4-year relationship: Walked away after being neglected. Now I’m blocked on Instagram for a week. Should I break No Contact?

[nikos777]

Hey everyone, looking for some objective advice on my situation. We never officially broke up, but I had to draw a line.

My girlfriend (35F) and I (29M) have been together for 4 years. We don't live together, but we live in the same small town. The first 3 years were perfect and we were very close, but during the last year, she started emotionally drifting away. Lately, she was intentionally avoiding sex/intimacy (we had a total dead bedroom for the last 2 months). I confronted her about it, but she just dismissed it, saying "we are fine, maybe it's just a temporary crisis, but everything is okay.

About 15 days ago, I planned a lunch day trip for us. That same evening, she avoided intimacy again just to go out drinking with her friends instead. She knew I was upset and called me that night, but I spoke to her very coldly. We didn't talk for 4–5 days.

Then, I saw her driving in our town, so I called her. She had an attitude, telling me she didn't call me first because she expected me to reach out since she was the last one to call. During that conversation, it was clear she didn't understand why I was upset; she literally claimed I was just mad "because she went out with her friends." When I directly asked her if we were still together, she replied, "Did we ever say we broke up? No, we are still together," but then dodged the conversation by saying she "needed to take a shower" cause she just came home from work and that we would talk in person later.
Another 4–5 days passed, and last Wednesday she called me in the afternoon. I didn't pick up. She immediately sent me an Instagram DM saying she wanted to talk and told me to text her if I wanted to. I didn't reply. She called again that night, and I didn’t pick up either. I genuinely believed that pulling away (No Contact) was the only way to make her realize that the relationship cannot continue like this.
The next morning, I woke up and found out she blocked me on Instagram. It has now been 7 days since the block, and there has been zero communication. The block is still there.Since we never had an official breakup talk, I'm stuck. Should I break No Contact to initiate a conversation, or should I keep waiting to see if she reaches out? I want to fix things because I still love her and find her attractive, but I dont like  the way things were lately.
What should my next move be?

[smackie9]

If you want to fix things then you should have picked up when she called you instead of stonewalling her. She wanted to have a conversation. 

[ShyViolet]

You two have horrible communication skills.  Instead of talking about the issues openly and honestly to try and work through it, you both played immature games, like not answering calls and blocking.  If you want to actually try and save this relationship you need to change that behavior and learn to communicate.

[ExpatInItaly]

4 hours ago, nikos777 said:

She called again that night, and I didn’t pick up either. I genuinely believed that pulling away (No Contact) was the only way to make her realize that the relationship cannot continue like this.

What exactly did you expect her to do, though? 

Just keep calling you until...when? 

[nikos777]

yeah I understand why it looks like stonewalling from the outside,  I did try to have an open and honest conversation with her about the lack of intimacy and her pulling away before all of this happened. Her response was to completely dismiss my feelings, saying "we are fine, everything is okay," without making any actual effort to change.


 

5 hours ago, smackie9 said:

If you want to fix things then you should have picked up when she called you instead of stonewalling her. She wanted to have a conversation. 

[nikos777]

2 hours ago, ShyViolet said:

You two have horrible communication skills.  Instead of talking about the issues openly and honestly to try and work through it, you both played immature games, like not answering calls and blocking.  If you want to actually try and save this relationship you need to change that behavior and learn to communicate.

You might be right about the breakdown in communication, but It is incredibly difficult for a man to continuously bring up the fact that his partner doesn't want to have sex with him. It made me feel extremely insecure and undesirable.Despite that, I did try to talk about it openly. I also tried changing my own behavior first—I became more giving, more attentive, and tried to make her feel loved and comfortable, but nothing changed on her end. She is not blind; she knows that going a  month + without any physical intimacy in a 4-year relationship is not normal.

[BlueberryPie]

My feeling is that you're both playing petty games by taking turns ignoring each other and that it could cost you the relationship, first of all. First, she didn't call you for several days because it was your turn to call her. Later, you didn't answer her calls, to teach her a lesson. Now, it's her turn to not answer your calls again. It looks like you both think you're making some big important point by refusing to speak to each other but if that's true then why aren't your problems with each other already resolved? To be honest, I found it exhausting to just read about. So my first suggestion, if you do get back on track, is to agree to stop that. It's silly and it's destructive. If either of you wants to talk to the other, you call them, period. And if the other one calls you, you talk to them, period.

