Best friend (30 M) pressured me (26 F) into a relationship, only to lose interest after 2 weeks and dump me

I posted this on r/breakups as well, but I thought I would post it here as a question to gain more insight.

I (26 F) hang out pretty often with a group of mostly men who I play board games with a few times a week. We're all very close, and it is the one group where I feel like I can always be myself. I've always suffered from a pretty bad case of outsider syndrome, so finding a group like that is a big deal to me. Anyways, there is one guy in particular (30 M) who I became very close with. I always really trusted him. First, as a friend, but after a few months of divulging some of my personal thoughts to him, my feelings started to shift towards romantic feelings. It was very obvious that he felt the same. However, I had a lot of baggage at the time that I needed to work through, in particular, a very recent breakup. He is also a divorcee of 3 years with some baggage of his own.

He, however, started to put extreme pressure on me almost immediately upon me revealing my feelings, and basically told me that we needed to be together immediately and started giving me things like timeframe ultimatums. He would also tell me how devastated he'd be if we didn't end up together, and was making a bunch of grand statements about the future he saw for us together. Now, clearly, if this was any other guy I would have seen these all as huge red flags. However, I had trusted him a great deal prior to this due to how close we were, so I figured he probably had good intentions and wasn't expressing them correctly. I was also concerned that if I did not date him that he would accuse me of leading him on and my place in the group would be compromised.

So I gave in, and ended up dating him within the timeframe he demanded. We dated for 2 weeks total and had sex pretty early on. After 2 weeks, however, he sat me down and told me that he didn't feel a spark for me and that even though he likes me and I'm incredible, he wasn't invested in the relationship and liked us better as friends and wanted us to continue the great friendship we had prior. As you can imagine, I felt pretty goddamn floored. This was the same guy who, just 2 weeks earlier, had begged me and pressured me and really manipulated me into being with him. I accepted the breakup with grace, I did not beg or cry. However, I did express my anger at him pressuring me so hard out of what he saw as the "friendzone" only for him to ask to go back to us being friends almost immediately after we had sex and I had committed to him. He apologized and said that wasn't his intention. I asked if I did anything wrong, and he said no, it was him, and that maybe he wasn't ready to date so soon after his divorce. I feel like this is a pile of horse shit excuse, and that there must be something there he's not telling me.

I went no contact immediately, and he tried to reach out to see how I was very shortly after. I didn't answer him. I decided to go back to our board game night a few days after the breakup so I could feel some normalcy again. Bad idea. Seeing him really made me realize how upset I still was about everything, and I left after a few hours in tears. After that I realized that I can't even be involved in my friend group anymore, because I want nothing to do with him for now. I feel so stupid and like I had been fooled. One of the big reasons that I dated him was so that I would not lose my place in the group, but I ended up losing it anyways. I left the group chat on Facebook, and this morning I deleted him as a friend. He hasn't reach outed to me since I deleted him.

He swore that he didn't just use our friendship to get sex or emotional support, but I don't believe him. I am so angry, and upset. I feel so stupid and foolish, and like there must be something wrong with me to make him want to leave me after chasing me so hard. I feel upset that one of my best friendships is compromised, and that I don't even have a group of people i can go to anymore to feel good around.

So my question his, how can I recover from this, short of the no contact I am already applying? Is it worth continuing a friendship with someone like that after the no contact period has ended? Should I walk away from my group of friends entirely due to his behavior? I just feel like this entire thing is not fair.

TL;DR, best guy friend pressured me into a relationship the second he learned I liked him, and then broke up with me after only 2 weeks because he doesn't feel a "spark." I am not sure if I can ever forgive him.

Submitted January 27, 2019 at 06:01PM by angerygirlthrowaway http://bit.ly/2G4OxMn