There’s this guy I really like and at first things were great. We texted constantly for about five days but then he suddenly stopped. I left him alone because I didn’t want to come across as annoying or something.
After that it seemed like I always had to initiate the conversations to get a response. It really seemed like he cared so why would he go from talking to me all the time to not talking at all?
You’re not alone. This type of question has been sent to me hundreds of times and I want to write about this to help you and everyone with this type of situation.
Actually, A New Mode’s relationship section is only part of my business – I also help guys with their dating questions. And believe it or not, I had a guy send me virtually this same question in hopes that I would discuss it at a speaking engagement.
To answer your question, I want to quickly tell you what I cover in this article:
- If you just started seeing him and he suddenly stopped texting, why that’s a good thing…
- If you’ve been seeing him a little while and he suddenly stops texting, what to do about it…
- The best way to text with your guy in your relationship
Also, I highly recommend you take the following quiz to see why he’s not texting you back.
Take This Quiz And Find Out Right Now: Why Didn’t He Text You Back?
I also put a link to another quiz at the end of this article about how to understand your guy’s texting style, so I recommend you take that one too.
If this is a guy you just started seeing…
Over the course of the last decade and a half, texting has increasingly become a constant part of waking life. For most people these days, it’s tough to imagine waiting for something or sitting idle without checking your texts, social media, etc.
Sooner or later, though, there will be a point where the person you’re seeing doesn’t text back and you’re left wondering what they’re up to…
And if you haven’t discovered this yet, it will be at these moments that you discover one of the necessities of modern relationships is to remain undisturbed when it does happen.
When a guy suddenly stops texting right at the beginning of a relationship, it could be for a number of reasons… you don’t know his patterns yet, so he might be at the gym. He might be focused on something and have his phone off.
If he’s not that into you, consider that a blessing in disguise…
Or, yes of course, he might not be all that into you in the first place and be fading away. And if so, do yourself a favor and let him go… there are plenty of signs a guy isn’t into you and it’s a fruitless venture to think you’re going to convince him he should be.
So just to get that out of the way: When a guy likes you, it’s obvious.
No analysis or detective work needed… and you don’t need to put in effort for a guy who’s into you to remain in contact with you.
I’m not talking about constant, minute-by-minute response times and non-stop chatting, but if a guy is in the mindset of establishing and participating in a relationship with you, he’s not going to unpredictably disappear for days or weeks at a time.
So if that’s happening, you’re probably looking at a guy who isn’t all that into you… at which point I would recommend you would cut things now and meet someone new.
Some great reasons to cut it off now if he’s already suddenly disappearing:
- While you’re chasing a guy that isn’t that into you, you could instead spending that time with a guy who’s head over heels in love with you.
- And, in the scenario you’re with the guy who’s head over heels in love with you, you could be putting in time with a guy who is moving with you in the direction you want, towards the kind of relationship you want?
- And if you’re with that guy who’s heading toward the kind of relationship you want, doesn’t it make sense that if he’s heading in the same direction as you, then you’d be swimming with the current instead of against the current?
- And in that view, wouldn’t it make much more sense to view dating as a process of finding someone who’s “on the same page as you” and “heading towards” the kind of relationship you want? That is to say, you say NO to guys who are not heading in the direction you want to go and YES to the one who is?
Dating is not about impressing him, it’s about selecting him
This is a slight tangent, but the vast majority of the problems we have with dating in our culture is how we view dating.
Currently, the western world views dating as a process of impressing the other person. Which is foolish on two fronts: first it implies that the time to be impressive is only at the beginning and second it implies that another person should select you because you impressed them (and that you should select them because you found them impressive).
The problem with this is that it fixates on you and the guy putting on a sort of performance for each other… and an unsustainable one at that, in most case.
Dating is not meant to be about impressing another person or being impressed.
Dating is about selecting someone who’s a good fit for you.
And who’s a good fit? Generally speaking:
- Someone who’s on the same page as you (their manner, their values, their views, their way of living, their way of being, etc. matches or complements yours)
- Someone who didn’t outright and explicitly say they don’t want to be in a relationship (for any reason, the reason is irrelevant…)
- Someone who is enjoyable and natural for you to be with.
Dating is about selection!
And relationships… relationships are about learning to still relate to your partner from a place of love and compassion even when it’s not easy (especially when it’s not easy)… and that goes for your partner too!
So to tie this tangent up… letting a guy go who is already showing signs that he’s not that into you early on… well, you could be saving yourself a ton of time and heartache.
I’m not saying that there aren’t those rare cases where some disinterested guy inexplicably changes his tune and comes around… it can happen in the same way a person could win the lottery or a tree could be struck by lightning… but the odds are bad. The odds are much higher you’ll waste a ton of time, youth and heart on chasing a guy who isn’t interested, when you could be spending it with a guy who wants exactly what you want… with you… right now!
