Hey Helcat,

Thank you for the responses! I definitely agree with all of that. For this particular recent relationship though, are you suggesting that I should not have asked for clarity and just taken his hot and cold behavior as a sign he wasn’t interested and moved on (without a conversation)? Or maybe you’re suggesting I should have given him more open-ended time and space to see if he started showing interest in seeing me in person again?
<p style=”text-align: left;”>I am in therapy and boundaries is an area I’m working on a ton. One of those boundaries is not participating in relationships that don’t serve me. Determining what is “enough” information to know it’s the right time to cut it off is difficult for me, so I wanted to have an open conversation with him about what isn’t working for me as well as hear his perspective. In this, I get more data on whether this is a person I want to continue to get to know or not. Do you have suggestions for other ways to know? Maybe my behavior comes from a place of impatience, but in past relationships I have stuck around for many years feeling in limbo with inconsistent connection.</p>
Or perhaps…it doesn’t really matter what I decide on any given relationship – if I can’t heal myself a relationship won’t feel good regardless. Curious what you think!

Anyways I’ve made up my mind for now on this particular relationship that I don’t want to invest more. He’s messaged me a few times since then looking for my attention on unrelated things, which to me speaks volumes – I’d like to think that in a healthy partnership, when I initiate a difficult conversation I won’t be blown off.