Repeating a cycle and i want to break it

[NotAmonster]

Hello everyone, im honestly at a low point rn and hopefully can find usefull things here because ... i feel like shit and this cant go on.

Obligatory 25 y/o male

Ive recently gone through the third iterartion of a sexual behaviour cycle im sick of that involves the following:
1 finding a female friend sexually atractive.
2 making advances towards her and hitting it off .
3 plan and have a consensual sexual encounter with her and or propose a FWB arrangement(CANT STRESS THIS ENOUGH ***NO PENETRATIVE SEX***) .
4 have a brief period in which i feel like James Bond. Confident, charismatic, atractive and sexy.
5 have a panic attack and stess over the emotional implications i.e What if she catches feelings and i cant offer her a relationship? What if I catch feelings and she just wanted some quick fun? What if we have sex and i dont like it (a topic for another day)? What if we have sex and she gets pregnant? (again, for another day).

Oh god. Did I just use her for her body? Am I an abuser? A deviant?

6 call it off and ask for some time to think it over.

7 resume the spiral described in step 5.

8 come back but this time having gone through 14 million possible futures and made contingency plans for each one.

9 turn her off with how paranoid ive become and the relationship sours.

This particular time i went through this cycle twice with this girl, lets call blue. Which is particularly problematic because she is friends with my best friend, and im sure if she found out i played with her friend's feelings she'd be pissed and pull away from me... and i dont know what i would do without her.

I feel like a pice of shit. Like i played with Blue's feelings despite both of us agreeing that we wouldnt date each other and that this was just some fun experimenting between friends.

Reading this out loud it... doesnt feel like the end of the world and thay i just fucked up and its time to give Blue some space and take a long hard look atmy self to fix my shity behaviour but ... i feel like im not worthy of forgiveness. I dont know how to explain it but it feels like this time shit will just collapse and its all my fault.

Any words of wisdom will be apreciated and a sincere thak you to anyone who made it this far.

Men will do everything except going to therapy (mainly because im broke and therapy is expensive).

[Anya]

Hey NotAmonster,

Welcome to the boards, we are happy to have you here.

What I'm hearing is that you are pretty used to this repetitive, frustrating, and recently pretty harmful cycle involving people you sexually engage with, and you'd like to talk through it and think about next steps.

First of all, I just want to say you are not alone in these kinds of worries regarding complex relationships and trying to navigate your own feelings and the feelings of others. We are generally not taught how to engage with others sexually outside of the most normative dating-to-marry framework which I'm sure you've noticed sure doesn't work for everyone. So those of us looking for the relationships that might actually fulfill us the most can sometimes mean a lot of building from the ground up. This can be a challenge for sure, but is by no means impossible.

The no. 1 biggest thing we can do for ourselves and our relationship partners generally is to communicate. I strongly urge you to voice these feelings to the person you're engaging with as it allows you to be on the same page. Because think about it, you're going to "spiral," as you say regardless, and during this time it seems like the person you're engaging with gets left out of any of this thinking, letting you further drift apart as a result. So letting that other person in on how all of this makes you feel acknowledges that these feelings exist and that they are valid in their own right, but also allows space for the other person to have some say over how the experience goes. Otherwise it does end up being pretty unilateral if you feel like you're the only one in the relationship who can or should make decisions over how it goes (even if that feeling stems from not wanting to get hurt first, or trying to avoid some situation and protect yourself). Sometimes, and unfortunately so (because it can be hard as hell), the best thing you can do really is to just allow yourself to be vulnerable with your relationship partner and communicate your feelings honestly.

Below i've linked some resources that you might find helpful for how to cope and go about this. Does any of this feel doable to you?

Be A Blabbermouth! The Whys, Whats And Hows Of Talking About Sex With A Partner
Quickies: Heathy Relationships
Casual...Cool? Making Choices About Casual Sex

[NotAmonster]

Thank you for being so wellcoming. Ive read the material you provided and... tho its all well and good my question is ... now what?

I find myself catastophising to hell and back and can come up with a million new outcomes that range from "ill probably see her again at the christmas party and it will be a little akward" to "my best friend will find out, give me the yelling of a life time and end our relationship because i couldnt keep it in my pants".

What is done is done and comunication has stopped for the moment. We havent blocked each other but we didnt leave in the best of terms.

A friend told me some time ago that my biggest flaw is that i dont know what i want and that confuses/hurts people.

I wish there were a way to know what people are going to do and act on that but sadly i broke my crystal ball last week.

Any way, thanks for the info and ill try to calm down. Whatever comes from this i have no other option than to face the consecuences. I just wish i could just stop speculating about what they will be.

Obligatory apologies for bad grammar and stuff. English is a funny lenguage with all the double letters.

[Heather]

Hey there. It is a funny language, thanks for working with us in it! Your grammar is fine, truly.

Can I ask if you've considered talking with your best friend about what happened openly instead of waiting for her to find out?

In terms of where things are with Blue, you say communication has stopped: do you mean that you have tried to continue it and she isn't replying or...?

In other words, the biggest pieces of what Anya offered have to do with communication. But I don't see you thinking about how to communicate, instead it sounds like that's something you're avoiding?

I do also want to offer then if and when we don't know what we want, that's another thing that it's always okay to be open and honest about. I don't think not knowing what you want will necessarily always be hurtful, but I do think that if you're not honest with people about your not knowing what you want when you don't know or aren't sure, that's where the hurt can come in.