Now granted, I don’t know your exact situation… so if you think that you have a good relationship with the guy you’re with but you believe he’s starting to lose interest, then I highly recommend you take the following quiz.
QUIZ: Is he losing interest in me?
Good relationships tend to come about when you’re swimming with the current, not against it.
So let’s return to the subject at hand… if a guy has stopped texting you all of a sudden, and it’s a guy you’ve been seeing for longer than, let’s say, 2 weeks…
Sooner or later, this kind of thing is going to happen and now is as good a time as any to become comfortable with the idea of giving a guy space.
When should you expect a text back from the guy you’re with?
The best way to think of text messages is this: If he tells you, specifically, he’s going to text you at a specific time for a specific reason, then it makes sense to expect him to do what he told you he’s going to do. After all, he explicitly said he would!
Outside of that, texting (in the view of most men) is an interruption to whatever we’re doing at that moment. Now there might be those moments where you catch a guy in a chatty mood, but those are best viewed as the exception to the norm, not something to be expected.
If you don’t have the expectation the men should text a lot or that men want to text a lot, you’ll save yourself a lot of grief wanting something that, for the most part, goes against a man’s nature.
When it comes to relationships, treat your actual physical time together as your quality time. It is infinitely better than text messages, there’s no room for misinterpretation or miscommunication like there is in the limited medium of texting and it takes the pressure off both of you.
So as a general rule in relationships, try to keep texting to a minimum and, when you do need to text, your texts will have much more impact.
And if you need something urgently and immediately, call him. Don’t text.
For texts that remain unanswered for some length of time (and it’s going to happen sometimes), the real benefit comes to your relationship comes from how you handle it…
Why you should become comfortable with giving your guy space:
In this day and age, what we really would do well to embrace in our lives is more space…
There’s this expectation nowadays that we’re almost meant to be constantly available and in contact with others… that we should be on our phones at every waking moment, ready to respond to any message sent to us.
Things didn’t used to be this way. There used to be moments of space mixed into our days, where we would just have to wait for things.
We didn’t have Candy Crush to play while sitting on the toilet. We didn’t have social media to check while gassing up our car. We didn’t have stories to post while sitting in the doctors office.
At most maybe there was a magazine to read… or if you were at home, you might be on the phone with someone on a landline… but there were many portions of the day where there was space to just “be”… without doing something or reacting to something.
With a near constant stream of things to react to, we have created and have been participating in a world that’s become increasingly frantic and stressful.
I mean, could you imagine being bored in today’s world?
The most sane thing you can do for yourself is to start bringing space into your life as much as possible. Stillness. Silence. Peace.
And for your partner, allow them to have as much an opportunity for that as possible as well.
What’s so great about space in a relationship? Why should we want our partner to have space? Why should we create space in our own lives as well?
Plain and simple: It is within moments of space where we are most able to connect with ourselves and the life within us.
Our outer world of smartphones and social media is a constant stream of unending noise and a frantic freight train of activity to react to.
Without space, it almost feels as though this constant activity is like a vortex that pulls us into it.
We can get caught up in it, thinking about and reacting to the happenings streaming through our smartphone into our head. With the social aspect of social media, we might even find it very hard not to feed into the constant drama of it.
Contrasted against that, we have a whole inner world that, for most people, remains largely unexplored.
When people talk about having a relationship with yourself, what does that really mean in the deepest sense?
In the simplest terms, it means to step inside yourself… reconnect with how you feel inside… reconnect with your body… reconnect with the still, silent sense of “you” that’s always been there (even since you were a little child) and has remained unchanged…
Reconnecting with that “space” within you is, in its essence, having a relationship with yourself. Finding the still point of sanity that rests in the background behind the frantic insanity of the outer world and, more importantly, that rests even behind the chaotic and perhaps constant thoughts of your inner world.
What does this have to do with relationships though?
It is within this space… this re-connecting with “you”… where you recharge your batteries and re-connect to your own sense of OK-ness. It doesn’t happen in the outside world and it doesn’t happen in your relationship or through your partner. It happens directly, through you and through you giving yourself space to be in touch with “you” (the “you” within).
This is where you recharge your metaphorical batteries… and this is where your partner does as well.
It is in our best interest to give our partner as many opportunities as possible to have space in their life and this very easy to do when we understand it benefits the relationship immensely.
They recharge their batteries. They become more calm inside. They re-center themselves.
And, from that place of renewed inner clarity, they come back together with you and that improved inner state reflects itself outward in how they relate to you.
And the same goes for you, too.
Relationships aren’t something to extract happiness from. It doesn’t work that way.
Relationships work best when viewed as a place to bring happiness into, so as to help your partner come into alignment with that inner state as well (and vice versa).
