In early December 2025, I met a Russian girl named Lia (real name redacted) on Tantan. She was born in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and moved to Saint Petersburg after she turned 18 to study at university. She’s now doing her master’s at [INSTITUTE_REDACTED].
I’m Chinese and was doing my master’s at [INSTITUTE_REDACTED]. In mid-June 2026, I started my master’s thesis and internship at [COMPANY_REDACTED] in Spain.
Everything was really good in the first few months after we met. We talked about basically everything: our dreams, studies, places we wanted to go, everyday life, hobbies, traveling, values, family, children, money, etc. We did have disagreements sometimes, especially about money, but somehow we always managed to talk through them and reach some kind of agreement, at least that’s what I think.
By around mid-May, we started talking about actually meeting. I told her I was scared that after seeing me in person, she might not like me anymore. She understood that and said that if she met me and I didn’t like her anymore, she would also be really hurt. But she encouraged me to take the first step and said she would support me.
So, over the next few weeks, I started seriously planning the trip. I researched things to do in Saint Petersburg, discussed dates and sightseeing with her, etc.
Around that time, we also confessed that we liked each other, and we almost became an actual couple.
She said that when I came to Saint Petersburg, she would be my translator and tour guide. I asked her, “So are you my girlfriend?” and she said yes.
A moment later, I asked if that was a bit sudden, and she admitted it was. So I said that becoming a couple was a pretty important decision, and if it felt too sudden, we could just meet first and decide afterward.
She agreed.
At the end of May, I booked my flights to Tallinn and told her my whole itinerary. I was going to travel from Tallinn to Narva, cross the Estonian-Russian border, and enter Russia from there.
I also showed her the email I sent to my company about taking leave, so she knew I would be in Saint Petersburg from August 22 to 25. She said she knew all of this.
At the time, I thought everything was moving in the same direction.
Then, around June 20, things started getting weird.
The day before, we had our usual weekly video call, and we talked about the trip. She told me she was going to Vietnam from late June to early July. I mentioned that my trip was already completely booked, including the tickets and hotels, and she was really surprised.
Apparently, she thought I would wait longer before booking everything.
I was also surprised because I had clearly told her about my itinerary at the end of May, and as far as I knew, almost everything had already been booked.
Later, she criticized me and said she felt that maybe I hadn’t been serious before, because I had talked about things as “plans,” and plans can change, so she didn’t necessarily take them seriously.
She also said my communication style was wrong because I sent her a formatted itinerary, which apparently made her feel overwhelmed.
Honestly, that really hurt me because I was genuinely serious about seeing her. Instead of feeling that my effort meant something to her, I felt like she was criticizing me for it.
But after that, we both said that we were still happy about meeting.
That was also our last video call.
Until around July 10, she was still replying pretty enthusiastically and sending me photos from Vietnam. But after she came back to Saint Petersburg, her replies gradually became slower and drier.
On July 15, I asked her if something was wrong.
She said she needed some time before she could explain it. A few hours later, she told me she felt really tired. She said that she wasn’t actually in a relationship with me, but somehow she was already feeling the responsibilities of being in one.
She also felt that there were some things about her that I didn’t like. There were a lot of things she didn’t understand, and she didn’t want to keep waiting until she figured everything out.
I was honestly really confused because, from my perspective, things had been going in a good direction, and suddenly this happened.
We eventually had this whole discussion about “accepting” someone versus “liking” them.
I told her that there might be things about her that I don’t like—basically, the only thing I could think of was her smoking, and she had already quit, although she occasionally still smoked—but that didn’t mean I didn’t like her.
I told her that I accepted her as a whole, and that not liking every single thing about someone doesn’t mean you don’t like the person.
But she really didn’t like the word “accept.”
She said she didn’t want to be accepted, she wanted to be unconditionally liked, because “acceptance” made her feel like there was something wrong with her that needed to be accepted.
Eventually, I suggested that we slow everything down and not let the relationship move too quickly. I told her that if she was confused about something, she should just tell me directly and I would try to explain my thoughts.
Then, on July 24, we had another conversation.
I told her that I had dreamed the night before that she had left me. She understood how I felt, and then I asked why she seemed like she didn’t really want to talk to me anymore.
