When I asked whether he still wanted to keep talking, he said he wanted us to keep meeting, but he couldn't make promises. I replied that I understood. The next day, I sent him a good-morning message and wished him a good day. He didn't answer.
A week and a half earlier, he had taken me home after our first visit to a motel and said he still wanted to see me. I keep returning to the difference between that reassurance and what followed.
I'm 27, and he's 33. I had been in love with him since March. At the beginning, he said he didn't want anything serious. Later, he became open to getting to know each other better and seeing whether something could grow. That wasn't a relationship promise, but it gave me something to hope for.
Before him, I had gone almost ten years without anything romantic in my life. My only previous boyfriend had been a long-distance relationship. So when we met in October, this wasn't just another date to me. He was my first kiss.
At the motel, we kissed and touched each other, but we didn't have sex. I'm a virgin, and I wasn't ready to go further. I cried because I felt I hadn't been able to please him. He comforted me, held my hands and explained that he wasn't angry. He said he was happy and had a good impression of me.
He seemed understanding. That mattered because I had felt so exposed, and because I wanted him to want to see me again even though I wasn't ready for sex. When he said we could keep meeting and getting to know each other, I believed there was still something ahead of us.
For the first four days afterward, he answered my good-morning and good-night messages, though only briefly. He said work was keeping him busy with projects. Then the replies became even less frequent. I was still sending messages, but he was hardly answering them.
I know work can take over. I'm busy too. What hurt was the growing distance between saying he wanted to keep seeing me and finding so little time to respond. I wasn't asking him to promise a future. I wanted to know whether we were still getting to know each other.
That's why I eventually asked him directly. His answer left the possibility open without offering anything I could count on. I don't know whether his feelings changed after the motel, whether work really was the whole explanation, or whether he had never hoped for as much as I did. I can't turn the timing into proof that not having sex was the reason.
I've deleted his number. I don't want to keep speaking to him, even though I still feel heartbroken. After almost ten years without romance, I had let myself want this. But I don't want to keep a conversation alive by being the only person in it who writes.
