We Had Such A Great Connection & Then He Lost Interest—What Happened?

Being friends before dating sounds like a great idea—at least I thought it was when I started flirting with a guy who I’d been buddies with for a few weeks. When he was out of town for a while but continued the flirting via text, I thought we were onto something good. Spoiler alert: I was wrong.

1. We had textual chemistry. Seriously, we could text all day and never get tired of each other. Although we couldn’t meet up right away and go on a date because he was out of town for work, it was clear that that’s exactly what we’d do the second he got back home.
2. We got to know each other via text until we could meet up. It was awesome to be able to text each other so much, and it just built up the anticipation to see each other properly. Sometimes it felt like I was traveling with him because we spoke so much about each other’s lives and days. We started getting really close.
3. It felt so comfortable and natural. Of course, texting wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t exciting, and we had that going for us. But we also had a sense of comfort with each other, which came from our foundation of friendship and how much time we were taking to get to know each other even better. I really believed we were onto a good thing. Even our texting routine became predictable, which I liked. We’d text at least two or three times a day without fail, which gave me a sense of security.
4. I was in a constant state of anticipation for our first date. I was enjoying texting him, but a small part of me also kept reminding myself that we had to start dating in real life, otherwise, what would be the point of all that talking, right?
5. Then he got weird. It seemed to happen suddenly. One day, I noticed that his texts were starting to slow down a little. He wasn’t responding to them as quickly as he used to, which didn’t freak me out so much as how he could go for longer than ever before truly replying to me. He started to say he was busy and would get back to me or he’d send me one-word answers. What was going on? From chatting at least twice a day, now we were down to once. Sometimes he’d even skip days. Things were not looking good.
6. It was so confusing. I knew something was weird, but whenever he did text me we still really had a great connection and could chat for hours. Was I just getting paranoid over nothing? The guy still seemed really interested in dating me. Ugh, talk about confusing.
7. I had some theories for his change in texting habits. One was that we were still finding our texting mojo, which might not have been texting each other throughout the day—and that was OK. I could live with that as long as there was still regular contact, obviously.
8. Then again, maybe we were just running out of things to say. I started making a bit more effort to keep the conversation really interesting when I had the guy on the line. Sometimes that backfired, making it seem like I was trying way too hard… which I totally was.
9. Still, I pushed forward. Tired of feeling uncertain about his texting habits, when he told me he was getting back into town the following day, I asked him about when we could meet up. He didn’t answer. Great. He did eventually text me back, but he wanted to talk about other things and didn’t even mention our upcoming date. Clearly, we’d been having way too much texting and not enough RL connection. I’d been a bit of a fool to think that just because he’d been texting me so much that it meant we were definitely on our way to something special.
10. Then I backed up. I stopped trying so hard. I stopped hoping that he’d text me or mention our upcoming date. I saw that when I wasn’t texting him, he really didn’t have a need to text me much. I stopped trying and things really started to fizzle fast. From texting each other at least once a day on most days, now the guy could go three or four days without so much as a “what’s up?” message. From being super interested in what I had to say, now it seemed like he couldn’t care less.
11. Texting matters… but it really doesn’t. I always think that having textual chemistry with a guy is important to see if there’s a real connection there. But even with all that spark and all those flirtatious texts, it doesn’t really mean anything. Texting can fizzle out or it can grow, but either way, if it’s not backed up by real dates, it’s pretty damn meaningless—and not going to be something a guy does for long if he’s not seeing dating potential. In future, I definitely won’t stick around and text for longer than a few weeks unless the guy’s making definite plans to see me.