He started calling me “babe” after I moved away. By then, we had managed three dates—or two, depending on whether the first one deserved the paperwork. We were texting more and flirting. The pet name was new, and I couldn’t tell what I was supposed to do with it.
I’m 27; he’s 30. Before I moved, we had spent enough time together for there to be something to wonder about, but not enough for me to feel I understood the situation. Distance arrived while the connection was still new.
At first, our texting wasn’t great. He would disappear for days. I was fine with that because I had already assumed the whole thing probably wasn’t going to work. There wasn’t an established relationship being neglected, at least as far as I understood it. There were a few dates and a man who was sometimes available by text.
Then the contact picked up. We started talking more, and there was flirting. That change matters more to me than a cute word on its own: the conversation had become warmer before “babe” entered it. I wasn’t trying to find romance hidden inside an otherwise practical exchange. We were already flirting; I just didn’t know how much weight to give the language that came with it.
It didn’t seem sarcastic. That was part of what threw me. A joke would have given me an easy place to put it. Instead, he seemed to be using it sincerely, with a familiarity I hadn’t realized we had reached. I was still counting our dates with a footnote, and he had apparently found a pet name.
I have very little experience of how people date in the West. So alongside the ordinary question—what does this particular man mean?—there’s another one: is this simply how people talk? I don’t know whether I’m noticing a meaningful step or pausing over something that would barely register for someone else. I can understand the word perfectly and still miss its social value.
Maybe he feels closer to me now that we’re talking more. Maybe “babe” is easy, casual flirting for him and doesn’t carry the significance it seems to have when I read it. Those are different possibilities, and nothing in the word itself tells me which one applies. It certainly doesn’t fill in the distance between us or explain what he wants next.
The awkward part is that I’m not objecting to the flirting. I’m trying to work out its scale. I can enjoy a warmer conversation without knowing whether we’re becoming closer or just getting better at flirting from a distance.
For now, we’re texting more than we were, he’s calling me “babe,” and I’m still working out whether this is a new stage or simply his choice of words.
