The conversation was going well until I suggested we speak to each other. On the phone. Before meeting for the first time. Apparently, this was where our promising little exchange took a troubling turn.
Until then, he had been lovely. He sent a warm good-morning message. When an apology came up, he made it clear that there was no need: we both had lives. He was happy to move our conversation off the dating app. So far, a man who understood that other people had schedules and owned phones. Encouraging.
I thanked him and asked whether he was open to a phone call before we met. For me, this was part of feeling comfortable and safe about meeting a man for the first time. We had been talking through an app; a brief conversation before an in-person meeting did not strike me as an extraordinary escalation.
His answer was an immediate no. Not an explanation that calls made him uncomfortable, or a suggestion that we find another way to get acquainted. He said that my asking was a bit of a red flag for him.
That was the part I could not follow. He had been happy to connect away from the app, but a request to talk before meeting had somehow become cause for concern. I had expected an answer about a phone call. Instead, I seemed to have received an assessment.
I asked why. I was curious, and by then I really did want to understand what he thought I had asked for. There was still room for an explanation. Perhaps we meant different things by a call; perhaps he simply hated them. I could not know from a refusal alone.
He then softened the wording. Maybe red flag was not the right expression, he said. It was more a sign that we were not on the same wavelength. That changed the label without making the objection much clearer to me. We had gone from pleasant messages to a compatibility verdict, with the phone still entirely unused.
He wished me luck and told me I seemed lovely. The friendliness was almost the strangest part. There was no angry exchange to account for, no long argument to retrace. He could apparently think I was lovely and consider my request sufficient reason to end the conversation. I was left rereading an exchange that had sounded friendly right up to the exit.
I do not know what made the request land that way for him. He was entitled to decline a call, just as I had my reasons for wanting one. What confused me was treating the question itself as a warning, then closing things down when I asked about it.
I have not replied to his goodbye. His final message is perfectly polite. I am still looking at the part just above it, where asking to hear his voice became the problem.
