a story of a crush - opinions, please

First of all, hello to y'all, I just signed up for this forum today. :)

I'd like to have your opinions on the situation that I've managed to get myself in recently - I'll try to explain as plainly as I can and if there are some details you think are missing, I'll fill you in.
Additional information - I live in a Scandinavian country, but am actually from Eastern Europe and the guy I fell for is from another European country. We're both sort of a part of an international student community of an university town.

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I fell in love with a guy recently and have pretty much made every mistake in the book ever since then. We have been playing volleyball together once a week for 2 years by now, meaning that the relationship (until recently) could be described as casual acquaintance, I don't know much about his personal life, but I know that he is single. For your information I'm 26 (soon 27) and he is 32.

For background information, I also quite recently broke up with my long-term boyfriend.

Anyways, in a particularly lonely evening rather soon after the breakup, I wrote him an e-mail saying that I had been in love with him for a while, but didn't expect him to reciprocate the feeling and simply wanted him to clearly say no, so that I can get over the thing. He replied in a very friendly way (also by e-mail) that he has been through a similar experience himself, he is my friend and will remain so, but there will be no future for us in any other terms. I replied (yet again by e-mail) that I value his honesty and friendship and that I know very well that this kind of crushes pass.
At the end of this correspondence I had a definite impression that things were settled and that we'll go on playing volleyball as before next time.

This, however, did not happen. We usually played once a week and the next time after this letter-exchange I could not attend (he knew that) and the time after that when I went he didn't come. I thought it a bit strange, as he had clearly expressed that there were no problems with the whole thing and we could continue playing as usual.

However, after that I gradually realized that he was deliberately avoiding me, as he either didn't turn up in events what he knew I'd be attending or if we happened to end up at the same event, he ignored me completely, not even saying hello (not to mention 'how are you?' or anything of sorts). A month after my confession he removed me from his Facebook friend list (the strange thing about this was, that he was travelling while he did it - makes one wonder why it was so urgent). I wrote to him asking for explanation and saying that if I had somehow insulted him unknowingly I am more than willing to apologise; that friends are important to me and if he could meet me at an upcoming event to solve whatever problem there was. He never replied.

About three months after my confession I participated in a volunteering project, which he was coordinating. He still avoided me as much as possible if we were to have contact during the briefing etc. activities for the event. However, once while I was working at the volunteering project, he came to speak to me on his own accord - smalltalk, nothing personal, but as if nothing had happened and we could behave like normal again. A few days later, there was a party to celebrate the end of the volunteer project, where he blatantly ignored me again, not even greeting.

That was the last personal contact I had with him. The ignoring thing bothered me greatly, though, so a few weeks ago I contacted a friend of his (again by mail, but he was not in the same country) who I also knew a little. I described the situation to him and asked his advice. The friend told me that he was somewhat familiar with the story and agreed that my crush had been deliberately avoiding me. His advice was to send the description of the situation that I had sent to him to my crush as well, ask him what he thinks of the whole thing and steer clear from him otherwise. The friend also said that in case I was going to stay in the same country the following year (I am living in another country) it is his opinion that the relationship would be worth preserving.

I followed the friend's advice. The result was a rather angry mail from the crush, saying that he had never been interested in any relation with me whatsoever, he doesn't want to meet me and I should get over it and stop intruding his privacy by contacting his friends about imagined things. I replied by saying that he should have said it so from the start if he never meant what he said about remaining friends and that I'd not contact him again. Here the story ends.

I am well aware, that I made almost every conceivable mistake, first of all by even confessing the crush, then by doing it by e-mail and then mostly communicating by e-mail (I mean, the drama seems to be between penfriends, when I read this post now :)). However, as I said, we had been casual acquaintances and I didn't even know his home address. He had asked me over to his place a few times before, but somehow it had never come to me actually going. I'm really puzzled and confused about this whole story - and although I'm biased, I think that there was something between me and him (which I now managed to ruin completely). We seemed to have good chemistry between us as people, several common interests, similar educational background, similar sense of humour - in my opinion a potential for a good friendship.

Any opinions, impressions, ideas are welcome... thanks. :)

its not nice to hear.... but u scared him. its best to forget about this and never try to correct mistakes made. Its hurtful i kno but unfortunately the moment u mentioned ur crush to him he was overwhelmed with fear of a womans possible anger when rejected...if that makes any sense? he thinks u still want him by all the contact with him and his friends and is even more scared now. its a learning experience and u will kno next time not to tell ur future crushes unless they make it clear by making the first move...unfortunately its upsetting to kno that he has taken ur honesty as something negative...its defintely best to completely forget about the experience uve been thru and associate with people who appreciate u for u. and also i find when one pays less attention to people they seem to suddenly be interested....its something that works for me generally. not that he will be because it went too far for him...but future crushes might be if u act less interested in romance but friendship...u may be happily surprised.