When I asked her to be my girlfriend, she said yes—and said she'd assumed we already were together. I had been wondering whether it was time to make things official. Apparently, for her, that part was settled.
We had spent the night in a hotel, had sex that evening and again in the morning, and felt comfortable together. Nothing about being with her suggested that I was trying to drag a reluctant woman into a relationship. The uncertainty only really returned once we were apart and I was waiting for a reply.
I'm 23, she's 24, and we'd been seeing each other for about a month and a half after meeting on Hinge. We'd been on plenty of dates and kissed a lot. Becoming official didn't feel like a sudden leap; it gave a name to something that had already been taking shape.
There have been other signs that she's making room for me. After we became a couple, she shared her location with me on Snap Map without my asking, and I shared mine back. We're also planning a trip abroad together in a few months. That's a fairly substantial future plan to be making with someone whose everyday conversation currently arrives in two or three installments.
Most days, that's about how often we each reply. We ask how the day has been or arrange the next date, but we don't get much of a conversation going. We haven't had a single phone call in all the time we've been seeing each other. The dates keep happening; it's the space between them that feels strangely empty to me.
I like texting and calls. For me, they aren't just a way to confirm where to meet. They're part of feeling close to someone when we can't be together. When eight hours pass before a reply that takes less than a minute to read, I find myself feeling distant from a woman who seems perfectly comfortable being my girlfriend.
I've tried replying straightaway, hoping we might catch each other and actually talk. But an immediate answer from me hasn't meant an immediate answer from her. She can disappear from the conversation for hours again. My quick response doesn't turn the exchange into the kind of back-and-forth I'm hoping for.
The awkward fact is that this isn't a change in her behavior. She's texted this way since we met. I can't point to a lovely stretch of constant messages and say she's pulled away from it. We have become closer in person while the messaging has stayed much as it was. What suited the early dates—or at least what I accepted then—feels different now that we're a couple.
I don't want instant access to her, and I don't want her to feel that a relationship means accounting for every hour. But I also don't want to pretend that arranging our next meeting is all the contact I want. Asking for more conversation feels vulnerable when she may not even know there's a gap.
I haven't brought it up yet. We're already discussing a holiday months away, and I'm still trying to work out how to tell my girlfriend that I'd like to talk to her before our next date.