Also, I could see this falling apart simply because it's not progressing. You're 35 and 29, old enough to have been out of school for many years and adults for many years. Yet, you have been "just dating" for FOUR years? I don't hear anything about plans to get engaged, move in together, or anything but to continue at the same basic level of just dating. So, do you plan to still just be dating when you're in your forties, sixties, eighties? I think the not moving forward over four years may be very telling, though. I think it frequently indicates something is lacking in the relationship, that makes one or both of the partners not want to get into it more deeply. If that's the case, what is it that's been holding you back from making this relationship more serious and permanent? 

As far as sexual interest dropping off, that's pretty typical when the connection itself is dropping off and the feelings for the other person are dropping off. Just focusing on getting more sex is kinda missing the larger issue there, in my opinion. 

If it's seriously stalled and not going to progress, maybe it should end. But it shouldn't end because one of you wants to win the prize for being best at not speaking to the other. In other words, yes, of course you should call her. Even if it's over, after four years, I'd say a discussion is in order. If you're both still willing to work on it, maybe try couples' counseling. Good luck.

Edited 16 hours ago by BlueberryPie

[nikos777]

1 hour ago, ExpatInItaly said:

What exactly did you expect her to do, though? 

Just keep calling you until...when? 

I don't like playing games either. But in my mind, even if I had picked up the phone, nothing would have fundamentally changed because our past conversations led nowhere.

Because I still love her and want to be with her, I honestly hoped that after 4 years of being a constant presence in her life, she would miss me more than just making two calls and sending one text in a single day before giving up and blocking me.

I truly believed that the only way to save this relationship was through the shock of loss. Lately, our relationship had become completely one-sided. She only wanted to hang out with me when her friends were busy, or expected me to bring her food and buy her gifts, all while completely withholding intimacy. She took me completely for granted, and I definitely blame myself for allowing that to happen. My silence wasn’t about making her call forever, it was about stopping the cycle of being treated as a convenience.

[ShyViolet]

1 hour ago, nikos777 said:

You might be right about the breakdown in communication, but It is incredibly difficult for a man to continuously bring up the fact that his partner doesn't want to have sex with him. It made me feel extremely insecure and undesirable.Despite that, I did try to talk about it openly. I also tried changing my own behavior first—I became more giving, more attentive, and tried to make her feel loved and comfortable, but nothing changed on her end. She is not blind; she knows that going a  month + without any physical intimacy in a 4-year relationship is not normal.

Ok well if you have tried these things and nothing changed, that is your sign that this relationship has run its course.  There's nothing left to do but accept reality and move on, stop trying to force something to work that isn't working.

[nikos777]

36 minutes ago, ShyViolet said:

Ok well if you have tried these things and nothing changed, that is your sign that this relationship has run its course.  There's nothing left to do but accept reality and move on, stop trying to force something to work that isn't working.

So you think that if i wanna save the relationship i should text or call her?

[smackie9]

So as soon as someone says it's probably over you are scrambling for someone to tell you to contact her.....I see where the issue lies......I see her point, she wanted space by pushing away because she didn't want to deal with your reaction. She had time to think, she was ready to talk then you go and shut her out. What do you want?

[ShyViolet]

1 hour ago, nikos777 said:

So you think that if i wanna save the relationship i should text or call her?

I'm not sure where you got that from.  I highly doubt that anything will be different.

[nikos777]

2 hours ago, smackie9 said:

So as soon as someone says it's probably over you are scrambling for someone to tell you to contact her.....I see where the issue lies......I see her point, she wanted space by pushing away because she didn't want to deal with your reaction. She had time to think, she was ready to talk then you go and shut her out. What do you want?

I really want things to work out between us. Until yesterday, I genuinely thought I was 100% in the right and that I shouldn't have to do anything. But after reading your replies, I've started to realize that I have made mistakes too, some of which I wasn't even aware of. I think I was so focused on the lack of sex that I failed to see the bigger picture.

[ExpatInItaly]

It's clear she had already lost interest in the relationship, sadly.  I don't think picking up her calls would have made much difference to the bottom line. She was already on her way out. 

When soneone distances themselves from you like she had done, it's the sign that their heart isn't in it anymore. I don't think there is any saving this. She likely called to end things more definitively or cleanly, not to reconcile.