Dating after breakup - dealing with rejection

Hi all,

28 yo gay guy here. Sorry, It's going to be a bit long. This is my very first post on this sub which I've been following religiously since my BU almost 8 months ago.

I'd been with a guy for almost 4 years, 20 years older than me. I was madly in love with him and we had overall a healthy relationship, despite the fact that I seemed to always ask for more commitment from him, which he was, at the end of the day, reluctant to give to me. Anyway, we had a few crisis in which he irrationnally pulled away, but those crisis seemed to become less and less frequent, until this one day he had I guess what you could call a midlife crisis. He basically asked me to leave his apartment (I lived at his place) for a few days and gave me no news. 4 days later I demanded we see each other so we could talk. He told me : "I want to be alone and do nothing, and we must split".

I left right away and went total NC as a self-defense mechanism. A month later he sent me a text to tell me he had quit his job a few after our BU (confirming the midlife crisis theory). I got a breadcrumb in May with another text in which he asked "to see me and have some news from me" because "he felt the need for it". I thought it was incredibly selfish and I did not respond. No news since then.

Anyway, I am slowly healing, happy to see that time does heal wounds. As many of you know, it is not a linear process, there are easier days than others (typically weekends), other times are still difficult (I still dream a lot about him). I avoid his street altogether and thankfully haven't run into him yet (I live in Paris, quite busy city).

I feel that I do not want to get into a new relationship. I still feel the need to heal, and I find I am not able right now to give my trust to somebody else. I am still deeply hurt inside even though I'm very active and dynamic - I have lots of friends, I run, I swim, I go scuba diving, I go out a LOT, etc. However, I have begun in March to see guys for casual sex - I mostly meet them through Grindr or another dating website. Typically I go to the guy's place, we have a few drinks and talk (I've actually met some really interesting people), and then we have sex (usually "softcore" if you see what I mean). Sometimes I see them again, a few of them I felt were getting attached and I wasn't, and I stopped seeing them or told them honestly I wasn't looking for anything serious.

However, this weekend, I was kind of "caught out at my own game" (is this an expression ?). I went to a new guy's place and actually found that I liked him a little more than the others. We had a great time and I stayed for 5 (!) hours at his place, talking and having sex and kissing and learning to know each other. We were both honest about not looking for anything serious. When I left, I felt like the guy was really happy to have met me too and he suggested I come back to his apartment the next day (Sunday). So the next day he started texted me to tell me how happy he was to have seen me, and once again I felt like I was the one "in power". Or so I thought...

A few hours later, when I asked when he wanted me to come in the afternoon, he just replied "It'll be without me today". Quite blunt ! The rejection hit hard, way harder than I thought it would for such a short-term story. I didn't respond, but was angrier to see that he was connected on the dating website - basically he was already on the lookout for somebody else. I decided to go out with friends and take my mind off it. But 3 hours later he texted me again : "On second thought, if you want to come over and play...".

I thought it was utterly disrepectful and I felt frankly abused. I shouldn't have let this get to my head this way, but I realized that being blatantly considered as a second or third option hurt badly, very badly. Once again, I didn't respond, but felt really sad and angry at myself for having opened up so quickly to the wrong person. Also, it was basically the first time since I started dating that things didn't "go my way". And I felt a little bit like I was going through a small BU again.

So this leads me to the question : Is casual sex after a BU worth it ? I've had many ego boosts from seeing guys with an honest "no-strings-attached" attitude, but this one time I was blindsided by an unexpected rejection (which is bound to happen sooner or later when dating) and god, did it hurt badly. What are your thought on this ?

[TL;DR] NC for 8 months after BU from 4-year long relationship. Started dating again mainly for casual sex. Got too attached to one guy whom I thought liked me even more. Was rejected and felt badly hurt. Wondering about the pros & cons of dating / going for casual sex after BU.