She kind of lost control and sent me like 12 messages in a row.
Basically, she said that we’d already been talking online for so long, she was tired, and she had been waiting for the actual meeting. She said that before meeting in person, all the things we talked about were hypothetical and therefore didn’t really mean much to her.
When I heard the word “hypothetical,” I was really hurt.
I just told her, “For your information, my trip is not hypothetical.”
Eventually, I suggested that we stop talking for a week and give each other some space. We both agreed, and coincidentally, her mom was visiting her that week anyway.
The biggest conflict happened around August 10.
On the night of August 9, we were talking about our friends. A few days earlier, I’d followed one of her close friends on Instagram, and that friend asked her who I was.
I made a stupid, casual joke, an exclamation, like, “You two are really close, even one mutual follower can trigger a conversation.”
She said they were indeed very close, and I thought nothing of it.
But the next day, she told me that my comment made her feel disrespected.
I said it was literally just a casual comment and I didn’t mean anything by it.
Then she said, “Let’s just stay friends. I don’t see our relationship going beyond friendship. We’re too different.”
I told her that we could be friends, but I suggested that maybe we should make that decision after meeting in person. I wasn’t trying to force a romantic relationship.
But she immediately took the sentence “we can be friends” and quoted it back to me, basically saying, okay, then we’ll meet in Saint Petersburg as friends. You don’t need anything from me and I don’t need anything from you.
I was shocked.
I said that it might be off topic, but if two people have fundamentally different values, then yes, that’s a huge problem, but I didn’t think we’d had that problem before.
She replied that I was indeed going off topic.
I got angry.
About half an hour later, I said some really stupid things, including that I didn’t like her and that maybe we shouldn’t even continue being friends.
Then, late that night, I deleted our entire Telegram chat, so the messages disappeared from both sides, and I unfollowed her on Instagram.
The next morning, she asked why I’d deleted the chat.
I said I couldn’t find any reason to keep it anymore, especially since apparently everything was “hypothetical.”
She apologized and said she didn’t mean to offend me, and that calling our previous conversations hypothetical wasn’t meant as an insult.
Then, on August 12, there was a total solar eclipse visible from Spain, so I posted two Instagram stories about it and sent her the links.
I asked if she could follow me again because I’d already followed her again.
She asked why, after deleting her, I still wanted her to follow me. She sent me a head-injury emoji.
At first, I told her that she’d made a firm decision and I assumed she was prepared for the consequences.
But immediately afterward, I said I wanted to start over, although that also depended on her.
She ultimately didn’t follow me back, so I blocked her.
Then, later that night, I felt that blocking her was stupid, so I unblocked her. Only afterward did I realize that she had also blocked me.
As of even today, September 28, 2026, I’m still blocked.
On August 13, I restored all of our Telegram messages because I felt there was no point in continuing to hurt each other.
The following week, I went back to Zurich to finish my exams, and on August 19, we booked tickets for the Hermitage.
Our communication at that point was extremely short and practical, with basically no emotion.
At one point, I told her that since we’d decided to meet anyway, we should try to make it a nice experience and forget about all the emotional ups and downs for now.
Honestly, part of the reason I said that was because I was worried she might do something extreme when we actually met. Interestingly, she actually had the same feeling.
On the evening of August 21, I started traveling toward Helsinki, and at 00:50 on August 22, my flight landed in Tallinn.
Around 11:30 that morning, I crossed the Narva border and entered Russia through Ivangorod.
I messaged her, and she had booked a restaurant for dinner at 19:30. I told her I hadn’t really slept the entire night.
That evening, we finally met in person.
We talked a lot about everything that had happened.
She said she felt guilty because she was the one who ended things, while I had already booked the entire trip.
I’m honestly not sure I believe that she felt guilty, because when she ended things, she had been quite cold and even said things like I was “going off topic.”
I told her that the hotel and cross-border bus could actually have been cancelled with a full refund 24–48 hours before departure.
She went quiet, and I don’t know what she thought about that.
We also talked about Instagram and the blocking situation. I told her it didn’t matter and that she could keep me blocked forever if she wanted.
At the end of the conversation, I basically told her that I thought a lot of this was actually coming from her own worries and fears.
