My friend has been talking with this 24 year old man online since early 2022. She is into stereotypical nerds that are on the chubbier sides. He is a stereotypical nerd both inside and out, and is 350 lbs at 5"11. She thinks he's the cutest man she's ever seen. She met him on Reddit, he lives in California while she lives in England.
Early on he was very much into her. He kept complimenting her photos over and over, and would say things like "oh no..I scared you off didn't I? Sorry.." if she was away from the keyboard for a few minutes. He'd also send her selfies where he's carrying an invisible person over his shoulder, and then he asked her to imagine herself being carried by him. They voice chatted on Discord and had a lot of laughs, but over time he seemed to get less interested. He explained to her it's because when they first started talking, he was working part time, but now he's working from 5 AM every day along with classes until 10 pm some days so he's tired and burned out. In his recent selfies he has black bags under his eyes and isn't smiling. She said he hasn't smiled in his selfies for a long time. He used to talk with her every day, but some days he doesn't send any messages at all. When he does, he tells her he's sorry for not responding, he's been tired from work. He's made "I'll be free when I'm dead" comments lately. This made her believe he could be depressed due to burnout.
Recently, he admitted she lives too far away after she bit the bullet and asked him if he'd be interested in meeting up sometime, and she cannot travel due to a medical condition. He said "I think we're fine the way we are". He said it's "not all that likely" that he'll meet up with her in the future, since he's not a fan of travel in general and the distance seems too much right now. She's still very upset and feels empty because of this but they're still friends and have been talking since. Something I found out is that he's had two girlfriends in the past, and he said both of them were abusive, but also that his therapist thinks he's the abuser trying to play the victim.
She also told me that there's been two occasions where he punched other men. On the first occasion, he hit a man who was trying to leave a party with a half-conscious, visibly drunk girl. On the other occasion, it was because he embarrassed a gang member who was trying to mess with him. He showed my friend a photo of his two fingertips which are permanently bent because of his punching.
He has almost no online presence and made a post 2 years ago (shortly before he messaged my friend on Reddit for the first time) saying he's giving up because he thinks no woman will ever find him attractive or truly love him. He said he's kind of scared of women because of what happened to him before, and he claimed that one of his ex girlfriends tried to shoot him to death, with a bullet just barely grazing past his head.
I'm just trying to get a sense of this. He seems like a shy but gentle nerdy guy who loves collecting action figures and comic books, and I'm not sure how to feel about the other things. I can’t tell if he’s actually bad or not. I can't tell if these are red flags or not.
Are these red flags?
Yes, there are red flags there IMHO.
You know, I've seen similar behaviours so many times from people that they tell you how many problems they have and they kind of put the burden on you to deal with their problems. I don't mean you cannot be supportive of them if they really have problems they are trying to fix, but you shouldn't be dealing with someone else's problems if they don't want to do anything about them themselves.
I usually listen to them, tell them that I understand they are going through hard times and that I understand how tough that is being for them and all that supportive stuff... and then I tell them to go to therapy.
We cannot be someone else's therapists. Unless, you know, we are actual therapists. And even in that case, they would have to go through one of our formal therapies. I don't think even therapists get into relationships with someone just to fix them.
Some people will take the advice and consider getting help while others will not even consider it because they just want to take you hostage of their emotions. It's not worth putting any much more effort into someone who is apparently crying for help but doesn't really want to make any change and just wants to manipulate you instead.
And punching other people? Yeah, I don't care how "honourable" his reasons were, that's also a red flag.
I think that OP is work-shopping a short story.
This post feels familiar, so I looked at the account history.
Little details change here and there, but the guy is always the exact same size, and they always meet on reddit:
https://lemmy.ca/post/18971543?scrollToComments=true
https://lemmy.ca/post/19799717?scrollToComments=true
https://lemmy.ca/post/19845589?scrollToComments=true
https://lemmy.ca/post/20611177?scrollToComments=true
Therapists don't tell other people things about their clients.
Nut allergies don't prevent you from flying.
Based on her other posts, at the end of the story she's going to get away either because of a solar flare giving him a heart attack, or by playing a loud burst through his headphones.