Hey. First time poster, long time lurker.

So over the past few years I’ve been gently examining dominance and my desire to be dominant - have some experience in the past both online and real life and recently met a somewhat younger than I male submissive online, doesn’t matter where. We met in a context that was not kink oriented but over time our discussions turned to sex and kink and he revealed he had a desire to be submissive but hadn’t done much exploring around it.

We eventually decided to do some exploring together and he loved it. I loved it. We both got on really well. We would talk outside of dom/sub dynamic frequently and it seemed like we genuinely really just got as people and it became clear we both saw relationship potential in a romantic context as well. Yesterday, he told me he had fallen in love with me and I said I had some definite romantic feelings for him too but that love is a big word and we should probably talk more. During this time he also confessed that he carried significant shame about his desires, practically begged me to not ghost him saying he felt his life would be empty without me in it. He had also asked me multiple times not to tell anyone about his kinks as he was afraid people finding out in his community would ruin his life - his kinks were femdom but preference to a gentle approach, orgasm control, jerk off instructions, some mind games, and he confessed wanted to be pegged and that he was bi curious (I am queer and non-binary so this didn’t both me at all)We don’t live in the same country and his discussion about shame kinda gave me a big red flag. After I told him love was a big word and thing to say especially since we haven’t met in person but let’s keep chatting he went quiet. Stopped responding as quickly and when he did it was one word responses. I should say here that I said this because I didn’t want him to confuse him liking our sexual role play for the emotion of love. We had been talking for a while but still it was only like six weeks. I asked him at this point if he would ever like to meet in person sometime and he immediately said it was too soon to say but that he looked forward to the future.

Today he sent me a couple messages and snapchats - pretty surface level. We were chatting about our days at work and then suddenly out of nowhere he blocked me on all social media.

Now, I know this likely has nothing to do with me and everything to do with him, but I have to confess that I’m super confused. He begged me to not just ghost him (he explained that a previous girl he had chatted to had done this to him and it had crushed him)and go quiet - told me I was important to him, that he didn’t feel any shame when we were talking, that he felt free and like he could be himself and then even confessed he felt he had fallen in love with me and then out of nowhere blocked me.

I will say that today was a difficult day for me. I’m going through some personal grief and had only a couple sad stories on my social media. So I don’t know if me grieving and being a person just turned off the horny and he had some post nut clarity and didn’t like that behind all this I was a real person and not just a kink dispenser for him.

I know it’s him and not me but I can’t help but feel fairly confused and hurt and felt maybe I should post here for some support and advice. How does one get close to someone and say they love them and then just dip? Like I know I’m a little older but damn what? I’m no pro or anything so any advice or pointers for vetting this type of behaviour in the future would be helpful. Even just some reassurance would be helpful.

I’m embarrassed to admit I used my alt account and his accounts are active so he did fully block me.