You keep a safe emotional distance until you have had a proper time to see there true nature, and character.

Talaniman Rule - never give your heart to a stranger, until you know they deserve it, and know what to do with it.

Too much, too fast, crash and burn

Its up to you to weed out the good guys from the jerks.

It takes time to get to know a person-which is why it's best not to jump in too fast and commit to someone we've only known a short while-anyone can be on their ''best behaviour'' for a couple of months.

Date and have fun-get to k n o w people then decide what you want to do.

And ref previous posts of yours-he said x y z-but you never accept another person's judgemental opinion of you-as you know you are n o t that person-it's only their words and they can only hurt you if you let them.

Did you perhaps blind yourself with your own expectations? The fact is most people will seem nice and attractive to start with, otherwise they would have a pretty hard time ever getting a date. Once you get to know them some will turn out to be gems and some will turn out to be stinkers.

It is very easy to set off down a certain path with our expectations and fail to adjust them when reality tells us a different story.
On the one hand, we can be so determined that something will work out that we ignore the signs when it takes a wrong turn.
On the other hand, past let-downs can lead us to expect the worst and see it even when it's not there.

It's not just in relationships that we can fall into this trap. Ever saved for months for that dream holiday to find it's not all you expected, or planned the perfect christmas that didn't quite work out? So we put on our grim smile determined to make the best of it and tell ourselves it really is great because we were sure it was going to be, or spend the whole time moaning everything is terrible, when the reality is it's probably a mixed bag.

The trick is to keep revising our expectations according to reality. You have to go into a relationship with an open mind and keep it open.

You made a reasonable judgement to his character based on his behaviour at the beginning. His latter behaviour tells a different story. It's not that you were wrong to start with, it's that you didn't have all the information you needed at that point. People hide things about themselves and people change. It doesn't mean we are bad character judges unless we fail to amend our opinion when we get new evidence. And if we do make that mistake we can learn not to repeat it.

Even if the only sign he wasn't what you thought was him dumping you by text that would tell you something new about him. He is a coward and doesn't care about hurting someone in that way. Yes it's a horrible way to get dumped and a huge shock. So now you know he is a heartless coward aren't you glad to be rid of him? So your pride would prefer to have got in there first. A common reaction. Try thinking of it this way - the garbage just took itself out and saved you a job!