I asked my best friend for help meeting someone. I’m twenty, in my final years at university, and I’ve never been in a relationship. He helped by messaging women from my Snapchat account. This seemed like a reasonable opening move at the time.
We contacted ten women. One replied. A modest response rate, but enough to get a conversation going.
For about four days, she and I texted every day without knowing each other’s identities. She’d send games for us to take turns playing and ask how my day had been. We had a small routine going, all while remaining conveniently unidentified.
Then today she sent me a photo of herself.
I knew her. She’s in my course.
We’re in mechanical engineering, and there aren’t many women in the department. She wasn’t someone I vaguely recognized from somewhere around campus. She was a classmate. The random person I’d been chatting with had turned out to be part of my actual university life.
As far as I know, she still doesn’t know who I am. I’d very much like to keep it that way, which has made working out what to say next considerably harder.
There’s nothing wrong with her. I’m just not interested in her that way. Finding out who she is hasn’t changed that, but it has changed how awkward this feels. Four days of games and daily messages suddenly seem like quite a bit of conversation to exit without explanation.
I don’t want to disappear on her. She’s been talking to me normally, and an abrupt silence would leave her with no idea what happened. On the other hand, explaining what happened seems likely to involve explaining who I am. That detail is currently doing a lot of work.
My friend helped me start a conversation. Ending it appears to be my department.
Do I tell her I’m not interested after all these messages? Do I stop replying? How do I get out of this without revealing that the anonymous guy on her phone is also in her course?
