so i met this guy...

[elliohnnie]

i met this guy online and for the first time ever i clicked with someone? and the exact night we met we did sexual things (e-sex, we don't live in the same country) i didn't show any body parts or anything though. yet it was my first time doing stuff like that.
we've been talking and idk if we're a match but it's going okay. not awesome or great, just okay. i don't think i have a crush on him or anything, and i don't think he crushes on me either. i'm having lots of doubts because i have never received or given this kind of attention before, i don't know if i'm the one who's dry or him or if i suddenly don't have any conversation subjects left when i talk to him. it feels sort of shallow but at the same time i think about him a lot. like a lot.

we flirt a bunch and also chat from time to time, everyday since we've met. i don't think he means it in a bad way but sometimes when we're flirting he gets really sexual and stuff when i wasn't especially being in that mood in my texts, the first time he was it made sense since we were heating each other up, but then we were just chatting on video call and he was making cute comments about me but also my body a lot. at first it wasn't unpleasant, i liked the attention but i'm starting to think maybe he's a little too obsessed with my body.

i'm demisexual, and i don't have much sexual attraction to people. but even masturbating was a hard time for me alone because these things kept going through my mind, idk what to tell him or how to engage the conversation. i don't feel like we've had a serious convo at all outside of flirting and that one time sex thing but he keeps saying that he might fall in love with me? it sounds weird because he talks about my breasts a lot and not really my interests, what i did during the day etc. i truly feel like the only one to care about this...

[Jacob]

You know, the upside of an online interaction like this is that you don't need to deal with a person if they cross your boundaries, we have tools like muting, blocking, or even just not looking at their messages... however there are also downsides where people fail to see the whole of us when the interaction is primarily being driven by wanting to always engage in some sexual moment, which you enjoyed the first time, but they aren't seeing us in an everyday setting. The fact that you had a genuinely enjoyable connection the first time (I'm happy for you that you did!) doesn't mean you are agreeing to it every time. I'm hearing him make a lot of assumptions around that and not paying attention to the signals you're giving him.

i don't feel like we've had a serious convo at all outside of flirting and that one time sex thing but he keeps saying that he might fall in love with me?

I totally think you're right to be suspicious when he talks about falling in love because he isn't paying attention to any of the other parts of you that make you who you are, which is pretty much a requirement, in my opinion, when we're talking about love!

I also agree that a serious conversation would be good!

How do you think it would go for you to tell him that you don't want anything sexual, including comments around your body, to happen until you've had that conversation?

Then what do you think you'd like to be saying in the conversation?

It really sounds like there needs to be attention paid to consent and boundaries, including around how you want to be spoken to and how you ask each other to shift gears. If he can't agree to giving you that care and respect, I'd say that would be a dealbreaker. But what are you thinking?

[elliohnnie]

yes, he's also very cute in casual moments and it's great! i like that better but i think that me telling him i was often horny made him think that i would be down for sexual stuff most of the time when it's just a character trait of mine.. he made a sexual comments and really replied with some heavy sexual stuff but i didn't tell him about how uncomfortable i was. i tried to tell him that he talked a lot about my body and pass a message through that and he talked about something else but i don't think he truly understood. sometimes i tell him something casual and he doesn't get the undertone and i have to explain him also so i thought it could be linked to that.

when we video call it's more natural and flowing than texting because we listen to each other more physically and it's fun, and i can clearly see that sometimes he's really flustered and genuine through the way he looks and speaks so i tend to trust him as well. he seems like he really listens but again, he doesn't text me what i did or about my interests when i text him about his. (or at least i believe!) through text it can be really dry and idk what to do to make it better because everyone has their personality. i think he's overly confident through text since we don't look at each other, because really when we're "face to face" he's not like that at all.

a few days ago we started having a deeper convo but it was very early in the morning since we pulled an all nighte and had to go to bed, and i'd like to have that again with him but idk how. it was great how we just chatted about everything.

i think that when i'll tell him about it i'll be very anxious because that's just my nature, i think he won't be mad because he keeps telling me we're going at my pace since it's my first time having a relationship like this. i'd like to tell him that i feel a bit discarded? not that he puts everything aside but my body or something, because that isn't true, but when he makes comments like that i feel a bit more like a "thing" for him to get off with than a person he wants to pursue a relationship with. and on the other side when he's being casual i truly feel seen and whole, he tells me about what we'd do together and about his life and it feels good. but he's been busy this week because of an exam coming up, i'll tell him after the exam not to overwhelm him with this heavy convo.

i have very mixed feelings because it's like i can directly see the kind boy he is when we're calling and he's super sweet and all, and through text he's really really... horny. :') but also maybe i'm just being a bit delusional about him as well, i overthink this relationship a lot because we're not dating either.