She didn’t deny it and seemed to agree.
She also brought up the whole “acceptance” thing again.
She admitted that what I said about acceptance was reasonable and practical, but she still didn’t like it because it made her feel like she’d done something wrong.
I asked what her ideal partner was like, and she said she wanted someone who unconditionally liked her, rather than someone who “accepted” her.
I asked whether that was actually possible, and she gave me a pretty vague answer.
Anyway, that night we cleared up a lot of misunderstandings.
But for me, the important thing was that I realized I couldn’t be brave on her behalf.
Whatever fears she had, I couldn’t solve them for her.
I felt like I’d already been brave enough by crossing basically the entire continent of Europe to meet her, although she had said something really harsh to me.
Something interesting and confusing happened.
When I asked her if, as we had discussed, the plan to hug when we met was still valid, she literally laughed and flushed, saying she was shy.
Also, when I was trying to move forward a little bit toward the table, I think she hit me with her leg. I’m not sure if she didn’t want me to move closer to the table or if she was flirting, but I just looked down at the table.
Her right leg and foot were already across the middle of the table and toward my side.
I sat back a little bit and said sorry because I literally thought I might be hindering her.
I looked at her face after looking down at the table, and she was looking in another direction and pretending nothing had happened.
I still don’t know what that moment meant.
On August 23, we went to the Hermitage and several churches in central Saint Petersburg.
After the last church, we walked toward the metro station and took the green line toward the end of the line—the station Begovaya. She was going home, and I was going to Lakhta Center.
On the way to the station, I didn’t really want to talk because I knew we were walking toward saying goodbye.
She seemed to notice my mood, though, and occasionally tried to joke around and show me those water-level signs around Saint Petersburg.
We passed the statue of Peter the Great on horseback, and I suggested taking a selfie together.
She agreed.
Later, my umbrella broke. I promise it was really broken. She offered to share hers with me, so we walked together under the same umbrella for a while.
Eventually, we found a shop selling umbrellas. It is called Ulybka Radugi, and I casually said that a 995-ruble umbrella wasn’t exactly cheap.
She immediately gave her phone number to the cashier to check whether her membership could get us a discount.
That tiny detail still sticks with me because I literally just said it casually, but she still made the effort to help.
Then we got on the metro.
At the second-to-last station, I finally gathered the courage to ask, “May I hold your hand?”
She said yes, so we held hands for one stop.
When we left the carriage, we stopped holding hands. Actually, she pulled her hand back. I don’t know whether she simply didn’t want to hold hands anymore or whether she needed to hold her bag.
But honestly, when I asked her, my mindset wasn’t really “let’s get back together.”
It was more like, we used to like each other, and this might be the first and last time we’ll ever hold hands, so I just wanted to hold her hand once before saying goodbye.
It was kind of a goodbye to what we used to be.
After we left the station, I gave her a handwritten letter I’d written earlier that morning.
I didn’t keep a copy, so I can only remember the general content as follows.
I basically told her that when I first saw her, I felt she was like a cat—cute and quiet.
She had once said she wanted to live like a cat, but also that humans can never really understand cats, especially when they are suffering because we can’t always perceive what they’re feeling.
I said maybe we’re a bit like that: she can’t always immediately express her emotions, and I don’t always know when I’ve unintentionally hurt her.
I told her I’d thought about a lot of things and realized that maybe I don’t need to understand everything between us.
The simplest and strangest thing was that we had actually managed to spend those days together.
She could have completely refused to meet me, and I could have stayed in Tallinn and had a quiet holiday instead, but we both came.
I said maybe that was the most real thing between us.
I told her I respected her decision, but I still believed that our differences could have been solved if we worked together.
But since she’d chosen not to continue, I had to let go.
I also apologized for the things I’d done, especially toward the end, when my pride had made me say things that hurt her.
I told her I wasn’t bringing those things up to reopen anything, but just to leave them in the past.
I wrote that we’d exchanged at least 24,000 messages over nine months and had been active on more than 170 of those 250 days, and that strangers don’t do that.
Whatever we were, we weren’t nothing.
I said I restored the Telegram messages because I didn’t want us to keep hurting each other.
