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?
I'm not a therapist, so this is just a guess, but the "scared you off" comments and maybe the hints at depression could be seen as manipulative, especially when he really never wanted anything from the relationship beyond the online attention. He made her feel guilty for not spending more time and energy on him while exaggerating his own interest in her. Perhaps in his previous relationships the manipulation went further. Your friend needs to know she is not at all to blame for the end of this relationship. Nor is she dumb for caring about someone more than they cared about her: you can't always tell. But perhaps she will take from it the idea that she could ask for things that are important to her, like in-person contact or space to be doing something other than talking to him without being nagged, sooner in the process to be sure the other person is on the same page. Help her understand that whatever anxiety she felt to shore up his emotions should be at most a small part of their interaction. A relationship shouldn't feel like a tomagatchi pet.