What To Do When His Texts Suddenly Feel "Off"

Let’s talk about the dreaded experience of waiting for a text back.

I don’t mean waiting for a response in the middle of a flowy conversation with somebody.

I'm talking about when things feel off, and the pattern of your usual texting has suddenly changed.

Or when things were weird the last time you saw them, and now they haven't texted you since then.

You can't help but keep checking your phone and wondering if they're going to text you, and things just generally feel really bad.

When you're in that situation, you feel incredibly anxious and might even start to feel down about dating in general.

Before we decide what to do in this situation, we need to decide what experience we do want in dating and see what's preventing that from happening.

You probably want to have a connection with someone who doesn't make you guess or wonder, but at the same time you still feel attracted to that person.

And one thing that stands in the way of us having that is the fact that we don't even think that exists.

We think it’s either/or. Either we have this person who's making us guess and wonder, which creates a lot of desire, passion, excitement, and anxiety, or we have the person who's super available, but we don't actually feel attracted to them.

Believing you can only have one of the two options gets in the way because when you have this kind of mindset, you don't let go of inconsistent connections to find the happy medium of a connection where you feel attracted to that person and they show up for you.

It's important to be tuned into the moment-to-moment experience of your life now that this person is in it.

You may be feeling really anxious and dreadful and sad on a moment-to-moment basis.

Maybe when you spend time with this person you feel something positive, but it's pretty fleeting before you start to feel bad about yourself again,

When you're connecting with this person, your self-esteem drops lower than when you're just on your own.

These are the kinds of things that we need to be tuned into on a very granular basis, because when you are paying attention you might start to notice you feel negative nine out of ten times in terms of trying to connect with this person.

The other thing that gets in the way of having the dating experience that you do want is thinking that you can change how invested someone is.

So much dating advice is about influencing the other person and trying to get a certain level of investment from them

Often, when we're waiting for somebody to show up for us, we are under the impression that there's something we should do right now to improve things and make the person show up in a different way.

But in reality, someone’s level of investment is based on two things: their character, and your compatibility.

You can’t control either of those things.

Lastly, it's so important to let go of the belief that something is better than nothing.

The solution to that, first of all, is to realize that being with yourself is always better than being with someone who makes you feel worse about yourself.

The way that you can create that confidence is by having a wellness foundation. This is a huge part of From Dating to Exclusive and it's something that we spend a lot of time on in the first few weeks of the program.

You invest in areas of your life that have nothing to do with dating, and when you create this foundation outside of dating, then you don't feel as attached to an experience that's making you feel worse.

The only logical move forward then becomes to only date people who add to your life and your foundation instead of chipping away at it.

Okay, so what can you actually do if his texts are feeling off?

If it feels like things were going really great and this is the first time something like this has come up, the thing to do is to communicate that to this person.

Communicating in this way really helps you see what kind of connection you have with them.

It might sound like, “Hey, I'm feeling kind of anxious about hanging out tomorrow or continuing our connection because communication this week has felt kind of cold to me. I've been having a lot of fun when we're together, and at the same time I feel hesitant to continue enjoying that and leaning into it if when we're apart things get unpredictably cold. I just wanted to be transparent about that. What are your thoughts?”

The reason for communicating that is you don't want to make yourself stay in a situation that's uncomfortable.

What we usually do instead is not speak up at all and then deal with the confusing behavior for three weeks, feeling incredibly anxious the entire time instead of just taking things into our own hands and getting clarity now.

Maybe what they respond will be really affirming.

Maybe their response is even more confusing, which then gives you clarity about the level of communication and connection that’s there.

Or maybe they don't even respond, and that's the ultimate clarity.

It's just about not making yourself suffer in the name of trying to play it cool or anything like that.

If you're with someone who is worthwhile to continue dating, their response will be really empathetic and will help you to figure out what the differences are between your communication styles.

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This content was originally published on the Women's Dating and Confidence Podcast. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.