Where to Go From Here

I have been seeing a man for the past 10 weeks. We have seen each other once or twice per week since that time and have spoken nearly every single day, with the exception of the past two weeks, which is where my question lies. Just to clarify, we are not in a shelter in place location so we have continued seeing each other in our homes on the weekends.

He has definitely been the pursuer, initiating the vast majority of contacts, planning dates, paying for dates and always scheduling the next date at the end of a date. On the third date we decided we would tell each other if we decided to see other people, but he clarified that he wasn’t and I stated that I wasn’t either at that time. During that date he did ask “So do you like me?” and I stated that of course I did and was surprised that he couldn’t tell. We began sleeping together about a month into dating.

At the six week mark we ran into a friend of his at the grocery store and he introduced me to him. After we walked away he apologized if it was awkward as he hadn’t seen that friend in a year and therefore the friend didn’t know that he had broken up with his ex-girlfriend eight months prior and may have thought it was weird that he “had a new girlfriend”. He also went onto say that when he met that friend he had no idea that he was married because he wore no ring and mentioned no wife (who was working abroad). He said “I could never do that, that’s why I introduced you right away, I want him to know that I’m with him and you’re with me. We were holding hands at the time and I squeezed his hand and smiled but that was the extent of any type of “defining the relationship”.

He routinely tells me how he really likes me, feels so relaxed and comfortable with me and is just so excited by the “total package” of what we have. I always respond and express my affections as well.

Contact has been consistent and although the “all day texting” diminished over the weeks as it was unsustainable, he was still texting me most days and also had started calling instead so that we could have actual conversations instead of texting back and forth. Things have been going so well up until about two weeks ago. He was moving houses after selling his and at the end of our date he kissed me and said, “Ugh, I’m going to miss these lips for the couple of weeks.” He had made mention earlier of the next few weeks being really difficult and promising to making it up to me once it was over but never specifically said we wouldn’t be seeing each other. This was the only time a specific date wasn’t set for the following weekend.

He texted me when he got home that night and we texted again the next day. I sent him a “good luck” text on Sunday when he was moving and then…silence. I didn’t hear from him until Wednesday when I came back to a missed call and a string of texts with apologies for not getting in contact the past few days and that he was “swamped and overthinking too much”. I told him it was fine to take space and time to deal with issues at hand and gain perspective. Overall, while it was a shift going two days without talking to somebody I’ve been dating for only two months didn’t seem unheard of when I specifically knew what he had going on.

We talked for an hour that night and kept our Friday routine in place. When he was here on Friday things didn’t skip a beat, except things actually escalated a bit in terms of intimacy. He’s not a closed off person, but he talked about some really deep things from his childhood that I knew nothing about and let me in on another level. He also did little things for me like feeding and letting my dog out without me asking while I was doing something else, hand washed the dishes for me and went to the hardware store to get items to fix two things around my house that needed to be done but I couldn’t do alone. He told me on our third date that if he started doing things for me that meant he was definitely falling for me, so although I tried not to read too much into it, it definitely didn’t seem like a bad thing.

One thing that happened that I thought was odd was that we were talking about what we’d strive to do if money weren’t an object. We both had similar answers and were just bouncing things off of each other and he exclaimed how hard working I was and I said, “Well so are you” and he said “I know but I’m just an engineer from India”. It was clear he was making a comparison between the two of us and thought he was the lesser. This couldn’t be further from the truth. He is incredibly intelligent, extremely (almost to the point of insanity) hard working, unfailingly kind, generous, funny and just overall a great guy. I hated that he said that about himself and tried to bolster him, which he said he appreciated.

When he left on Saturday all was well, he said that next week he would help me start packing the house (I too am moving) and asked if we were on for next Friday (two days from now). I said yes and he want home to work. He texted me to wish me a Happy Easter on Sunday morning and we had a short exchange but I was with family. He always works Sunday nights but I remembered he was supposed to send me the name of a contractor so I texted him asking about it. I knew I likely wouldn’t hear back until Monday because he is on an hours long conference call to India on Sunday nights.

I got a reply at 5:30 PM Monday, which is right where his work day ends. He used the typical flirty nickname for me, apologized for the delay in his response, gave me the name and contact information and asked how my days was. I didn’t see it until about an hour later and replied when I saw it, thanking him, giving a brief recap of my day and asking how his day was. It’s been almost 48 hours and he hasn’t replied to that text.

I know that he is super stressed about work. The CEO of the company he works for switched his project with no notice and has given him an 8 week deadline to complete something that has been shelved for 2.5 years. He has to reform a team of developers in India who he just laid off two weeks ago and get them working on a new project that he said has major flaws he needs to correct for the product to be marketable. I don’t understand a lot of his tech speak, but it sounded like a big deal. He said “Well now I’m back to being a slave.”

Part of me thinks “Hey you just told him last week that taking space and time to deal with things was totally understandable”, so you set this precedent.
Part of me thinks “How long does it take to send a two second text to tell me you’re busy?”
Part of me thinks “Are you an idiot who missed something major here?”
Part of me thinks “Why aren’t you reaching out to him and playing by some rule instead about “not double texting”?

I am so in my head right now that I can’t see the forest for the trees. Thoughts?