The best part of my day used to be the 20 seconds in the morning where I would be smiling because someone cared enough to text me and let me know that they still cared… even when they were far away from me all week.
Now that time is more often anxiety related than joyful. More often lately I am let down instead of buoyed up.
I find that the days he cares enough to text me in the morning I feel happier and more satisfied by our relationship. The days he doesn’t care enough to do it I see myself wondering if the relationship is going south again…
This one thing was (is?) the best signal of the health of the relationship, of my place in his life. I have learned that when he can’t find the 30 seconds to type out and send “have a good day, love you. Xoxo” it doesn’t mean he’s really busy (because, its 30 fucking seconds … you can do that between parking the car and walking to the office and not even NOTICE it) it means that it wasn’t important to him.
When that was almost 90% of our communication in a week, the drop from every morning to every second morning, to once a week, to never (and never RETURNING a text) was significant.
I see it happening again… he’s too busy or too rushed (or just couldn’t be bothered, really) to send a text in the morning. He doesn’t respond to me when I text him. He wants to get off the phone within 15 minutes… soon he won’t phone at all and he’ll have an excuse to get off (videogame, movie, tv show) as soon as I call, if he answers at all.
I am steeling my heart against another hurt as the frequency of the texts drops dramatically. The phone calls have already gone from being 1 hour conversations about EVERYTHING, to 15 minutes whenever he remembers (or answers) when we discuss what is on tv and then he tells me has to go have a shower. I have started to feel uncomfortable calling and talking to him on the phone because he’s always busy watching football or some show or he just really wants to rush off…
He’s noticing, but in his world we communicate a “lot”. We talk but usually only at the tail end of the day when I’m exhausted and all the hurt and disappointment of the day has built up. I would prefer a few nights when our lives don’t revolve around what is on the TV… when it isn’t about the show we’re watching or what he could be watching or me feeling disconnected because he’s tuned me out for hours. I have been feeling, lately, that I am not as important as what is (or might be) on TV… and that makes me uncomfortable interrupting him.
As texts and phone calls decreased I have found that I have become less comfortable asking anything of him. When I felt secure in our relationship, when I felt that I could call or text and I wouldn’t be interrupting something he wanted to do, I was able to communicate my needs to him. Of course, the texts and the phone calls were an essential KEY to those needs. I needed to KNOW that he cares enough to text me in the morning. I needed to feel important enough that he’d call me and talk to me in the evenings. I needed to feel, frankly, wanted and needed by him.
I have learned, though, that you can’t force anyone to communicate.
As was the case last time, as time together wears on I place MORE importance on knowing he cares (after all, there isn’t anything compelling him to stay with me as he gets to know me better) and he places LESS importance on showing it (after all, he’s with me, isn’t he?). He gets less attentive because HE is secure, and the drop makes me INSECURE.
When I get insecure I don’t feel SAFE communicating my needs to him. All I know is that I no longer feel important to him. Instead of asking for more attention from him, I pull away – I can’t trust him to meet my needs so I meet my OWN needs without him, effectively cutting the reason I’m in a relationship. The more I meet my own needs without him, the less I need him. The less I need him, the more I resent having him in my life because he’s not there to meet any needs and he’s just cluttering up my life – I can’t do things, go places, eat things, etc because I have a boyfriend. The relationship dies.
He’s starting to backpeddle… instead of wanting to discuss how we could make a life together he wants to tell me how much WORK we have to do to get to the point where we can even discuss it. I will never demand, but if things continue to look like they will never develop into anything more than a limbo-life of bullshit I will just make my way alone.
After all… he’s not even meeting my basic belonging need right now since 140 characters and 30 seconds of his time are too much for him… why trust him with more of my heart to break?
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