I didn’t know my co worker had feelings for me

i quit my restaurant/club job i had a lot of things on my plates, going through grief a lot of familial changes, 80% of the reason i quit was because i couldn’t stand my limerent obsession with my co worker. I had worked there for almost 2 years and liked him basically the whole time. What was even worse is that since the start of the year he started to reciprocate my feelings and it scared me. His attention instantly brought up feelings that i wasn’t good enough for him and drove me into self destruct mode. We had started texting non stop throughout the week before work on the weekends .even when i was dry on purpose he still found thjngs to talk about. He’s a generally nice guy but a HUGE flirt and known manwhore. I knew he had somewhat genuine feelings for me but it hurt when he paid attention to other women that i saw as more attractive than me. Part of our job was tips etc so i understood it but that’s not to say it didn’t drive me crazy. He was constantly complimenting me, touching me, finding ways to get me alone or talk to me one on one. at times he wouldn’t leave me alone which did used to piss me off (ironic considering he was on my mind 24/7 for 2 years straight) He said and did all the right things that you expect from a. guy that’s into you. He was soft and attentive, we’d known each other for a while so it was comfortable and i’m 100% sure he had feelings for me. But my paranoia (or instinct maybe?) told me that i wasn’t special, that he does this to a lot of girls. And that i was embarrassing myself by thinking he was interested.

My last shift i was being a complete bitch, blanking him, moving away from his attempts to touch me/hug me, telling him i would prefer if he just shut up and leave me alone. He was confused as to him i was just acting like this out of the blue after being so friendly to him the past 3 weeks. He kept trying to cheer me up and asking me what was wrong, why i looked so upset. But he didn’t know it was becasue i was just spiralling over the fact i knew the way views women and the way he acts towards them. he had tried to reassure me in the past thats “his personality” and he doesn’t want to f everyone he flirts with. The last straw was near the end of the shift my other coworker told me he had started flirting with the new hostess using lines he had said to me before and i just walked out, told him a brief it was nice working with you and never saw anyone from work again.

Fast forward to now a month later, it’s my coworkers bday at the restaurant and club we all used to work at. They all knew that we had some kind of mutual feelings/ attraction to each other just not how intense it was on my side. She told me that his face dropped after i left he was visibly upset the rest of the shift and that he was pissed off that after 2 years of knowing each other i just left like that, leaving all the groupchats and not texting anyone. She told him she knew there was something between us and asked him why he was really so upset and he told her “I liked so much our chemistry was strong , she was beautiful and funny” and he didn’t understand why i left so abruptly. It’s taken me a month to get over the intense feelings i had for him and the fact i am clearly incapable of letting relationships develop normally without sabotaging them. I even started to talking to a guy from high school that i used to really like to try get over my feelings for him. It’s taken me so long to detach from the feelings i had, i had thought he wouldn’t care if i left and he would just find someone else to flirt with. i didn’t expect his feelings to be hurt like the way my coworker described it, it’s like a bombs been dropped on all my progress. He didn’t text me once since i left but to be fair neither have I. Part of me also realises that i don’t think i liked him, just the way he made me feel.

To make matters worse my old manager out of the blue offered me a one off shift this week, i accepted it straight away thinking he would be there, just for my co worker to tell me that he’s not here this week. WHAT DO I DO??? Do i just do the one off shift and forget the whole place like i’ve been doing this whole time? Or do I keep going back to the job that use to stress me out, whilst i watch him flirt with other women (customers and staff)? Is it worth a chance at seeing him and speaking to him again? Do you think 5 weeks is too long and he doesn’t think about me anymore and i should just leave the short time we talked in the past? I don’t want to get stuck in that job again as i’ve found so much peace without it. Also now i’ve left i would feel embarrassed going back. This has brought back me thinking about him 24/7 again and i feel stuck. I’ve got a feeling there’s another girl in the picture already and he doesn’t really care about me that much. I don’t know.