Make space a priority. Make your mood a priority. Your relationship will improve immensely when you focus on the inner you and not what he’s doing or not doing.
Another note on men and space…
We all need space, although men relate to space and silence in a way that is different in character to the way women seem to relate to having space…
That’s not to say that women in today’s world don’t need space in their own lives. They absolutely do.
What I’m saying is that, for men in particular, there’s a part of our masculine soul that hungers greatly for pockets of time where we can be left completely alone… not have to deal with anything or talk to anyone.
With my male friends, there have been times where we hang out doing an activity and maybe say 10 words or less to one another over the period of many hours… and if someone asked how it was hanging out with them, we’d probably both say it was great.
Whether or not the guys you know have men in their lives they can hang out with without being unnecessarily chatty, the vast majority of men could relate to how this is possible. Most women I know would find the thought of sitting in silence with another woman for hours to be incomprehensible and… not much fun.
In addition to appreciating giving a guy space as a good thing, there’s a lot to be said for how men experience space and time with other men. It’s good for guys to have pure guy time with other guys… if you’ve never paid attention to this, you might notice that when your guy spends time with other men, his energy can shift into a more masculine place in a way that brings more passion into the relationship.
I would say the same thing for women spending time with other women. There is something to be said for enjoying and accentuating the polarities of your gender in who you spend time with.
Worrying
I say all this because I want to drive home the point that there is much more to having a healthy relationship than being in constant contact with your partner.
One thing I would encourage you to do, within your own space and inner self, is explore the reaction you’re having to him not texting you back.
In many cases, when someone doesn’t text you back, it might stir up feelings of fear or worry that the other person has lost interest or is going to leave.
Whether or not this is the case, your worrying isn’t going to change what is true… all it will do is drain you of energy…
If finding the inner space and stillness within you and “living there” is what recharges your batteries, then one might ask what drains your batteries?
Other than the most basic functions of living, most people needlessly drain their energy and vitality being caught up in their head… worrying about things… wanting to get “somewhere” or do “something” or become “more”… they spend all day looping, again and again, on thoughts…
Do these thoughts ever lead to any positive outcome? Usually no. In fact, I would argue that these types of “draining” thoughts never lead to a successful outcome… they only keep you caught up in your mind, stirring up uncomfortable feelings within your body… and then we try to distract ourselves from this discomfort through whipping out our phone and tinkering with it.
Living this way comes with a horrible price… the drain increases and becomes more pronounced over time… it affects our mood… and our negative mood radiates outward and affects our relationship negatively.
Your mood becomes your vibe and your vibe determines your love life
Or, as I’ve said it in the past: Your mood becomes your vibe… and your vibe will attract (or repel) love from you from every area of life.
If you want to experience love coming to you from every area of life, easily and effortlessly… then you’ll want to improve your vibe… which is to say, improve your mood (your inner state).
And the path to repairing your mood isn’t through feeding into more thought activity, but less. Reconnect with “you”, the silent field of consciousness behind your incessantly thinking mind.
You’ll still have awareness of your mind’s activities while you connect with the stillness within you… you just won’t mind it. You won’t take it all that seriously or view it as anything important anymore.
The punchline here is this: If a guy not texting you back is upsetting to you, instead of paying attention to what the mind wants to pull you into fixating one (what the guy should be doing, what you fear it means, what you need to do in reaction, etc. etc.)… get off the ride of your mind. Instead of paying attention to your mind’s story and reaction to what’s happening, step back and give yourself space to be OK anyway, even in the face of the hurricane of your mind.
Wake up from the dream of your mind… the unending stream of thinking…
By pulling the plug on the negative thought loop, you won’t die… you’ll come alive. You’ll be free and your head will clear up… you’ll regain your gracefulness and your mood will become light again.
In that space, it will be very easy to see what is needed for the situation. And, oftentimes, you’ll see that nothing is needed at all!
Make texting about quality, not quantity… less is more
(This portion is in direct reply to the question stated at the start)
The problem is not that you (or women or men in general) are doing something inherently “wrong” that results in the guy (or girl) stopping their frequent texting with you.
The problem is that it’s not sustainable. Texting constantly is a pain in the ass. Speaking from personal experience, I am an extremely busy guy and I generally avoid habitually texting back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth with women because I already know it’s something I can’t maintain. So I try to keep things short but polite.
Truth is, this guy probably was really into you when he was texting constantly and probably still is. But again, the problem is that it’s not a realistic, sustainable habit to be constantly texting little messages all day.
He might have been texting for the five days and then was thought, “Wow, this is really time consuming and distracting from… the rest of my life!”
