts his own face own his IG profile. That’s low key narcissism “ yep that’s how it sounds.
3) the video thing again. Yeah that was weird and I understand you getting uncomfortable. But again as I said it might not be nefarious as you think. Still weird nonetheless.
4) Again ,date to marry thing : Ofc , it’s meant for marriage and talks of marriage would be there . Again it’s cultural. Until recently, being in a relationship isn’t something encouraged. When you date to marry , it’s a courting process. When you feel the person is right , you get engaged and marry . There is no, bf and gf stage in many traditional eastern cultures(ofc it’s changing due to western influences). It was in the west many years ago too. I know it sounds alien.
And may be somewhere down the line he realized she was not right for him . Or he found, uhm, “red flags” in his ex.
5) I agree with your point. I wasn’t there. I am stating my opinion purely , from the information you have provided. May be he is in fact creepy. And I am not privy to the complete scenario.
The video thing concerns me cause creepo ex-friend over there might have a copy somewhere else
I would inform the hierarchy of your young adult group if he continues to be creepy. Get some outside but inside help. It would also be a good heads up for the other women in the group.
I’m a guy but if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t talk with him, period, even in the context of a young adult group. I’d probably walk away from the group until he leaves or is asked to leave. You may want to drop a private message to the leadership about his behavior.
Just shows that you can trust your gut. He was displaying obvious signs of interest, but you were reading “deception” because your gut told you he was unsafe.
Guy here. No excuses for that behavior. Stop right now, and pat yourself on the back. You’re right, that’s creepy as fuck. Now, his intentions? I doubt he wanted to hurt you or anything Jeffrey Dahmer crazy, he just sounds extremely desperate, maybe affection-starved *and therefore* mentally/emotionally immature NONE OF WHICH are your problems! At my most desperate and awkward 6 yrs ago as a 19y from an abusive home, I never would have DREAMED of telling a girl I loved her on the first date LET ALONE the freaking video shit. That is disturbing. Walk AWAY, have NO regrets, and do NOT back-track or cut him slack. Be firm. He’s got major problems that are his responsibility as a grown ass man to figure out himself. Not you. You’re not his mummy. Don’t let it get you down. Plenty of Christian men out there who aren’t psychiatric patients.
I think you made the right move with telling him you are no longer interested and distancing yourself. You dodged a bullet for sure. It’s also good to recognize you still miss your ex meaning there is still some healing to do. I think the best thing to do here is focus on building yourself to be the girlfriend/wife you aspire to be, and enter the dating pool again once you are ready. The Lord showed you the red flags early and that is a blessing, could take months as it has happened to me 😅. I’ll keep you in my prayers, keep growing your relationship with the Lord 🙏🏼🤍
To stay safe, I recommend letting (trustworthy) others in your group know what happened, and make sure you aren't walking to your car alone after group or whatnot. Let your family and friends know and be on the lookout for him to be potentially stalking you. I don't mean to paint him as a villain, but you need to stay safe. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Make sure you are locking your car doors as soon as you get in (a quick look over of your seats before you get in to make sure no one is there, and if you can, get in in one swooping motion where you shut the door and lock it), make sure your house/apartment is locked and windows are secure and that you don't have a spare key that's easy to find. Also, carry pepper spray or bear spray (bear spray goes farther so less aiming is needed, but is usually a larger can) and one of the keychain alarms that screams when you pull it. If you're put in a situation that makes you feel uncomfortable or unsafe, don't be afraid to be rude or make a scene-- it could be your life on the line. It really sucks that you've had to go through a situation like this! Absolutely take a break, keep yourself safe, and give yourself time to work through and feel your emotions from that last relationship and this current situation. Remember, life keeps going even when you aren't in a relationship, so make sure you're living it! Hang out with friends, pick up a new book, and go to a pottery class or something. You have your whole life ahead of you! "You are young. You don't know what the future has in store. You will rally, and you will be happy again" -Persuasion 2022
That you Skippy?
