Hi Valora! Thank you for responding 🙂 Sorry, I am still figuring out the whole “quoting” thing.

You seemed to get upset when he could not talk to you more often than you both had been talking for the past 3 years, but that bolded part is very important. It was you who wanted to make the change, but it sounds like he was unable to keep up with it and that that change wasn’t going to work for him because of his busy schedule. When you would bring up this issue to him, what type of tone would you take when you’d tell him?  Concern or criticism? Did he tell you he would talk more often or did he try to explain that he couldn’t because he was too busy for more?

Yes, I did start wanting to talk a bit more after things started to become more romantic. I really just wanted to create opportunities for us to become closer emotionally. Since it was long distance, I thought this could be accomplished if we spoke a litte more often. We did discuss it calmly (for the most part) the first time and he seemed to be agreeable to speaking more, but also mentioned that he’s not too great with texting. I was okay with this, until I started to realize that not much was changing. I was excited about him, and he claimed to also be excited about me. It’s not that I wanted to speak 24/7, but we would text here and there during the day and speak on the phone like once a week. 

I cannot lie, I did not always bring the issue up properly. Mind you, all of this was through texting pretty much…so things can quickly become misinterpreted because you cannot hear tone, etc. I was sometimes passive-aggressive, so I do understand why he would become defensive during those times. However, there were times when I felt that I did bring it up properly and he would still become defensive in his responses. I felt as if I could never get everything out that I had to say on the issue because he would become triggered so quickly. Then it would just turn into him telling me that I’m being illogical and me struggling to have my feelings validated. He would tell me things like “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a life,” which did come off as very harsh to me. I just felt that he was shutting the issue down immediately and would never really take the time to even try and understand my feelings. He never really just came out and said that he was too busy for more conversation. 

What was it that he said that made you feel that he was dismissive the first time or two that you talked to him about it? What did you need from him to not feel that way?  Would it have been acceptable for him to just tell you he was too busy to add more conversation time or did you need him to talk to you more in order for you to not feel dismissed? I feel like that distinction is important here.

I did not feel as dismissed the first time we spoke about it. I felt that he “heard me” the first time, for the most part. But every time after that, I was called illogical, accused of wanting to speak 24/7, and even accused of being jealous of his friends and family. I would tell him that these accusations are not true, but he would continue to stick to them. This is when I would become emotionally reactive and make comments such as: “I give more to our situation than you.” “You are unreceptive to my feelings.” 

I honestly just wanted some understanding. I felt pushed into a corner sometimes because it was almost as if he was on a mission to prove why my feelings do not make sense. I would have felt satisfied if it was something like “I understand where you’re coming from and I wish we could talk more, but I am very busy and cannot give you more right now.” I only felt dismissed because of the ways in which he would respond to my feelings. I felt brushed off most of the time. 

Outside of this issue, we really did get along quite well and really did “click.” I am just very confused by him abruptly blocking me after the last argument. After 3 years of contact, I just thought I would be worth more than that. It’s hard to understand how he could just cut me out of his life. We spoke at some point every single day up until that point and even had a meeting planned that was coming up in just a few days. I don’t know what to make of him. He could have had a conversation with me about being fed up with the issue. I believe that we could have put it to rest. I cannot understand him just giving up like that. He just left me to figure out that I had been blocked.