[UPDATE] My (25F) best friend (24M) proposed to me. I’m confused and mortified. Where can we go from here?

Original Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/s/btzLU6nQNi

Update 2:

So adding on, a lot of people said I should ask our mutual friends if he’s ever bought this up before. Ever suggested we were dating etc. All of the people I’ve asked (granted it was only 5) said that they’ve not got a clue and he’s never mentioned it before now.

I don’t know then if this is something that he’s newly started thinking, if it’s been something long term etc.

Either way, in addition I’ve also screenshotted all of his texts etc, just in case. Reading back on them not with a slightly less confused mindset, they read pretty manic.

Still haven’t heard back from his mum just yet.

—— Hey, I’m not dead! I’m back at my parent’s house at the moment and I’ll be staying here until school picks back up in a bit instead of travelling around. It’s nice to be home anyways.

Update TLDR: Jordan and I spoke. He didn’t explain where he got the idea we were in a relationship from, and he doubled down on the proposal idea saying I should’ve loved it. Apparently he’s dropping out of university.

Update:

Jordan did in fact not come back to the hotel. I stayed up until 1am before falling asleep and he didn’t return. When I woke up the next day, the hotel staff let me know he had checked himself out at about 6am.

I did end up responding to his big long text. I took everyone’s advice and told him that I was sorry it didn’t go as he had expected but that I wasn’t sure where he’d got the impression we were together. I said I’d be happy to sit and have a discussion about it all so we could make sure we’re on the same page.

He was not happy about this at all. And he again went off which a bunch of the same type of thing he’d said in his first message. It didn’t really seem to be going through his head at all. Even in these new texts he kept referring to this all as me ‘breaking up’ with him, despite me explicitly telling him we are not and never have.

Again, all his messages were very clear and coherent, even if what he was saying was not based in reality at all. He wasn’t sending paragraphs, just sentences in really quick succession which was blowing my phone up.

He told me he didn’t want to meet up with me to talk because I had ‘ripped out his heart and crushed it in public’.

I did ask him for specific instances he could recall between us that made him think we were dating, but he completely ignored the question and just kept going on and on about how hurt he was that I was ‘breaking up’ with him and how he felt his world was ending. He said he loved me more than anything and had felt so confident that I had too which is why he felt so certain about proposing to ‘move our relationship along’ (???)

Eventually, to be honest, I grew pretty tired of the conversation and stopped responding, because it was just going around and around in circles. Me asking where he got this idea, him ignoring this and telling me how hurt he is I’m breaking up with him over this, etc etc.

He went on and on saying he thought it would be a ring I like, because it was my favourite gem, ruby, instead of diamond. (It’s got me wondering how much he actually spent on this damn thing. I didn’t look very clearly at the ring so I couldn’t tell if it was something super expensive or not) and that he had been working up the courage to do so for a while and figured doing it when I was at home would make it more special.

For a while, he was just talking to himself in my texts, because I wasn’t responding anymore. When I checked back about 20 minutes later, I had something like 60 messages from him. Granted, they were all one sentences.

At the very end he apologised and told me that it didn’t matter anyway because I ‘wouldn’t see him around anymore’. Obviously I was concerned so I asked for clarification. He said that he was going to drop out of University and go back home because he ‘couldn’t deal with the shame’.

That’s where our conversation ended. I didn’t really know what to respond to that. As it stands now, I don’t really know where Jordan is. I didn’t ask him, which is my bad. I’m not sure if / when we will talk again.

I’m sorry this is quite a boring update. Unfortunately, I can’t excite everyone with a ‘and then he turned up at my door, and then he sent me flowers,’ or whatever.

It feels a lot is unanswered. I still don’t know where he got the idea we were saying from, he hasn’t explained that. So I’m sorry I can’t give everyone that answer.

I haven’t reached out to his family yet. I did consider it, but if he’s not having a mental health crisis, I don’t really want to involve them unnecessarily.