I am really conflicted right now and I don’t know if I did the right thing. I feel like I need to get some outsider perspective on this otherwise I’m going to drive myself crazy overthinking.

So for a little bit of background, I (22F) graduated with my bachelor of science last year and I now doing a year long Honours project in a lab at my university.

The building I work in has lots of different lab groups working there, and while every lab group has a separate area to keep all types of samples, most of the rooms are shared between all the groups.

I have a friend (25F), I’ll call her E, which I met in my second year of undergrad. We drifted apart since we didn’t have any classes together in the third year, we were doing different degrees but in the first and second year, a lot of the health science courses have some classes together.

At graduation, we discovered that we will both be doing Honours in the same facility (though we are in different lab groups and are working on very different things) and we got close again. That is when she introduced me to a friend of hers (23M) which I will call C. C is doing a PhD in the same lab as E, so he is one of her closer supervisors.

The three of us started to hang out more together and I thought him and I were becoming really good friends.

The two of us talked a lot, shared some things about our pasts, and I started to really like him as more then a friend. For the next couple of months we were just chatting, seeing each other around the lab, and hanging out the three of us when we were having lunch, things like that.

A couple of weeks ago we decided to meet up outside of uni on a Friday, I was going to come over to his house, we would get some work done together, and I was going to show him a comedian I love that I thought he would like.

During that conversation, I tried to make it clear to him that if he expected anything “adult” to happen between us, I would not be coming. The two of us have a very bantery way of talking so I didn’t question it at first when he kept making jokes.

I kept trying to get him to take me seriously but then he ended up getting offended, saying that I am lumping him in with ‘all guys’ by questioning his intentions and saying how hurtful that is to him. I apologized that I came off that way and we ended up closing off the conversation, though I was sure he got the message.

The Tuesday before we were supposed to hang out he asked me to come over that day. I said no at first because my little sister was having a bit of a bad day, but when he asked me again later she had already calmed down and he told me that he had a bad argument with his supervisor. like the naïve silly girl I am, I thought I would be a good friend and do what I would do for anyone else, I said yes and went over there with the hopes of cheering up my friend.

When I got there we went out to his back yard and he gave me a puff of his cigarettes and told me that he wanted to chat to me about something after.

It was really strong stuff so I felt a little light headed, but I was totally fine and we were having a good conversation. Then he turned to me and said he didn’t want to beat around the bush. He said that he thinks I’m cute, and he knows I think he’s cute, and asked if there was any chance of anything happening between us.

I said that I’m not opposed to something developing between us and that, but nothing too much that night. He then told me that he doesn’t do relationships and doesn’t want me to fall in love with him if we have S.

I was a bit taken aback but I told him that I wouldn’t do anything like that with someone I didn’t have some sort of romantic relationship with, that’s just not who I am.

I then said that it was great that we spoke about it, clearly our expectations didn’t line up so it would be better if we just stayed friends. I thought that would be it, we got everything out in the open, it clearly wasn’t going to work out as anything other then friendship, and we should just keep it at that.

However, he then kept trying to convince me it would be a good idea to start a friends with benefits relationship with him. I tried to make it clear again that this was not something I want to do, but he wouldn’t stop pushing it.

When we went back into his house he started going on about how it will always be awkward between us now, and we can’t really be friends because I rejected him. I was a little hurt but I told him that this is fine, if he didn’t want to be friends with me after this then I would respect that.

He kept going on about how hurtful this is to him, asking if he did something wrong to make me not want to do this. I told him that he didn’t, its just clear that our expectations don’t match so it was never going to work. He would not drop the topic, at some point he sat down at his desk and told me to get my laptop out and do some work because he cant even look at me right now.

At that point I was feeling really uncomfortable and I just wanted to leave, so I went to the bathroom and texted my mum the address, asking her to pick me up. Since she lives 45 minutes away from his house, she texted a family friend of ours that lived 10 minutes from him to pick me up.

When I was in the bathroom trying to text he shouted at me ‘just go ahead and text whoever you’re texting’ and ‘I can’t even hear you peeing in there’.

He was starting to get more aggressive and I was feeling really unsafe at that point. I went to his room and got my bag with my school work in it and told him I was going to head out soon and someone was picking me up (stupid of me, I know).

He then got really mad and upset, saying I drove all this was to his and it would be rude not to do anything. He was telling me how hurt he was that I came all the way to his house and then suddenly bail.

I was trying keep him calm by telling him that it was on me, I just felt a little awkward and I just wanted to go to sleep. He was getting more forceful, saying I should just stay the night there because I said we should still be ‘friends’. At that point I was feeling so unsafe that I told him my ride was here and walked fast out of his house before my mums friend actually got there to pick me up.

I just couldn’t keep being around him. Later he sent me a text saying how much I hurt him, and how he might be nice and give me a pass and not block me. I was just going to avoid him around the lab and leave things be. Sure I felt a little uncomfortable and was constantly looking over my shoulder, but I would get used to having to see him around and things would be fine.