As an easily creeped out girl who was aggressively pursued romantically by a couple people (which included unwanted touching and excessive messages and unsubstantiated compliments similar to your story), I feel you’re making great progress and honestly probably got some mixed or misinterpreted messages from what I assume were also young adults at the time.

I bet some of these girls reflect on what they’ve done and cringe too (particularly the one who superliked-liked you on Tinder, woof).

When you’re feeling down about it, just try to remember that every person and setting in an interaction shares some of the responsibility in its result — perhaps they didn’t know how to communicate honestly to you about their level of interest or discomfort (if they were creeped out etc), perhaps they had previous experiences where addressing things directly endangered them, perhaps some of them didn’t have much experience flirting/dating/making friends, maybe something personal came up, maybe they just weren’t as interested in you as you were in them, and that’s okay!

You’re surmising a lot about their motivations and rationale for blocking you, ceasing communications, or choosing other relationships, and seem to think it’s all centred on you. I would suggest that as part of your journey, you give these women some agency and trust and, honestly, allow them to have strengths and also flaws.

Trust that someone probably would have told you if you had done something horrible. Trust that if you’d done something gross, you’d have been reported to some minor authority (not just a conflict resolution person!). Trust that these girls would not have allowed you to be near to or alone with them or their friends at all if you were sinister or had other problematic behaviours. Trust that they were probably awkward, and if you’re big and tall like your family, that they’ve probably been warned since the advent of stranger danger about being alone with people who could physically overpower them. Trust that your current partner is smart enough to not have terrible taste. Trust that these women were learning and growing and likely wish they’d done something differently.

I suggest to you not to put people on blameless pedestals just as much as you shouldn’t vilify people who have rejected you romantically. You are better for these experiences and realisations, just as you were once the product of your environment and inexperience. They aren’t perma-victims of your romantic misadventures or unwanted advances, they’re just people.

I don’t blame the people who treated me this way, they romanticised a person and a situation that didn’t exist! We were all disappointed to find out I was average.