Could anyone help me understand what happened with her?

Hello,
I joined Warwick in 2022 and I met the sweetest girl ever in my accommodation- friendly, intelligent, exceptionally kind. Up until 2024 she was the most attractive girl I have ever seen as well. She was in a relationship, so I wanted to be friends with her. I wanted to be close friends with her.
I met her boyfriend a few times and really liked him as well.
We were just friends for months, until all of a sudden she disappeared.
The exact sequence of the events that resulted in that began in May. She was stressed out over a presentation she had to do, and I offered to help her out. I had just done the same thing with another one of my friends and felt I could really help her out. However, she then invited me to her room, and I (I have extremely serious social anxiety), completely lost my nerve.
I was later so embarassed about what I did. I was avoiding looking at her and at the same time constantly grabbing the part of my fleece that was near my neck, and repeatedly adjusting it whilst also adjusting the zipper of my fleece, which was near my neck.
We were still talking, but I was embarassed about what I felt about her (especially when I saw her in gym clothes, which resulted in me actively avoiding eye contact). We were still talking at that point, but then, when my last exam ended, I went to the store and bought her a box of chocolates. I intended to thank her for treating me so nicely (as everyone else in the flat either hated me or thought I was a curiosity to be laughed at). I texted her, and I remember jokingly asking her not to eat all of it at once and share with her boyfriend.
Immediately after, she (who was responding very frequently), began to respond very infrequently. She wrote me in a week. The next message she wrote me in a month (to respond to a post where I was stirred up by finding a rare orchid in Kent and wanted to share the experience). The time after that, she did not reply for 2 months 11 days. Over the summer.
I was very upset by this, but tried to divert my focus to self-studying general relativity.
Over the autumn, I asked if we could meet (after getting very upset she still did not reply). She agreed, but kept delaying it and replying very rarely to me.
When we finally did meet, she was, as usual, very friendly and polite, but she was constantly checking her phone and, I felt, texting someone, which was really painful to see considering how infrequently she wrote me. I felt she wanted to be somewhere else. When she was leaving, she was laughing and asking me not to start about her helmet, which she put on and then rode off on her bike. We lived in virtually the same place, but she went in the opposite direction.
During this meeting, I asked for her help with a laboratory assignment. She agreed.
I then texted her about it and she did not respond until it was almost the end of term. She said 'nah' to my plea for help about the assignment. This broke my heart really badly and I wrote a message which I really regretted:
'I considered you a friend far closer than anyone at uni. How do you think I feel when you don't reply for me to months on end and say 'nah' to me asking for help?'
Her reply to that (which came in a month), was exceptionally cruel and painful to read. My 'solution' was to take what I was feeling (and this heartache ruined my entire winter break) and push it to the back of my mind. It took one flashback in July for it to break out again and I spent the next week in mental agony.

Can anyone tell me what happened? Was it really her boyfriend taking issue with the gift I gave her? I lost someone else last week when her boyfriend threw a huge tantrum that I was writing her on average once every 3-5 days and made her block me on Instagram.

(edited 3 months ago)

Reply 1

Zarek

Getting romantically hung up over girls that, for whatever reason, aren’t available for you always leads to trouble. You overstretched the friendship to the point where it’s untenable and breaks. The solution is to redirect the angst energy in to looking for someone who is up for romance. Unrequited love is pointless, you can only be happy with someone that wants and returns your affection.

(edited 3 months ago)

Reply 2

Dunnig Kruger

Even if she was available, you acted in such unattractive ways that she lost her interest in you.

Mental and emotional strength are attractive. Weakness is unattractive.

White-knighting is unattractive. Because that's you putting her on a pedestal too much.
Once you're living together with someone as man and wife, it's fine to act as a partnership, where each of you contributes different things to the household. Before then, white-knighting is too much of an "I'm not OK, you're OK"

You not taking her up on her invitation to her room was a big mistake, because you rejected her in a clumsy and awkward way. It indicated mental and emotional weakness on your part. A man with strength would have gone to her room and either acted like a gentleman (you're an attractive woman and I like you lot, but let's take things slow) or made multi-orgasmic love with her - depending.

Your biggest failure - from her point of view - was you not conquering your serious social anxiety.
No man has to be perfect. But you would have been considerably more attractive to her if you'd demonstrated that you were at least trying your best to face down your social fears. Because that's what a mentally strong guy would do. Like a real life character development from a Hollywood film.

The asking her for help with your lab assignment was a good move. Strong people delegate and recruit the help of people around them.

Sending her the butthurt "How do you think I feel" message was a mistake. Due to it displaying weakness. Also women are attracted to men that make them feel good. How you feel does not particular come into the equation - from their point of view - when it comes to whether they should spend a lot of time with you.

If you had behaved in sufficiently attractive ways, combined with you taking the lead in key moments, there's a fairly high chance the two of you would have had a sexual adventure together with her either cheating on her boyfriend or dumping him and going with you.

You're at Warwick (the university presumably?). It has a fantastic campus for talking to people you randomly come across. Reinvent yourself and start breaking the ice with a lot more fellow students than you have done up till now. Get rid of this self image that you have social anxiety. Have the self image that you used to have social anxiety. And now you're a guy that is naturally generous with conversational space (IE you're happy to listen whilst others talk), but you do take the lead in opening conversations and in carrying them over lulls and in spicing them up to make them more interesting or funny. Stop caring so much about what others might think. Take yourself and your life less seriously.