Does he sound emotionally unavailable?

What Tallspicy said.

Also, you’ve had a few dates & he constantly brings up his ex in conversation. That’s an enormous red flag. No man who is emotionally available and open to a relationship would bring up his ex constantly to a woman he just started dating.

I’m sure he enjoys your company well enough but this guy doesn’t sound emotionally available, or even terribly interested.

I’m going to play devils advocate here. Not all conversations about exes are bad, nor does it mean they are still pining for them.

Men don’t have a large pool of topics to talk about with women unless she likes sports, fishing, working on cars, or you share similar passions or things in common. My ex husband and BF did the same thing when I was ‘just getting to know them’ (not dating them) where I asked my [now] BF point blank “Are you still in love or emotionally tied to them because you sure do talk about them a lot.” He gave me that surprised look and then responded with “I was just trying to give you some background so you could get to know me better.” Needless to say he stopped talking about them after that lol.

Distance after a date doesn’t automatically make it bad. Men aren’t here for our amusement, whereas, you should have enough things going on in our life to amuse yourself than waiting around for a text or call from a dude you hardly know. I find its best that a bulk of the communication is done on the date as it allows for some mystery and intrigue—like opening up a present on Christmas Day and learning something new about each other. That’s how human’s create bonds; by learning more about each other, over a period of time, whether its romantic, friendship, professional, etc.

This IMO is a good pace and way to get to know someone v. all the silly stupid texting that goes on today, which is the TOP TWO reasons (having sex too early is the other) as to why most don’t get off the ground or stay on the ground because you give out too much information about yourself to the point the the man loses the desire to spend his time and energy on you because you give it away to easily and freely…BORING. OR you text something that doesn’t come out right and it turns into a text meltdown, he poofs, and the ladies come here going “WHY?”

A man can’t lead you on if you’re *expectations* are out of sync. You can only work with what you have and if you don’t like it or he’s not doing what *YOU* need or think he should be doing, then YOU stop dating him! Easy Peasy!

for me its not clear what this guys action are. So he did set up another date and in between he is silent? But you also state the dates are far apart. Like over a week apart?
The one thing that stood out to me is you are overinvested already. You decided he is the guy but he has to see it too. After a few dates. Thats crazy. And you already have two flags collected: 1 he is not much of a talker and that leads to boring ex talk (i agree With lane that its possible he doesnt do much on his own), he doesnt like to text (at least you are complaining about it). You can see how weird this is right? So just be chill, vet him, stopt trying to engage him to text and date other guys whe youre ready