Oh yes I've distanced myself from this guy before and not contacted him for a week, in the hope he'd miss me. Which he did. Still not enough to commit to me fully and have me as his girlfriend, but he missed me, and stupidly I went back and he treated me even worse than before.
My biggest lesson is that with NC you really have to be DONE. Like totally done. Not in the hope of them coming back to you. I mean there is a slim chance they will see the error of their ways, but it's unlikely it'd last.
You shouldn't expect someone to change for you, and relationships aren't easy, but they shouldn't hurt because we feel disrespected enough to go NC.
My idiot wasn't all bad as a person, I actually don't hate him at all believe it or not. Even though he has done things to me that are hurtful, I'm over it or will get over it. I guess none of us hate them, there might be some hatred towards things they've done, but we still like them. That why it makes it hard. Because there are likeable qualities they posses..maybe a lot of likeable things about them.
However, treating women correctly is NOT one of them.
For me now I have blocked, I know for my own pride I would never go back. To block someone is to be done with them. I think for any of you who are resisting the urge to block it's because you don't want it to be done. I totally get that, has taken me a while to get to where I am now. I'm very sad about it, and that I've gone to this extreme. But it was so toxic that I actually feel relief too.