You're in denial. Your subconscious thinks it's clever, having its cake and eating it too, but in reality you're just deluded, and you're harming yourself and others in the process. Like my first experience with a guy hitting on me, back when I was in my early twenties. In hindsight it was freaking hillarious, we were both up our ears in denial. It was like /*About half an hour into my roommate's attempt to sweet-talk me into bottoming for him, in rather graphic detail, and with me becoming increasingly horny.*/ Me: "Are you gay?" Roommate: "No, but aren't we both lonely and horny, and ancient warriors did it all the time." Let's just say, that the only thing that REALLY stopped me was that I was sure the rumour would've gotten out and suspicion that an extremely violent and homophobic jerk living next door could hear every word we said. Apparently, it was similar for him, in the morning there was horror in his eyes, he moved out the same day, I never saw him after that night. The very next day I fervently believed that any straight guy would really get hot on thinking of what would've happened if he said "yes." No, it's not gay at all. Ancient warriors did it all the time. For all I know, I ruined that guy's life, I can only guess to what kind of place he could move on such a short notice, not that place what we rented was anything but cost going for it in the first place... Yes, it would never have worked long-term, he wasn't my type AT ALL, but... I still feel guilty, why couldn't I just say to him "Listen, no offence, I really like the idea, but think about all those paper-thin walls in this place, think about what [that notorious type next door] will do to me or to you?" Instead I just messed up his life... And yes, I've eaten that cake of having sex with him too, but only in my mind. Isn't denial grand? Isn't messing up your own and other people's already messed up lives, without even a chance for a lame apology, absolutely and definitely in line with moral values of the nation? Isn't this world totally not messed up?
If you're carrying around this horrible burden of having messed up someone's life, I'd put it down and move on. I don't think what you did sounds wrong or horrible. Someone you barely knew (apparently - because you never saw him again) propositioned you for sex and you declined. That's what most people would have done. MAYBE you're mixing guilt with regret? Maybe there's a part of you that wished you'd said yes. And we all have those moments, but carrying around regrets doesn't do us any good either. You'll never know if it would have been the right thing to do. But maybe you'll be prepared the next time an opportunity presents itself to make a different decision.
Don't blame yourself for the decisions of someone else. There is no need to feel guilty about anything. He was the one who brought up having sex so it's not your fault. Just let it go.
Well, we all do things we regret and yet can't undo or make apologies for. But.. do recognise when you're overanalysing too. I mean: one night, you didn't agree to have sex with the guy. is it seriously likely that this single instance of not getting what he wanted ruined his entire life forevermore? In the extremely unlikely case it did... then that guy had issues above and beyond what you ever could have saved him from. Most likely scenario is that he moved in with a friend for a few weeks while finding something else to stay, or that he moved to something cheap and worse, but was out of there as soon as he found something better. He might be having sex with a wonderful boyfriend right now for all we know :icon_wink You shouldn't undersell other people here. We all have our disappointments, but no single disappointment ruins a life. We deal and move on. If this guy was halfway capable of surviving, odds are very good he did just that. The real core of the matter here is how YOU deal with it, though. Even if you can't know how that situation turned out, thinking about it made you find out that denial and the closet aren't good places to be. So maybe the best way to overcome this is not to focus on what-ifs but to work on coming out, being out, and if it comes up, letting other people down gently. By learning from it you're doing yourself more favours than forever revisiting the past and continuously blowing it up into worse than it possibly could have been.
Thanks everyone for their insight. I brought that particular story up because, well, it, unlike most others, involved two guys, but that's true of me in almost any situation. I just hate people breaking up and saying "no," it always feels like Eternal Harmony Ruined to me deep down inside, facts or no facts. It could be a rather harmless foible if it was only about occasional guilt about things long ago gone and forgotten, and sometimes ill-adviced attempts to play stay-together-at-all-costs marriage counsellor to my friends (I mean, even when I rationally recognize break-up is a better solution for everyone concerned.) But it quite often ends up preventing me from even trying to approach someone. "Yes, I want them, I'm reasonably certain they want me, cool... Then again, what if we aren't really compatible after all, we'd have to break up, or will end up as 'just friends,' and I'll hate that. Better not to even try." Guess for all my instinctive distrust of "traditional family" anything I've heard too much "happily ever after, till death did them part" stories at an impressionable age, and am absolutely indignant when love refuses to work that way.
