Hey, thanks for your thoughts, John! This continues to be one of the great mysteries of my life; just 2 months ago, I received words of effusive praise from a "secret admirer" who wants to DM me with random compliments every so often but says he is "terrified" to tell me who he is. So even at age 39, the pattern continues, lol.

In my case, a couple of of these men who disappeared had bailed on the prospect of even just purely casual hookups. Situations where they were promptly moving out of state and it was clear we couldn't have more than casual. So I do think it isn't that they were imagining I wanted something deeper than they did. It was just a really, really weird situation.

Your hypothesis about men being afraid of the competition is interesting. One guy eventually hinted at feeling "unworthy" of me. I guess it's possible that some of them struggled with low self-esteem and were afraid they'd somehow lose me if they ever did make a move — no matter how much I reassured them of my sincere interest.

It's been an important lesson for me, as a formerly-codependent person: that even if we do everything right, we can't help the fact that some people just have issues, and if they're unwilling to work on their issues, that is just that. They will take their healing at their own pace, and it's not our responsibility. Kind of frustrating, but also kind of lets an erstwhile "healer type" off the hook. ;)