Hot And Cold

[OatsAndHall]

I recently reconnected with a woman that I have known for years via Facebook. I don't have a romantic attachment to her: it's strictly platonic.

I've really enjoyed our chats as we have the same sense of humor and can go back and forth hours.

 

However, there have been long lulls in our conversations. We chat back and forth for a few days and then she just disappears. I spark up a chat with her after a few weeks, we have fun talking and we get a lot of laughs out of each other. But, then it goes dead again. It's kind of disheartening for me as I am living in a new area, I don't have many friends and am in a LDR. I've been focused on making new friends but it's not going so well as I live in a small, close knit community.

 

But, I have noticed two patterns in behavior:

 

1. We'll have long (several days), light hearted conversations but then she brings up something pseudo-personal (like her dating experiences or something from her past) I respond with a neutral platitude and she disappears. We started chatting when I was single but I didn't flirt with her as, again, it's just a friendship. She's been more chatty with me since I started seeing someone.

 

2. She stops talking to me right after she gets back from a school break (she's a teacher). She's mentioned that she's had a rough school year and that she gets bummed out when she has to go back to work. This happened just recently. She was on a week long break from school, we talked throughout her vacation and then I stopped hearing from her as school came back into session.

 

So, I'm not quite sure what to do. There's a part of me that feels creepy and uncomfortable when I generally have to strike up the conversations. But, she doesn't seem to mind me making the effort to reconnect. I'm not upset that she doesn't make more of an effort to contact me as the friendship may not mean as much to her as it does to me.

 

I'm not quite sure how to proceed here. Do I keep making contacting her or do I back off? If I choose to contact her, do I tactfully broach the fact that she ghosts me? I wouldn't be blunt about it. I'd simply state that I've enjoyed reconnecting with her.

 

Thoughts?

Edited April 1, 2017 by OatsAndHall

[preraph]

I don't think her responsiveness is out of the norm. Now, I am only going by how my communications with my friends is.

 

One friend, single no kids like me, works full-time. Last month, we were writing back and forth all the time (we email) because we had a couple of things to talk about, but then we will go 2-3 weeks without either of us reaching out just to touch base. But if something we want to tell each other comes up, we email more, of course.

 

Friend No. 2 is married with kids and now also working full-time as a teacher. To make matters worse, she lets her kids be who decides everything, what they do, where they go. One is old enough to have a driver's license but refuses to get one yet so she still has to cart him around wherever he decides. I ONLY MAYBE see her now for one lunch when school break is on and birthday maybe and Christmas. And she is my best friend and I am hers. She is exhausted and hardly ever gets any downtime at all for herself.

 

Third example. I have a friend who I used to get together with a lot more, but we've never been best friends. He called me last week and I told him "I'll talk to you once my taxes are done in a couple of weeks and we'll go to lunch." I've been slammed with work. I've also been traveling out of state once a week for physical therapy and I've also been trying to find time to do my taxes. For two months, I did not have one single day off.

 

The point is people get busy and sometimes when they are home and if they do have an hour, they just want to lay down and nap or watch tv instead of interact.

 

I understand being in a new place and being lonely. I moved to a new city decades ago before internet and didn't even have a telephone. I wrote SO many letters.

 

But you can't expect anyone to just conform with your needs on this. Her being sometimes unavailable has nothing to do with you and is just about her personal schedule, her personal needs, and the priorities she's setting, and frankly, there's no reason to give most friends priority over your preferred way of being.

Edited April 1, 2017 by preraph

[springblossoms]

I have a friend that I just ended the friendship with because I got sick and tired of being randomly ghosted for months at a time for no reason.

I am a super chatty person that likes to keep in touch with all my friends regularly. To me, someone i need to always start conversations with and someone who disappears all the time, just bothers me too much.

 

Guess I was way more into the friendship then he was.

So I just hit the delete button today.

[OatsAndHall]

I don't think her responsiveness is out of the norm. Now, I am only going by how my communications with my friends is.

 

One friend, single no kids like me, works full-time. Last month, we were writing back and forth all the time (we email) because we had a couple of things to talk about, but then we will go 2-3 weeks without either of us reaching out just to touch base. But if something we want to tell each other comes up, we email more, of course.

 

Friend No. 2 is married with kids and now also working full-time as a teacher. To make matters worse, she lets her kids be who decides everything, what they do, where they go. One is old enough to have a driver's license but refuses to get one yet so she still has to cart him around wherever he decides. I ONLY MAYBE see her now for one lunch when school break is on and birthday maybe and Christmas. And she is my best friend and I am hers. She is exhausted and hardly ever gets any downtime at all for herself.

 

Third example. I have a friend who I used to get together with a lot more, but we've never been best friends. He called me last week and I told him "I'll talk to you once my taxes are done in a couple of weeks and we'll go to lunch." I've been slammed with work. I've also been traveling out of state once a week for physical therapy and I've also been trying to find time to do my taxes. For two months, I did not have one single day off.

 

The point is people get busy and sometimes when they are home and if they do have an hour, they just want to lay down and nap or watch tv instead of interact.

 

I understand being in a new place and being lonely. I moved to a new city decades ago before internet and didn't even have a telephone. I wrote SO many letters.

 

But you can't expect anyone to just conform with your needs on this. Her being sometimes unavailable has nothing to do with you and is just about her personal schedule, her personal needs, and the priorities she's setting, and frankly, there's no reason to give most friends priority over your preferred way of being.

 

I certainly understand that she is busy; her current job is demanding and time consuming. I don't expect her to make me a priority over anything in her life and I certainly wouldn't make any demands of her.

