First off, I've had 3 serious long term relationships in my life and a few dalliances of sorts, so some experience with men, however I have only ever met or dated people I knew "in person." I know quite a few friends who have had very fulfilling online relationships, so I'm not knocking it, I'm just inexperienced with online dating.

4 or 5 months ago, this guy began actively pursuing me on social media. Flirting, attentive, funny, but I just brushed it off as him being playful and not serious. At some point I decided to send him a DM to say that I had just gotten off of a long term relationship, I didn't want to hurt his feelings, etc. We started chatting and this led to 2-3 months of very personal and intimate (not sex intimate, but sharing personal tragedies, failures intimate,) phone calls, DMs and such. Tragedy happened to his mother and I started hearing less and less from him and now I have this paranoia that none of it was real and I never should have let myself get this deeply attached to someone I've never met in the first place.

I don't know what to think. I don't know if he was just having some fun and "we" were never real, regardless of plans to be real. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but as I was skeptical of online dating in the first place, it's like I'm automatically paranoid of the situation.

Thanks for letting me rant if anyone reads this.

It sucks that you have to deal with this. It may well be that he is just processing whatever happened with his mother and he is pulling away for that reason. In these types of situations where you don't know why the person is pulling away, I personally find it easier to deal with by choosing to believe that what was shared was real while it lasted. Don't know if that will help you.

I'm sorry that something so awful had to happen to him and that you're not having to question everything as a result, that really sucks for everyone involved. I do think, from what you said, that it was real but when tragedy strikes I think most people step back from relationships unless they're right there immediately involved in person all the time. You could always ask him directly if he's still interested but needs time to process what happened in his family before doing anything further, just make sure he knows that he doesn't have to deal with everything there immediately and that you'll wait for an answer until he's okay enough to give one if you can and want to.

I have had a lot of relationship problems since my mother passed away. maybe it's just him struggling to cope. With me it was never that I didn't care about my Boyfriend it was just really hard to learn how to cope.