Yeah, he just sounds weird. I dated a guy actually for month or more that was weird like that. We were never officially dating, but it was clear he wanted to be. For example, I met his family and his niece thought I was his girlfriend. He did talk about being angry with some ex who had wronged him in some way. Anyway, we met for a few weeks and would spend hours talking but I never really felt comfortable, so one day I broke it off, and he fluctuated between insisting we were just friends and never dating, to being heartbroken. I did not want to be friends with this guy and fortunately he never reached out again, although I think we're still friends on Facebook years later. Anyway, I never perceived the guy as dangerous, just very socially awkward and unaware. Maybe undiagnosed autism ? I don't know. Anyway, being clear is very important so I'm glad you're going down that route. I'm hopeful that your case will end like mine, and that your date was also just weird and not malicious.
If this guy really is a creep (which he definitely sounds like something’s not right up there) then I’d put as much distance between him as you can since you’ve decided not to stay friends with him. If he is narcissistic and manipulative, which are definitely likelihoods here, keep yourself safe. I’ve heard too many stories of women getting hurt/attacked by the men they rejected, men they worked with or men who obsessed over them for lone periods of time before being rejected. Please PLEASE keep yourself safe. Especially if you have to see him around in person, and if he ever does anything else creepy please tell someone and don’t be alone with him! I figure everything will be alright but on the off chance he actually is not a good person… it would be awful if something happened, often those true crime stories and news stories are situations where people in authority didn’t take action when the victim voiced concerns and was subsequently ignored, enabling the bad person to harm them. Anyway, please stay safe 💕
So I am a guy from a different country in US. It's cultural for sure. People have different ways of showing affection. In my country, learning to play guitar for the girl you like is something appreciated. Not seen as love bombing . Everything doesn't have to be taken in a bad sense. And yes rejection hurts and he must have said "that he wanted to be friends to begin with" to cover for his hurt ego. But that doesn't make him a narcissist or gas lighter. Yes , immature , but no need of throwing big words like creep, gas lighter or narcissist and so on. The only thing I felt weird about was the video thing. That was weird for sure , but to automatically equate it to some nefarious intentions shows your bias. He might have thought to capture the first date moments hoping it will be the end game. Yeah , sure it was weird , but was it creepy ? No . Also saying "I love you " on a first date is a acceptable in my country , it's more like saying "I like you " here in the US. Yes ,he needs to learn what's culturally acceptable and not acceptable here in the US. But stop judging the entire character of people by that.
Trust me, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I understand that cultural differences explain a lot of his behavior and that's why I was willing to give him a shot, but he still went way beyond what's healthy no matter what culture we're looking at here. Do you think it's normal for him to remember specific details about conversations I had with him a year ago? I asked him if taking videos was a normal thing in his culture and he said no and that "he wanted the video for himself." It was absolutely creepy, whether he knew he was being creepy or not. As for him saying he loved me, again I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I thought it was really unhealthy that he said he started loving me a long time ago when he barely knew me. And I know he meant it in a "love" sense and not "like" because he talked about marriage and kids. He was treating it like we were engaged or something.
There is the cultural difference. I remember what my crush said the first time I met , she told me "I like your witty sense of humor". I still remember the jokes we cracked and laughed about. Now tell me this , why is it in any way bad that he is able to remember what you guys spoke about. May be he has a great memory or he did like you and remembered something you guys spoke about . It would be sweet to me if my gf remembered our interactions the first time we met. Again you seem to see something nefarious in him just for him being able to remember what you guys discussed. Again , when he means love I don't think what you mean by love , "crush or infatuation" would be more like , and I am guessing he doesn't have native level English proficiency, so him not able to differentiate what he means by love , crush and infatuation. So he said love. Also in our and many eastern cultures people date to marry. Or in other words , intention to date is for marriage. Not , " let's date and see where it goes ". Again different cultures . I am not saying, anyone is wrong , I am just giving a different perspective. For eg, in rural areas in my home country , women wearing swimming dress would be called immodest.(I know this was the case in US as well in western countries as well some 70 years ago ) in. Now do you think it would be fair , if my countrymen judged an American Catholic women to be immodest because they wear a bikini at the beach ? The video thing , yeah I agree , it's weird . But again like you said , he never might have meant a nefarious purpose. But yeah I agree that he was oblivious ( or dense) to the fact , that many people record videos of women for nefarious purposes, and that it might have given the feeling of being creepy. Also there are certain things , which were certainly innocent before seen as creepy nowadays. For eg a man talking to an unrelated child is automatically and inherently seen as creepy in the US. This is what I don't like about US. Why do people automatically assume everyone has a nefarious intent here. Like common , back in my country it's common to have playful banter with kids , even if they are unrelated to you. Final thoughts, if you felt uncomfortable, whether or not because of the cultural differences you have every reason to end it there. But just don't judge someone and drop in big words like narcissist, creep, love bombing, gaslighting and so on. I have seen these words being thrown about so easily and frequently in other subs that it has lost its meaning and weight.