 

After posting this, I came to the realization that I am uncomfortable to keep pushing contact with her because she stops almost immediately cuts contact after she starts talking about something personal.

 

For example, her and I had been chatting back and and forth for about two weeks several months ago when she started talking about how she wasn't happy with her current station in life. She said that she had expected to be married with kids by this point and that she'd been dating with no luck. I told her that I could relate as life hadn't quite turned out the way I envisioned either. She read that comment, didn't respond and that was the end of our contact until I reached out a few weeks later. This happens quite a bit with our conversations.. We post on each other's FB pages, chat back and forth via messenger daily, the conversations jump into more personal topics and we stop talking.

 

I've been trying not to read into all of this and just enjoy keeping in contact with her. I just don't like feeling like I am pushing it or making her uncomfortable. I'd have fewer reservations if her and I were just bantering back and forth and we stopped talking. But it seems like she gets comfortable with talking to me, starts mentioning things that are a bit outside of this usual banter, and she gets spooky and stops talking.

 

Basically, I'm uncomfortable because it appears as though she's uncomfortable.

[preraph]

Sounds like she likes to lean on you for telling her woes to but isn't actually interested in you romantically, if I had to guess. So when you open a door, she backs away from it instead of going through. And honestly, if she's that busy, she doesn't have a whole lot of time to think things through. It's just do, do, do and eat and sleep and work. So she's probably not really living in her head or thinking about this nearly as much as you are.

[OatsAndHall]

Sounds like she likes to lean on you for telling her woes to but isn't actually interested in you romantically, if I had to guess. So when you open a door, she backs away from it instead of going through. And honestly, if she's that busy, she doesn't have a whole lot of time to think things through. It's just do, do, do and eat and sleep and work. So she's probably not really living in her head or thinking about this nearly as much as you are.

 

Yeah, we'd both be smart to avoid a romantic entanglement, even if I was single. I know I realize it and I think she's smart enough to know it as well. We don't live anywhere near each other and, although we do have a lot in common, she's a stout Catholic, I'm agnostic and she has mentioned that she has a hard time meeting men that aren't of the same faith. So, neither of us would pursue a romantic relationship because of that. And, to be blunt, I've known her for years and I've never viewed her as a potential partner. She's just fun and easy to talk to.

 

Yes, unfortunately, I have too much time on my hands and end up over-thinking this kind of stuff. I'm still finding my niche in the social fabric in the small area where I live and I get bored pretty easily. I'm busy as well, between finishing my masters, coaching, work, and trying to make my LDR work. But, it's feast or it's famine at this point: I'm either flying around with no down time or I have several days of sheer boredom.

 

But, I'm going to keep approaching it the way I have been. She responds to my messages when I do contact her, we have good chats and she'd either ghost me completely if I was making her uncomfortable or she'd tell me.

[preraph]

Well, given her faith and of course the marriage, I would just say be VERY careful never to enter intimate territory, or anything close to it, like personal marriage talk. Try to keep it light.

 

I thought you coaches had loads of moms after you!

 

I probably scanned over this, but does she live in your same area? If so, ask her outright to introduce you to some single ladies!

[OatsAndHall]

Well, given her faith and of course the marriage, I would just say be VERY careful never to enter intimate territory, or anything close to it, like personal marriage talk. Try to keep it light.

 

I thought you coaches had loads of moms after you!

 

I probably scanned over this, but does she live in your same area? If so, ask her outright to introduce you to some single ladies!

 

Yeah, I really do keep the conversations limited to fun, sarcastic banter. We chat over Facebook so we send funny memes and pictures back and forth and it's fun. She brings up subjects that are more deep and personal at times and I tip-toe around them quite a bit. Especially when she brings up dating and marriage. I was single when we reconnected and I didn't want to give her the impression that I was picking up on her by jumping too too far into that topic.

 

Lol.. Yes, we coaches and teachers do get some attention from moms. But, dating the mother of one of your players or students is uncharted territory for me and I'm going to keep it that way. There's way too much potential for drama there.

 

No, we don't live in the same area which kind of sucks because it'd be fun to hang out, here and there. But, that's for the best given polar views on religion. I respect her faith but dating someone with firm beliefs like hers pretty much immerses you in it and I'm not comfortable with that. Like I said before, I've never really viewed her as a potential partner. We were buddies back in elementary and junior high school but we grew apart after that because she was heavily involved with various church activities while I was involved with looking for gold at the bottom of beer bottles.

[OatsAndHall]

I decided to stop reading into things and started contacting this woman on a more regular basis. I enjoy chatting with her and we have delightful conversations. Unfortunately, it appears as if "feelings" have crept into our friendship from both sides.

 

We have been chatting virtually every night for the last few weeks and things started to become a little more intimate than they had before. We started reminiscing about our childhood together and she asked me how we didn't end up dating back in high school.. I initially wanted to play it off with a smart a-- remark but I decided to be honest and told her that I really didn't know either as we spent a lot of time together back then. Then the conversation progressed into us talking about how neither of us expected our romantic lives to be at this pathetic... I could get deeper into the conversation as you can get the gist of it.

 

So.. I have no idea where to go with all of this now. I realized that I do truly have feelings for her that go far beyond a platonic relationship. We've grown much closer since we started talking again and I am absolutely at an impasse right now. I am so hesitant to broach the subject with her because I don't want to lose our friendship but it's been a long time since I have connected with a woman like this. And, even if I did, we live eight hours apart and are both locked into teaching contracts for another year.. And, I've been out on a few dates with a woman here and I don't want to be an a-- in that respect either.