I told her I didn’t want us to be exclusive anymore. I also told her I still wanted us to be part of each other’s lives. At the time, those felt like two things I could say together and mean.
When I left her place that morning, she still seemed eager to have me around. She asked whether we could keep doing boyfriend-and-girlfriend things for comfort. Could I still text her every day, the way I had before?
I said sure.
That was the arrangement we left with: a change in our relationship, with some of the familiar contact continuing. I’d said I wanted less commitment, and I’d also agreed to keep showing up in ways that had belonged to being a couple.
Afterward, I sent her texts. Then she didn’t answer my last message.
Over the next two days, I tried requesting her on Instagram four times. Four requests is a definite number, and it looks different written out than it probably felt while I was doing it. Each attempt came after the previous one hadn’t brought a response.
When she didn’t appear to look at those either, I stopped. I went silent, too.
Eight days later, she finally sent a text.
Now I’m looking back at the whole sequence: what I told her, what she asked for that morning, the messages afterward, and my repeated attempts to reach her. I’m trying to understand how we got from agreeing to stay in touch to this.
Part of me keeps reaching for the phrase “the upper hand.” Who handled the ending badly? Who gave away more by reaching out, or by waiting? It’s a strange way to describe someone whose place I’d left after agreeing we could still offer each other comfort, but it’s where my questions have landed.
She has replied now. I’m still wondering what the eight days before that reply say about her—and what those four requests say about me.
