I’ve been dating a man for 4 months. We are dating exclusively and it seemed to be going well.
He has flown back to his home country for 5 weeks. It’s a stressful trip as he is sorting out some probate related stuff and dealing with some tricky family dynamics, plus has a lot of people to see.
He’s been there two weeks. He’s text and called every day, some days quite a lot which is lovely. However, in the last week, his communication has really just been him complaining about how stressed he is. None of the conversations have really been him engaging with me or taking an interest in what I’ve been doing.
I do get it, I really do. But the last straw for me was when he called yesterday. He said he’d call me at 10pm his time. He called me at 4am!
When he did finally call, he sounded so miserable and like he desperately didn’t want to be on the phone. He was irritable and kind of snappy with me. There was no warmth in his voice at all. I just got really upset and couldn’t hide in my voice that I felt put out. It really felt like he’d called out of obligation and had no interest in talking to me.
I messaged after to say I totally knew it wasn’t personal, but to please let me know if he was finding calling me to be an obligation and that his disposition on the phone had made me wonder if he was actually interested in continuing a relationship with me.
I know it’s always a no-no (especially on MN) to be needy, especially in a newer relationship but I was really at the end of my tether after a week of hearing no niceties at all and just being a dumping ground for his stress, with 3 more weeks of it to go.
He replied and said he did still want to be with me and everything was fine, and I definitely wasn’t an obligation, BUT while he totally understood my side, unfortunately he was giving was all he had in him right now and he was unlikely to be able to be any more engaging or cheerful any time soon.
That was last night and today I haven’t heard from him today at all 😔. Usually I hear from him a ton during the day. So now we’ve gone from very frequent albeit gloomy communication, to no communication at all. Which makes me feel like I really messed up last night by telling him I felt upset. I really should’ve been more understanding and just kept my mouth shut. I let a moment of insecurity ruin things and now I don’t get to hear from him at all. The worst thing is, now I look back and realise he had been making a lot of effort, despite his stress, and I let one bad conversation get to me and drove him away.
I am 45 years old and have been happily single for years, so I’m completely embarrassed that I’m even having to worry about such things.