How long do you give chatting to someone without a date before you give it up as a bad job and move on?

[TwinkleTwinkleLittleStar2021]

As the title says really. I’m separated and have only had one brief fling since my husband so I am extremely out of touch at this dating thing now.

I’ve been chatting to someone for 7 months now. He’s in a high risk area for lockdown and I am not, he’s a couple of hours drive away from me which in itself isn’t a deal breaker but lockdown He originally found me through a Facebook group we are both in. We hit it off and what started off as just friends progressed after a couple of months to sexting and finding myself a bit more emotionally invested than perhaps I should be with someone who I still haven’t yet met face to face. We were just getting to the point where we were talking about meeting up when restrictions were brought back in for his area followed a few weeks later by full lockdown.

His work is quite stressful at the moment. I know he is working long hours, he’s short staffed anyway and he keeps having staff having to isolate etc. They have also had to completely close down and deep clean a couple of times due to positive cases. Over the last 3-4 weeks he has dropped off how much he messages me. I’m still getting my good morning messages and probably 4 or 5 messages throughout the day/evening but the frequency of communication has reduced considerably and the sexting has reduced to a bit of mild flirtation. I can understand that he’s busy, he’s tired etc but part of me still thinks that if he was still keen then he would probably make a bit more time to communicate, I don’t know if I’m being unreasonable thinking that but I’m so out of touch with what is normal in a potential relationship now. There’s also not been any mention of “when we can get together” recently.
It’s completely possible that I’m just allowing my epic amount of insecurities to rule my head and I’m being unreasonable when he’s obviously pushed at work. But that little nagging voice is there at the back of my head that says that he’s stringing me along & that I was foolish allowing myself to get involved. I really like him when we do communicate and he does seem like a genuine, nice guy. I’m scared of being friend zoned. I’d forgotten how hard dating is

I learned a lot from my OLD experiences. Firstly, constant messages give a false sense of intimacy. I messaged lots of men and when I met them all I wanted to do was run a mile. They were nothing like what they were via text. For this reason I would arrange to meet within a week. They were 'allowed' to cancel / rearrange once. If it didn't happen, for whatever reason, I moved on. This worked brilliantly to fish out all the attached and flakey men.

I also knew that distance would be a difficulty for me. I work full time and at the time had teenage children so distance would be an added difficulty. However, I do know people who have successfully managed a LDR, but they don't have any dependant children. In your case, you already seem tied up and busy for a call so a meeting would be even harder.

Although we're in lockdown atm and realistically you could be fined for travelling, you had months before Christmas you could have met and haven't and that would be a red flag especially if you asked to.

For me, this relationship is going nowhere. Too much like hard work. Move on, your time is precious and you're wasting it on this one.