To be feeling a bit disappointed?

[KiddingEve]

Previous relationship I was with someone who expected to be in contact by text for a lot of the day so I’m not really sure what a ‘normal’ amount of contact in a relationship is. Does this sound ok or am I expecting too much/putting up with too little?

Boyfriend is away visiting his day for a week (in the UK so no problem with phone signal/WiFi etc), it was my birthday yesterday, he sent me a text in the morning saying happy birthday and we exchanged a couple more texts just about what we were doing that day. I didn’t hear anything else from him the rest of the day.

I get that he’s away with his family and I wouldn’t expect him to be texting me all day but I was a bit disappointed he didn’t check in again in the evening even to just say hope you had a nice day. It just feels like he’s done the bare minimum on my birthday (didn’t get a card/gift from him before he went away) and I would have liked a little more thought or should I not have expected that since he’s away and we haven’t spent the day together?

I think it's good that he remembered which day it was to be fair, 4 months in!
Would have been nice for him to get a bunch of flowers delivered or something, though.

@ShatnersWig it wasn’t several messages through the day, it was about 3/4 messages at the same time in the morning. I thought maybe he would have just text again in the evening just to say have you had a nice day or something, not expecting a big conversation.

How often does he usually text you each day?

I note you say I was with someone who expected to be in contact by text for a lot of the day

A lot of people wouldn't expect that or, to be honest, would absolutely loathe that and find it too smothering.

You ask what is "normal"? There is no normal. 25 years ago texting was barely a thing. 40 years ago you'd have been going down the public phone box with a load of 2ps and 5ps!

If you WANT a lot of contact during the day, then that's fine for you. But you need to find a guy who is equally happy to have lots of contact during the day.

That's a separate issue from whether he should have made a bit more effort.

@ShatnersWig that’s the thing, I hated having that much contact before and don’t want that again - I know I’m probably contradicting myself a bit there.

We usually text in the morning, sometimes at night but sometimes not so it is ‘normal’ for us to just have that amount of contact, but I just felt like on my birthday I would have liked to feel he thought about me a bit more, especially because I didn’t get to see him.