Then I thanked her for everything and wished her well with her new job, her studies, yoga, dancing, horseback riding, hiking, everything.
I basically told her that she had been a beautiful chapter of my life and wished her well.
The final "thank you for everything" was written in Russian, i.e., "Спасибо вам за всё."
When I gave her the letter, she said it was "cute."
I told her, "There are some things I wanted to say in here. Please read it later. I don't know when we'll see each other again."
And honestly, I completely broke down when I said that and started crying.
I told her I hoped everything would be okay for her, and that if we ever happened to meet again, don't forget to say hello.
She kept comforting me, telling me not to cry and that everything would be okay.
She said she didn’t want me to hate her and hoped I could forgive her, and that we weren’t enemies.
She also told me she knew her decision to end things was significant because she knew my company took my trip to Russia seriously due to the sanctions.
[COMPANY_REDACTED] doesn’t allow employees to travel to Russia on behalf of the company, although private travel is allowed but discouraged.
I’d actually checked this with people in the legal department at work and showed her the screenshots.
She said she was happy that I came and grateful that I made the trip.
We hugged twice.
I couldn’t really look into her eyes anymore.
I just said "thank you," then "bye," and turned around and walked toward Lakhta Center.
Then, at around 1 a.m. that night, she messaged me saying she’d read the letter and was very grateful for my kind words.
She said she appreciated that I shared my feelings and thoughts, and that she would keep the letter as a beautiful memory.
She also said my handwriting was beautiful and thanked me again.
On the next day, I went to the Catherine Palace, and she started working for her internship.
Something darkly humorous happened.
The umbrella we bought yesterday was lost after I put it under my seat on the bus back to the city center from the Catherine Palace.
She said maybe someone needs it more.
Well, she was so kind, the kindest person in the world.
During the following week, we only exchanged very short messages.
I told her when I got back to Spain.
On Saturday the 29th, I replied to one of her jokes.
When we were walking to the metro on the 23rd, she’d joked that she was "poison" because she studies chemistry, and that I’d come all the way to find this poison and should take some back to my colleagues.
So I joked that my colleagues really liked her poison and that I’d also been poisoned, and asked if she had an antidote.
She said no.
I told her she should think of something because I’d already become fascinated with her.
She replied 😅😅😅, and I joked that she was an evil chemist because she didn’t have an antidote.
Then I told her I’d watched "Her," the movie she’d recommended.
She took seven hours to reply with just "Nice 👍".
Everything was becoming really slow and dry.
On September 11th, all my exam grades were released.
I didn’t just pass the courses with the base score 4, but got a nice score way higher than that.
I was excited, and my last piece of worry finally disappeared.
I told her about this news, along with many other friends of mine, and of course my parents.
Still, many hours later, at about 18:00, she replied with a single "Congratulations!"
On the second day, around noon, I replied "Thank you!" and asked her "How are your work and new semester going?"
She replied at about 19:00 with a simple "I'm good 👍", then I just replied with a "👍".
At that moment, I think it is going to be our final conversation.
All the things are finished.
She had asked me about my exams on August 22nd, and now I told her the results.
I wanted to tell her, not because I wanted to show off or wanted to talk to her, but to give myself a release, as the famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker" (What does not kill me makes me stronger).
I survived the broken August.
I deleted all the chat from my side.
I don’t know how she is doing. Maybe she has already found someone else, someone better, someone who likes all about her.
As I have thought about everything, someday later, I found the invitation from the Moscow State University (MSU) Language Center.
That was the invitation to process the visa to study Russian language at MSU in 2020.
Unfortunately, COVID made it impossible.
Oh, I wanted to go to Russia since that early?
Well, the dream that didn’t come true, Lia (real name redacted) helped me in 2026.
Maybe this trip was not as happy as a usual tourist trip, but the experience will last forever as a great asset.
At least there were two people who used to like each other so much, and the guy crossed the whole of Europe to keep a promise that was already difficult to keep.
I’m not sure if she has ever been serious. At least I was, and I had nothing to regret.
Today I write this up, not to memorize anything, just as a diary.
In the future, when I am older, looking at this diary, maybe I will laugh that I was too young.
Or maybe I will still remember those moments that happened in Saint Petersburg in August 2026.