Is NOBODY wrong in the post ? POST : This is a crazy long post but I feel like you need the whole picture. TLDR at the bottom.

Seven years ago, I met a guy in my college dorm and we quickly became best friends. Toward the end of the year, we started fooling around. I wanted a relationship but he didn’t. Fast forward about 6 months (and a summer apart), and we decide to get together. At the beginning, he didn’t treat me very well, not because he was a genuine asshole, but just generally immature and I think he still didn’t like me as much as I liked him. However, it is important to note (and you’ll see why in a minute) that our sex life was definitely healthy at this point. 

Then, his behavior toward me started changing and I could tell he started to like me a lot more. He started doing things like waiting for me to get in my car before going back in his house and texting me nice things during the day. However, the nicer he gets, the less frequent sex becomes. By year 2-3, it gets to the point where we are having sex about once a year, not even exaggerating. By year 5, this has taken a massive toll on my self-esteem. During a summer abroad, I cheated on him. I’m not trying to defend my actions here, there is no excuse for this. After I got back, I came clean and we tried to work it out. We sat down and wrote out all the things that needed work in our relationship. Things like he needed to pay me compliments, I needed to quit smoking, and most importantly, we needed to have sex much more often. We set to work putting our plan into action. 

A few days later, I realized I was super uncomfortable having sex with him. I had no physical attraction to him whatsoever. I think after a couple years of not feeling good enough, I stopped being attracted to him as a defense mechanism. We broke up. However, he was still my best friend, and at this point, we still had 8 months on a lease that neither of us wanted to pay to break. For a few months, things were awkward and sad, but after a little while, things got much better. 

Fast forward to today. He has been an absolute sweetheart to me these last few months, however, I am still not sexually attracted to him at all. We are best friends, go out to eat all the time, talk on the phone almost every day, etc. He has bought me flowers once before when I had a really bad day, but yesterday, he sent me a beautiful bouquet for Valentine’s Day. This is where I started evaluating behavior over the last few months. Occasionally, he has used sweet nicknames with me or called us going out to eat a “date” (but like sarcastically? Like he definitely knows it’s not a date), but I always would say “no…” and kind of laugh it off. But now that he sent me flowers…I don’t know, I just feel so guilty, like I’ve been leading him on all this time? He knows I’ve gone on a few dates with other people so it’s not like he thinks I’m just waiting to get back with him.

It’s also worth noting here that he has extreme social anxiety and never goes out or meets new people. His group of friends is the exact same people we met freshman year of college, which would be completely fine, except they are almost all gone. The last two left in town have plans to move in the next few months. I have no desire to cut contact with him not just for my own selfish reasons, but also because he doesn’t have a single other friend left in town. I’ve tried to suggest ways for him to meet new people but every time I bring it up, he gets irritated and defensive. If I cut contact with him, I'm afraid he would spiral into a deep depression.

Okay, holy shit, I’m so sorry for that massive wall of text, but if you’ve made it this far, thank you so much! So Reddit, am I an asshole?

TLDR: Ex and I dated for five and half years. Broke up due to no sexual connection/attraction but have stayed best friends for a year and half. He has occasionally said or done “romantic” things that I tried to shut down but I have not cut contact or anything. I want to stay friends both because I love him (as a friend) and because he doesn’t have any other friends. Does this make me an asshole?