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So I’ve been chatting to this guy online. It’s got to the stage where we’ve arranged to meet for coffee. It’ll be early evening and in a public place.
Now he’s messaging me all the time and it feels too much. He seems needy, it doesn’t feel healthy. I’ve just ended an emotionally abusive friendship – she was very needy too.
Last night I told him I liked a particular band. He’s just messaged me to say he’s bought tickets to see them.
I think he should have asked me first: a) to check if I wanted to go and b) to check if I was free that night. I think it was a bit presumptive to just go and buy them. Abusive friend aside, I do have other friends and have a fairly busy social life.
As it happens I am free that night, but at the moment I’ve got a thing about setting boundaries and I think it’s a bit of a boundary violation for him to assume that I’m free on a particular evening. Furthermore, we’re going to be meeting up for the first time, and there’s no guarantee we’ll like each other when we meet in person. So to me, buying tickets on the assumption that we’ll want to see each other again after our first meeting could be a sign of a potentially controlling personality?
At the moment I feel very mistrusting with men and worry that I might be over vigilant to the slightest sign of red flags. However my recent abusive friendship has left me feeling very vulnerable and I’m concerned that he could pick up on my vulnerability.
Any thoughts please ladies?
Copperflame -
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Hi coppeeflame
I can see where you are coming from
It’s normal to feel this way after your experience. He does sound very needy ..
And that is a huge red flag .My advice is don’t let him control you hun
Turn the tables round ..Trust your gut instincts hun
I want to start a relationship but I know I ain’t ready yet
Iam also talking to someone..but there is no pressure at all .. with him and he’s not needyJust be careful x
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I agree, his behaviour already is showing red flags. In my experience, genuine men don’t want to rush things, because they too are figuring out whether you’re a good match for them, whereas the dodgy ones rush in with love bombing and boundary violations dressed up as ‘being keen/romantic’ and before we know it we are involved with someone we barely know who 9 times out of 10 is bad news.
I’d be very irritated if a man I’d been speaking to online bought tickets for something without asking me then expected me to go, and there is no way I’d go either. In fact this has happened to me twice before and both times the guys had other red flags. The first one was a man online sent me three long messages with the third one saying he’d bought tickets, this was all before I’d even replied to his first message! I just ignored all of the messages, blocked and deleted as I can’t stand people trying to bulldoze me and being presumptious.
The second one was a man I met on a workshop recently, he kept pestering me to meet up with him despite me saying I’d ‘let him know’ because I’d only just left my ex and was traumatised. Bizarrely he even sent post to my home with details of some event he wanted me to go to with him (he got my address from the organisation that ran the workshop because he was (detail removed by Moderator)!) He seemed normal initially but all the invitations and ignoring my wishes felt very boundary violating, not to mention using my number and finding out my address to ask me out – a very dodgy professional boundary violation. I had to be abupt in the end and told him I never wanted to meet him, not now or in the future! I felt like he was trying to bulldoze and pressurise me and I’ve already had more than enough people like that in my life.
Copperflame we deserve people who respect our boundaries, are calm and respectful, who listen and don’t love bomb and rush us so definitely don’t feel pressured into meeting this guy, I think you’ll know when you meet someone healthy who treats you properly. I also think it’s better to date after forming a friendship first, my best relationship started out this way, he never put pressure on me and was a genuinely good man. These men are out there but we have to dodge a lot of the idiots along the way!
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Thanks Borntobefree and SunshineRainflower.
Well I’ve realised I have an appointment on the day I’d arranged to meet him for coffee so I messaged him to postpone. I’ve also politely told him that it was very nice of him to buy the tickets, but it would have been courteous for him to have asked me first to see if I was free. I explained that I have a wide circle of friends and quite a busy social life and that he needs to check that I haven’t made other arrangements. I also said there’s a possibility that we may not like each other when we meet in person, so it’s best not to make future arrangements until we know for sure we will want to see each other again. Hopefully I’ve come across as polite while still being assertive and setting appropriate boundaries.
SunshineRainflower,
Those men you describe sound a right pair of creeps! As you rightly say, respectful non- abusive men don’t rush things or put you under pressure by love bombing and messaging constantly. The man (detail removed by Moderator) your workshop organisation sounds frighteningly unprofessional and it’s very scary and a huge red flag that he found out your address. He also abused a position of responsibility at a time when you were feeling very traumatised and vulnerable. Totally unacceptable behaviour – ugh!
This man wanted to exchange phone numbers very early on, but I told him I preferred to chat for a while before giving anyone my private number. He seemed to respect this, but then this morning he messaged me his number and asked me to ring him! I told him it was inconvenient.
Oh and another thing, when we were chatting about bands I mentioned I was going to a gig locally the following weekend. He asked me who I was going with and I said with some friends, which is true. He then said that’s a pity because otherwise he was going to invite himself along!! How very presumptive of him, what a cheek!
Another thing, he said he’d gone through a messy marriage break up and wanted to tell me all about it when we meet. Well sorry I don’t want to seem harsh, but I don’t want to hear anyone’s sob stories. If he’s an abuser he will very likely give a twisted version of what happened in order to appear the innocent victim of an evil wicked witch and make me feel sorry for him. Oh dear I’m getting very cynical in my old age lol…
Well I have no intention of talking about the DV I went through to him or any other man, until I have got to know him well enough to trust him. This is one of my boundaries. Like you, I hate feeling pressurised this.
I don’t even want a relationship at the moment, I’d just like to go out for a few dates with men. However I’m concerned that I still seem to be a target for this sort of man, even after several months in a DV support programme, doing the Recovery Toolkit course and now having my second lot of specialist DV counselling. Maybe we are more vulnerable than we realise?
Thank you both for confirming my suspicions, this is where this forum is worth its weight in gold.
Well it looks like another (detail removed by Moderator) is going to get the grand order of the boot…
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Well he’s now saying he’d already bought those tickets for a family member but it sounds like an excuse to me. He sounds just like my ex, who was a master of excuses.
Even so, he still violated a boundary by not asking me if I wanted to go and see this band first, or ask if I was free that night.
No siree, I don’t subscribe to excuses. If nothing else I have better self esteem and actually LIKE myself these days, even if I still seem to have a sign on my head that attracts these geeks…
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