I’ve been dating this guy for about 2 months now, and at the current moment we are long distance. We normally texted every day, except he would disappear on weekends. Suddenly, this week, his responses starting taking much longer. On Thursday, he disappeared and I didn’t hear from him again until Friday morning. I responded, and then didn’t hear from him again until Wednesday night.
He gave me a “it was a busy weekend and busy couple of days at work.” Honestly, I’m not buying it. I think 4-5 days is a really long time to not answer a text or at least not say “hey I’m busy and I’ll get back to you later.” It just feels like I’m not as much of a priority and he’s pulling a slow fade instead of telling me he’s seeing someone else or not interested.
I don’t really know how to address this. I feel like the person who slow fades is doing it so they can avoid a confrontation. And in the past, when I’ve had these situations, confronting the person has only led them to lie and insist they are interested, string me along, and then ghost me soon after. So I feel that confronting him is really unlikely to get me to an honest result. At the same time, my only other option would be to just cut it off and stop responding. However, ghosting also feels so wrong…even though he’s currently being flaky himself.
Lastly, I am pretty turned off at this point. I was initially really interested but his repeated disappearing on the weekends and sudden 4-5 day delay is making me see he isn’t really consistent, and that is annoying to me and not something I want in a partner. What is the best way to handle this situation?
tl;dr How do I handle a slow fader?
5 comments
Ignore him if he texts you back and move on.
I don’t understand the entitlement of texters. Someone whose life you don’t understand takes a day, or a few hours, to respond and you feel they’ve slighted you. I’m sure each one of you with this common fade issue made damn sure your LDR knew they were to respond to your finger snap instanter!
And the person you feel you own pushes off another response to see just how entitled and demanding you are. So you throw some negging and guilt at them, and shockingly, the next text gets a lot of air before a response. It’s not worth trying to convince you that manners fucking count, so they fade.
It’s just inconceivable that continued rude demands for instant response and text tantrums drive off decent people, isn’t it?
You’ve said it yourself, you’ve lost interest. Just be up front about that and say you’re moving on because of it.
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>On Thursday, he disappeared and I didn’t hear from him again until Friday morning.
So this had my red flags waving … not about him, but about you. Like literally he didn’t text you for 12 hours? 16 hours of which he was asleep for half of them? I would literally never think about using the word “disappeared” for somebody not responding to me for less than a day.
That being said, him going from Friday-Wednesday seems like a more legitimate concern (although there’s an established and presumedly acceptable pattern of you not hearing from him over weekends, so it’s really just Monday and Tuesday where he didn’t respond, right?) But I mentioned that first, less-than-24-hour delay because, honestly, for A LOT of people, if they felt AT ALL like letting a text conversation drop for an afternoon or an evening and then picking it up the next day was a problem for their partner, they’d start looking for the exits.
So normally if somebody said, “We’re texting all the time and then we went four days,” I’d be like, “maybe nothing, maybe something.” But in the context of someone who has alarm bells ringing at a less-than-one-day delay … I suspect that there’s a certain amount of pressure he’s feeling to keep things up, text-wise. He may be starting to feel like his phone is a leash – and even if he’s into you, that’s not a fun feeling.
The whole thing about texting is that … it doesn’t demand a response right away, most of the time. If you want to have actual conversations, pick up the phone and call someone. And you may not have much of a sense of how confining it can feel if not responding ASAP is a big deal for your partner. It’s like, “Man, if I respond, and then she responds, then I have to respond AGAIN … there’s no way out.”
Is this a “slow fade” or rather him just … having a bit more of a life? Most people don’t want to spend a lot of time texting when they’re out with their friends. “Be here now,” and all that.
Maybe he’s not for you. I don’t know. But I will say that it sounds like you could be running a risk of driving away guys who would actually be very into you. When you talk about confronting previous guys in similar situations, I can’t help but wonder if that’s what is going on: they’re not lying, but rather the confrontation itself over something they see as totally reasonable causes them to have second thoughts and start pulling away. Nobody wants to date someone long distance who has zero chill.
As a person who chronically procrastinates responding to texts… I would be as frustrated with you needing me to text back ASAP as you are that he is not texting you back ASAP. I would be equally turned off if I recieved the “you’re taking too long to respond” text as you are turned off by not getting a response fast enough.
Tell him how you feel. He will either address it with you or he won’t respond for 5 more days – either way, you’ll know then whether to end it or not.