I(29f) have a friend (33m) let's call Sean who I have a bit of a history with and I'm wondering how much it's worth to repair the relationship between us and how much effort I should consider putting in in trying to do so before I just cut my losses.

I am in an open committed relationship and both my partner(30M), and I have "friends " that occasionally have benefits attached. This is totally fine as a function of our relationship, and we handle it simply by using communication with each other. We recently moved away from our hometown so all the metas kind of just fell by the wayside since nobody was in close proximity to either of us. I had two other partners when my partner and I became committed to each other. One of them was Sean.

Sean and I have a really long history together. I've known him since we met in the same social circles when I was a teenager. He was in the same youth group as my neighbor, and we went to the same conventions for a long time. I have an ex who I was in a long-term relationship with who was also in the same band as Sean and he would always go over to his house to write music.

We were really just friends for a long time until right around the time my long-term relationship ended. Sean revealed that he has always had romantic feelings for me. I was pretty blind sighted by this revelation at the time but after thinking about it, I could see where little things always showed up that he really liked me.

There was a time I got hurt at a party while they were doing a video shoot and my ex wasn't really paying much attention to me but Sean Literally didn't leave my side. He was always drawing "album art" of a ninja girl with a lot of my physical characteristics including a mole I have. Coming to look for me all the time and always asking me for ideas on how his music sounds. He used my name as a line in a song and has several songs that sound suspiciously like they are to me.

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shortly thereafter we started hooking up. I was broken up with my ex but we were still living together at the time so he didn't like the prospects of the relationship. I think that Ex told our friend group because a few members of the group started to ostracize me and even Sean himself started acting kind of odd after that. He would go on unprovoked rants about how he doesn't want to get too attached to anyone and he started acting kind of standoffish towards me if we were in public in a social setting.

This behavior was not consistent however because Sean would Snapchat message me all the time and he would always ask me to come over to his house. I did a few times and every time I did it was wonderful. I really enjoyed spending personal time with Sean. Our personal compatibility was insane. It felt like we were just made for each other. But I wanted more.

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I was happy just keeping a casual relationship but I didn't want a secret relationship and I was feeling like that's what it was. So I started taking steps to fix that. I told him how I was feeling but he'd just respond with "what do you mean?" I tried inviting him to go do things with me but he could never take time out of his schedule. He finally invited me to go on an outing with him and it turned out to just be a three way scenario that didn't happen. I got him to agree to a picnic at a park and instead of going with me he cancelled. I took my current partner instead.

About that same week he comes to me and is like "I think that I need a break from our relationship" and I ask him why and he says he has a girl who wants to be more serious and he doesn't think she would like us being friends like we are. I understand but I look on social media and I find out that the girl is my second or third cousin. and he took her on the exact same date I planned for us.

All this was just too much for me so I ghosted him after that. I was feeling frustrated and like I was putting too much effort into the whole thing. I hadn't talked to him for a year or so and a few weeks ago he randomly added me back on social media.

He asked me what happened. Why did I bail on him and that he was sorry. He is not dating my cousin anymore. I don't know what happened there. And his perception of the whole thing was that I was already with a primary partner and that he didn't want to disrupt what I had going on. my current primary partner was not my primary partner at the time. I was single . It wasn't until after Sean's nonsense did I consider making him my primary partner.

Sean's back in my dms now and I would very much like to repair our relationship. I still like him a lot but I have him on ice still for now. I'm unsure if it's worth working at or if best left in the past.

It seems like he is low key just as hung up on me as he was before because he is checking in on me often but I was pretty hurt. I don't know how to repair this. I feel as if keeping him at a distance is a matter of self respect.

TLDR: a long time friend turned situationship had a misunderstanding with me and we broke up but now they're back and I would love to repair our relationship but I'm not sure if it's worth it.

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