The girl I've been talking to has suddenly gone silent for almost a week.

[RayQ2025]

Hi everyone! This is my first post here :)

Over a year ago on one pen pal website, I met a girl based in Canada. I can safely say we clicked in our first week of talking to each other after learning that we were both introverts. As the weeks went by, we exchanged increasingly longer and more personal letters before deciding to move to an instant messaging platform where we traded more personal messages, travel pictures, memes, etc., every two days or so. While on this platform, we also met online four times. In the last one, she showed me the gift she had bought for me when she was in another country several weeks prior. Long story short, we became extremely close in a year of being online friends, but I haven't had the courage yet to ask he if she wants to level up our relationship.

Now, here's the (what I think is the) problem. Last Friday, she sent me a message with quirky random question. I replied to it the following day and asked her my own random question. She viewed my reply the next day, but she hasn't replied to it since then. I sent her four more short messages last Sunday, last Tuesday, and earlier today. However, not only has she not responded to any of those new messages, she also hasn't opened or viewed them despite her being online often. In fact, I sent her the last message when I saw that she was online.

I know she can be busy because she's working while finishing her studies, but before, she at least viewed my messages within several hours and replied to them within two days. So, what do you think could be going on? What message is she trying to tell me? Should I send another message or call her when she's online?

TL;DR: I met a girl I've been talking to for over a year, but she has suddenly stopped responding to or even viewing my messages for almost week despite her often being online. What should I do?

Thank you so much in advance for your advice!

When you say girl, I presume you mean woman? What was the random quirky question and was your answer to it controversial or could be taken the wrong way? I’d put money on your answer or subsequent questions being the thing that’s switched her interest off, but without details nobody can really say.

She's not that into you.

It's a silly random question. The question was what my favorite breed of dog was.

Yeah but that’s not very helpful. When you’ve been chatting for over a year every two days and buying someone something when you travel it’s a bit flippant to just say ‘yeah. She’s just not that into you’.

Could be anything OP. She could be struggling mentally or emotionally. She might be feeling overwhelmed about something completely unrelated to you. She may have got cold feet although one would typically expect signs of this. It’s odd to go from normal for over a year to suddenly ghosting you.

if she has ghosted you then she’s a shit and you’ve dodged a bullet

Yes - you don’t just switch off after a year of talking with no obvious cause of offence.

Unless she was never interested - but that’s some feat to pull off for a whole year.

What do you mean level up your relationship?

What was your answer to quirky question too?

unfortunate the may not be a reason.., this is the nature of online relationships…strangers

How old are you both
and you say she lives in Canada, where do you live ?

Meanwhile, wait
do not bombard her with more messages
there are lots of reasons why she has not replied.
if she is going to reply, she will.

I assume from the way you say “I met a girl” that you were flirting and this isn’t just a completely platonic thing?

If flirting then most likely, to me, is that she’s gotten more serious with someone else and thinks continuing chatting with you is disloyal/verging on cheating.

If totally platonic then she’s probably just decided that it’s taking up too much time and your friendship is too shallow/annoying to her in some way/etc. and she can’t be bothered. Though I think the abruptness is strange if that’s the case.

The fact is, though, no one on here can tell you why she’s ignoring you. Only she can do that and she has chosen not to. You need to make your peace with it. Maybe put a lot more effort into some real life friendships to distract you from a while.