The strange part comes after I ask for a phone call. This is a man who has already wanted to call me, or FaceTime, and I have happily made time. Then I start asking too, and somehow the call never happens. The texting, however, remains in excellent health.
I have run into this more than once lately. At first, the interest seems easy to read: he wants to talk, I want to talk, we talk. I take that as a promising little sign. Hearing someone's voice feels different from exchanging messages whenever there is a gap in the day. And if he is initiating those conversations, it seems reasonable to think he enjoys them.
Apparently, my mistake may be assuming the invitation works in both directions. I am comfortable with the radical arrangement in which two adults can each suggest a call. I had not realized there might be a designated caller.
I don't mean that I ask and expect him to answer immediately. We have jobs, responsibilities, lives that were already underway before we exchanged numbers. I understand being busy. I am busy, too, although apparently still capable of finding a phone when sufficiently motivated. A call that doesn't fit into one particular evening would barely register.
What does register is the repeated expression of interest without the follow-through. He keeps saying he wants to call. It keeps not happening. Then the messages continue as if there were no unfinished part of the conversation. There is still contact, which makes the whole thing harder to describe than a straightforward loss of interest. He hasn't disappeared. Just the thing we were going to do has disappeared.
I can't tell whether that means he prefers the ease of texting, likes calls only when they suit him, or is less interested than his messages suggest. Maybe I am encountering a broader dating habit; maybe I have simply met several men with the same approach. I don't have enough information to promote any of these possibilities to a finding. Repetition makes a pattern noticeable. It doesn't make me a mind reader.
It does change how interested I feel. When I make time for someone because he asks, I like to imagine that my wanting to talk would also count for something. I don't need equal numbers of calls entered in a ledger. That sounds like an unpleasant second job. I want the ordinary sense that either of us can reach toward the other and expect some effort back.
The ongoing texting leaves me in an awkward position. I could keep enjoying it on the terms available, but those terms are already making me lose interest. I don't want to become a convenient person to message in spare moments while the conversations I ask for remain permanently theoretical. Nor am I trying to turn every exchange into a discussion about communication. I wanted to hear his voice. The administrative burden seems excessive.
I'm still wondering whether other women are running into this, or whether I keep encountering the same pattern in different men. What I have so far is a man saying he wants to call, a call that doesn't happen, and more texts arriving afterward. By then, I'm less eager to make time.