[HannahP]

Hey there, Elliohnnie! What I'm hearing is that there are things you really like about this guy and about flirting and talking with him, but then there are other things you don't like, is that right?

I like the idea of having a serious conversation with him about how you've been feeling and what you are enjoying and not enjoying about your interactions. We have a great article about how to have conversations like this and set good boundaries for yourself that you might like to check out: Be Your Own Superhero: Learning How and When to Stand Up for Ourselves.

One thing that I'd especially like to highlight is that it's normal for you to be figuring out what you enjoy as you go. Just because you started out talking a certain kind of way doesn't mean you have to continue to talk that way forever! It's also normal to enjoy sexual things sometimes but not always. It's a great practice to get into the habit of paying attention to when you're enjoying yourself and when you're uncomfortable, just like you're writing about here!

[elliohnnie]

so i read the article, and i will seriously have to talk to him about that as well. but i have another question,

since this is my first relationship of this kind and walking through that, i don't know how to entertain small talk and how to manage the talking/flirting stage in general with the guy. it's difficult for me to figure out if i'm being too over him or too careless, and then he tells me sweet things and i don't respond because i'm embarrassed but i don't want him to think it's because i'm not interested but also i tell him some (what i consider) sweet things and he doesn't reply sometimes too... sometimes i feel like i'm the only one being interested and he texts me all of a sudden and i don't know what to think. i have no idea if it's contradictory or normal in a new relationship. and also i don't know any more if texting every day is normal or not and i'm just very lost in general.

[Heather]

Hi there, elliohnnie.

I'm afraid there really is no "normal" with the things you're asking about, just a whole lot of variation: variation in what different people want, prefer, or have the capacity for, variation across the length of a relationship, variation on what people actually do.

we flirt a bunch and also chat from time to time, everyday since we've met. i don't think he means it in a bad way but sometimes when we're flirting he gets really sexual and stuff when i wasn't especially being in that mood in my texts, the first time he was it made sense since we were heating each other up, but then we were just chatting on video call and he was making cute comments about me but also my body a lot. at first it wasn't unpleasant, i liked the attention but i'm starting to think maybe he's a little too obsessed with my body.

i'm demisexual, and i don't have much sexual attraction to people. but even masturbating was a hard time for me alone because these things kept going through my mind, idk what to tell him or how to engage the conversation. i don't feel like we've had a serious convo at all outside of flirting and that one time sex thing but he keeps saying that he might fall in love with me? it sounds weird because he talks about my breasts a lot and not really my interests, what i did during the day etc. i truly feel like the only one to care about this...

Between what you have said up there in an earlier post and what you have said in this one, it's clear to me that you are feeling the need for some boundaries that you haven't set yet. No one should ever get mad at someone for setting boundaries, and if they do, that's a very clear sign that person isn't going to be able to be in a healthy relationship with you. If someone got mad at me for setting a boundary, especially like these, and so early in a relationship, I'd personally stop being involved with them.

I think what you said in that bit I quoted has all the pieces of the things you need to tell him or talk about: that you feel like the level of focus on sex and your body feels imbalanced, to the point of making you feel uncomfortable, and you would like for your communications to be less sexual and/or less sexual more often. You can tell him that you're demisexual, and that's part of this: you need to be able to build more of a broader relationship first before things get so sexual. You can tell him that you would like to have some more serious conversations where you talk about things besides your body parts and sex. You could also ask him to ask for your consent before engaging in sexual conversations. It's easy for any of us to ask someone we're dating or in a sexual relationship with if they're in the mood for sexy talk or not before launching into it.

It also sounds like you might want to ask him to sloe down, given what you have said about how the sweet things he is saying have been making you feel. That's honestly often a good idea, because a whole lot of lovey-dovey stuff when we have only just met someone can also be love bombing, which we want to look out for, because that's another sign of unhealthy, not healthy, ways of interacting.