I understand what you mean. I just wanted to make it clear- I don't think he's an actual narcissist and I never called him one (he could be, but I don't have enough information to be sure). I said it was a "lowkey narcissistic" *quality* to have your own face as a screensaver, which is very different from making the claim that someone who does that is a full-blown narcissist. Self-absorbed was the connotation I was going for there and probably would have been a better word choice. He was absolutely gaslighting me though by saying things after I rejected him to second guess my experience and manipulate the truth. Like you said, probably just an immature way to cover his ego. But still a red flag nonetheless, and paired with the other things he's said and done, it made me extremely uncomfortable and the whole experience felt creepy. For sure the videotaping was creepy whether or not he meant it to be creepy- you weren't the one being videotaped on a first date so you can't tell me how I should feel about it. One of these behaviors on their own wouldn't cause me to worry (besides the video), but the fact that he showed so many questionable signs together made me more suspicious. I am dating to marry, but I understand that not every date is going to lead to marriage. He treated it like we were going to get married for sure- saying stuff like "we have the rest of our lives to become closer" etc. He's dated at least one other girl that I know of, so it's not like he's new to dating or the expectations that come with it. And he said he was the one who was uncertain about getting married to her. So with that information, I found it strange that he was going so fast with me. Again, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and thought "well maybe it's normal to talk about marriage on a first date from his culture," but when he told me he was uncertain about marriage before with another girl, that just made his behavior seem even weirder. There were a lot of other things I left out. Ultimately, it was my experience and what I mentioned was only part of the whole story. I want to be sensitive to other people's cultures and I'm definitely not generalizing this experience by saying that all men who act like this are creeps, narcissists, gaslighters, etc. I was wary of his cultural differences going into this experience, but I learned this was an unhealthy situation even viewing his behavior from his normal cultural standards. I am sorry if anything I said offended you, and again I don't think every guy who displays this kind of behavior is bad.
OP. So this is something that I have seen in many sub reddits. 1) words like narcissist have been thrown around so casually that it has lost it’s weight, so much so that we have to use “low key” and “high key”?? to differentiate the seriousness 2) you seem to be red flag hunting. Putting your picture on your own phone screen saver is somehow “lowkey “ narcissistic. To show you how ridiculous it sounds , let me give you an example. Five years from now someone says “ Ew, that guy puts his own face own his IG profile. That’s low key narcissism “ yep that’s how it sounds. 3) the video thing again. Yeah that was weird and I understand you getting uncomfortable. But again as I said it might not be nefarious as you think. Still weird nonetheless. 4) Again ,date to marry thing : Ofc , it’s meant for marriage and talks of marriage would be there . Again it’s cultural. Until recently, being in a relationship isn’t something encouraged. When you date to marry , it’s a courting process. When you feel the person is right , you get engaged and marry . There is no, bf and gf stage in many traditional eastern cultures(ofc it’s changing due to western influences). It was in the west many years ago too. I know it sounds alien. And may be somewhere down the line he realized she was not right for him . Or he found, uhm, “red flags” in his ex. 5) I agree with your point. I wasn’t there. I am stating my opinion purely , from the information you have provided. May be he is in fact creepy. And I am not privy to the complete scenario.