Sometimes we can get caught up into thinking that the other person is being rude when our text message goes unanswered. The truth is that when we send someone a text, we don’t know what they’re up to. We are interrupting them and expecting that they should answer a text message just because we sent them something is selfish.
I know you don’t mean it to be selfish, so I’m putting this way of looking at the situation out there because it’s useful to see things from that perspective.
From the other side, when you consider that you may be interrupting someone, you could see how one interruption isn’t that big of a deal. But if the other person might feel that they are being barraged with messages and it could be overwhelming or even annoying sometimes.
With that said, I can be guilty of being “that guy” who doesn’t text back. And I (probably more than any other guy on the planet) know how much that can drive a woman crazy.
But I’m busy! Even though I know better, the unconscious thought I have is that “she knows I like her.” Generally speaking I do make more of an effort to send an occasional text message so she knows I’m around and nothing’s wrong.
No reason I can’t be considerate to a woman’s feelings, but I promise you most guys don’t have any idea how upsetting not being texted back is for most women.
Now the useful question from here is: What should you do about it?
I stand by everything I said in the first section of this article, but if your mind is on fire and you just need an emergency method to catch your breath, take this approach:
I’m going to give you the same advice that I give to guys in this case because it applies across the board: Be un-reactive to it and assume they really, really like you.
What do I mean by un-reactive?
I’m not saying don’t have an awareness of what’s going on around you. I’m not saying become like a robot, absent of emotion in general. What I am saying is don’t react to the stuff that’s happening or your mind’s thoughts about things. CHOOSE not to have a reaction and be cool with everything.
This advice is for you. It’s not for the other person, although at first glance it might look like you’re just letting them do whatever they want.
When you stop reacting to things automatically, you gain awareness of the situation. You stop getting lost in emotions that don’t help you and start clearly seeing the best way to respond to something (if the situation even warrants a response). When you are un-reactive, you get to choose the best move.
So be un-reactive to this so that you have clarity of the whole situation. I think once you can stop reacting and look at the situation clearly, you’ll see that there really isn’t a big problem here.
Again, this is more or less a restatement of what I was saying more explicitly above:
- When you have the view that giving your partner space is a healthy thing, it’s easy not to have a bad reaction to him not texting back…
- When you have the view that your good mood helps improve the relationship (even without speaking a word), it makes it easy not to have a bad reaction to him not texting back…
- When you have the view that negative reactions around texting creates relationship problems where there don’t need to be, it makes it easier to not react negatively to it…
From a deeper perspective, you might find that there’s a way of looking at just about anything that doesn’t have you reacting negatively to it… and, in freeing yourself from a continuous series of bad reactions to things, you’ll find you’ll gain a much greater sense of clarity in your relationships and love life.
And if you’re going to assume anything…
The other side of how to handle this in a useful way is to assume that the other person really, really likes you.
The fact is none of us are mind readers… we will never know exactly what the other person is thinking.
But I can tell you that people who assume that other people don’t like them usually end up with other people not liking them. I can also tell you that people who assume that other people love them usually end up surrounded by people who love them.
Same goes for relationships and attraction. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Sure, it may seem a little delusional to just choose an assumption to make about how the other person feels about you, but the truth is that we do it all the time anyway! You might as well choose an assumption that serves you instead of one that guarantees failure.
And finally, one of the best things you can do is make sure that you have a full, enjoyable, fun life. When your life is full of fun and friends, you won’t fall into the trap of obsessing when that next text is going to come or if he called or not. You’ll be too busy enjoying the rest of your life.
The beginning stages of a relationship are best served as “icing on the cake” rather than “the cake itself”. Make your life your focus and it will make his erratic texting behaviors much more tolerable.
Oh, and one last thing… don’t take a man’s texting habits personally. That is a recipe for disaster if you do…
I hope this article helped you better understand a guy’s texting habits. But there is more you need to know. There is one defining moment in every relationship that determines if it will last, or if you will be left heartbroken…
At some point, he will ask himself: Is this the woman I want to commit myself to? The answer will determine whether the relationship deepens or ends. Do you know how a man decides a woman is girlfriend or wife material? Do you know what inspires a man to want to commit? If not, you need to read this article next: The #1 Things Men Desire in a Woman
Another big reason why women worry about a guy’s texting habits is because they think he might be losing interest or pulling away. Do you know what to do when this happens? If not, you run the risk of making the most common relationship-ruining mistakes. Read this now and learn exactly how to handle it: If He’s Pulling Away, Do This...
Hope it helps,
eric charles
Take This Quiz And Find Out Right Now: Why Didn’t He Text You Back?
P.S. If you want to better understand a guy’s texting habits (and why men act the way they do when it comes to relationships), take this quick and easy quiz to see what your guy’s “texting style” means about your relationship: What’s Does His “Texting Style” Reveal About His Feelings For Me?
Written by Eric Charles
