Dessert: Cannolo from Sicily.
This story starts back in September 2025. I’m M33, he’s M28. We never really talked that much at first, but we got to know each other because we’re both part of the same video game community in our city. It’s a pretty large group, so for a while we were just acquaintances.
Around March, though, we started texting and talking more.
For context, I’m gay and I’ve been with my boyfriend for six years. He’s straight and, at the time, had been dating his girlfriend for about two years.
Things started becoming complicated around April/May. Our bond grew stronger very quickly, and we started texting every day. The tone also became increasingly affectionate. At one point, while I was on holiday, I texted him saying I’d seen a guy who looked a lot like him.
At 5 a.m., he texted me asking whether I’d fucked that guy.
Another piece of context: around this time, I found out that he was pretty heavily into raving and drugs.
The whole dynamic between us was becoming increasingly ambiguous, and I’m not pretending I was completely innocent in that. I went with the flow. I never physically cheated on my boyfriend, but I eventually started wondering whether what I was doing amounted to emotional cheating.
Our bond kept intensifying. Good morning texts, goodnight texts, him calling me “cutie,” constant messages, and so on.
Then one night he texted me: “Can I come sleep at your place?”
His relationship with his girlfriend was falling apart. They were having extremely bad fights, to the point where he sometimes had to leave their home. She would destroy things around him, and apparently the neighbors had called the police on occasion.
They broke up in June.
After that, he started coming over to my place regularly. Eventually, I began feeling that our bond had become too intense and that something about it wasn’t right. I told him how I felt.
He seemed to freak out a little. He started texting me every day asking how I was doing and saying that we needed to meet and understand what was going on between us.
Eventually, we did.
He walked through the door of my apartment and we gave each other this very warm hug. We were both visibly embarrassed. But the conversation actually went well. We talked things through and acknowledged that there was a connection between us, but that it didn’t necessarily have to be something bad. It could simply be something beautiful.
Two weeks later, we were supposed to travel with some other people from the gaming community for a tournament.
In the days leading up to the trip, we weren’t talking as much. He would contact me, but sometimes I wouldn’t reply. I still had this persistent feeling that something about our relationship was off.
Then everything collapsed.
On the day we were supposed to fly, I realized he wasn’t at the airport. I called one of his friends, who told me: “He had a psychotic episode yesterday.”
He had already experienced another psychotic episode in the past, which had resulted in him spending a month in a psychiatric ward.
This time, the episode was apparently triggered by weed consumption. I genuinely didn’t even know cannabis could trigger something like that in vulnerable people.
He ended up hospitalized in a psychiatric ward for another month.
My heart broke.
I called him while he was unwell, and at one point he was shouting, “I just want to stay with you. Just me and you.”
That phone call genuinely traumatized me.
His time in the hospital was incredibly difficult. We still spoke every day. Sometimes he would video call me. Sometimes he would get angry with me; sometimes I would get angry with him. It was emotionally exhausting, but I didn’t want to abandon him while he was going through something so serious.
Meanwhile, his ex-girlfriend reappeared. From what I understood, neither of their families was happy about it, so they started seeing each other secretly while he was still hospitalized.
And somewhere in the middle of all of this, I had my own realization: whatever this bond was, it had gone far beyond what I personally understood as a normal friendship.
I’ve had plenty of straight male friends. In fact, because of my culture and upbringing, I spent a significant part of my life having to act straight myself. I know what close friendships between men can look like.
But with him, it felt different.
It felt like we constantly finished each other’s sentences or somehow had the same thoughts. He would often tell me, “You know. You know everything.”
Eventually, he came out of the hospital, visibly exhausted.
By that point, I was exhausted too.
All I wanted was to have a normal friendship with this guy.
About a week after he was discharged, however, I disappeared from his life. I found out that he had said inappropriate things about me to a friend of mine - things that could potentially have compromised my relationship with my boyfriend.
I should mention that my boyfriend has been incredibly supportive throughout all of this. He was aware that there was ambiguity in this friendship, but he consistently told me that he trusted me and that I should handle the situation in whatever way I believed was appropriate.
So I sent this friend a message telling him that I never wanted to see him again.
I know that sounds incredibly harsh, particularly toward someone who had just come out of a psychiatric hospital, but at the time I felt it was necessary.
He didn’t respond to that message. Instead, the following day, he verbally attacked my friend for telling me what he had said.
My friend told him that the inappropriate comments were only part of the problem - that he had become obsessive toward me, and that it was understandable that I had finally drawn a hard boundary.
Despite my message, he continued texting me every day without receiving any response from me. At that point, his behavior started feeling obsessive and genuinely unsettling.
About a month later, I contacted him again.
I told him that I missed him and that I had needed time away.
He replied saying that he was still in shock about everything that had happened, but that he was open to talking. We agreed that we would meet once I came back from holiday.
When I returned (one week ago), he texted me, and we finally saw each other.
We talked everything through.
I told him that, from my perspective, our relationship had gone beyond the boundaries of an ordinary friendship and that we had clearly crossed some lines. He agreed with me and apologized.
He also seemed much better. More lucid. More like himself.
But then he told me that he had basically gone back to his old life. He was raving again, and he admitted that he had taken something at a festival to give himself energy.
He is also back together with his girlfriend.
And this is where my feelings become complicated.
While he was telling me about the festivals, his girlfriend, the things he had been doing, and his life going back to normal, I felt incredibly sad.
I had essentially lost my summer to this situation. For two months, he was constantly on my mind. I worried about him, supported him through hospitalization, dealt with the emotional intensity of our relationship, questioned my own boundaries and my relationship with my boyfriend, and eventually had to cut him out of my life because everything had become too much.
Meanwhile, he seems to have simply returned to his girlfriend, festivals, raves, and his previous life.
I know that feeling this way might sound selfish. I’m genuinely happy that he is doing better.
But this bond was incredibly important to me. And now it almost feels as though everything that happened has been erased, or put into some box somewhere, while he has gone back to his life.
I don’t regret being there for him. I would do it again. During his hospitalization, I was one of the few people consistently supporting him and speaking to him every single day. I did that because I cared deeply about him, not because I expected something in return.
But I can’t deny that it hurts.
My life felt like it was on hold for two months because of what happened to him and because of how much this relationship affected me. Now I feel like I’ve simply been moved into the background of his life.
And maybe that’s unfair. Maybe I’m expecting him to attach the same meaning to everything that happened that I do.
I don’t blame him for trying to move forward. I’m happy that he’s doing better. I also never expected him to abandon his life for me.
I think what hurts is that, somewhere inside me, I believed that once the crisis was over, we would eventually find our way back to the fun, close friendship we had before everything became so intense.
Instead, I’m left wondering whether that friendship ever really existed in the way I thought it did or whether the intensity itself was what made it feel so special.
We only talked everything through three days ago, so I realize I may be speaking far too soon. There’s been very little time for things to settle, and maybe I’m still processing months of emotional chaos.
But I honestly don’t know what to make of any of it.
Was this simply an unusually intense friendship that crossed some boundaries? Was I more emotionally invested than I realized? Was some of his behavior connected to what he was going through psychologically? And is it unreasonable that, after everything that happened, part of me feels hurt seeing him simply return to his old life while I’m still trying to process it?
What do you guys think?
