Why the sudden change

Any man you only saw once a week for 3 months and not committed has not changed. They were never that interested. Any man who is not your boyfriend in actions and words by 3 months will never be.

That said, it is most likely that men are more rational and the current situation has no end date so staying engaged has no real end game.

It is amazing how emotionally invested some women can get so early on. Just try put him on a shelf. Mirror his texts.

If you’re “confused” or you have to post here to ask… you should stop wasting your time and energy on him, he’s not that interested and he’s just keeping you on the hook for an ego kick and for possible use later when it suits him. Hint: the less you care… the more they care.
Let him do all the contacting. Don’t break speed records responding. And forget about him. Until he really steps up and shows he’s for real.

OP here: Wanted to update and ask for advice on potential course of action

Basically, I don’t like playing games, and I think this situation is in some ways unfair to everyone. By everyone I mean me, potentially the guy this post is mentioning, and any new guys I meet currently, because I am out living my life still. If I meet a new guy, which I have been talking with other guys, I wouldn’t feel comfortable going on a date (or more dates) while still talking to this original guy every day, not for my own emotions, but because it feels wrong to me as someone who values transparency. It just feels like in this situation, someone’s like a clear backup, I’m not sure who, but that’s not what I want to do to anyone and I’m going to stick with these values. As in I’m afraid I’ll start to probably in my mind treat either the original guy or the new guy as a backup to the other.

I’m looking for answers and advice to this one question in particular: I want to end this ambiguous pen-palling with the original guy. But I don’t just want to call it off with him, because I do like him and I would be interested in giving this a chance at something more. And originally, I planned to wait after we met back up in person, see how we connect again when we are in person together, and go from there as to whether to try to move towards something more. In the meantime, I live my life, and if something changes, cross that bridge when I get there. And I get that in person is better since it’s so hard to know and maybe we need more time to truly know whether we are a good fit for each other. But on the other hand, I think he probably knows why he’s messaging me, whether it’s because he wants to try to connect and develop something when we’re back in person, or he’s bored, or he thinks of it as like fwb, or who knows. But he’s also not a shady person, he’s not the shallow player guy stereotype who strings girls along lying to their faces, so I’d get a genuine answer regardless if I asked.

I think I’m at the point where I want to know why he’s keeping up messaging me. But I don’t know how to ask, I’d prefer to do it as gently and respectfully as possible. And I also don’t know if I should ask because maybe this is pushing it at an uncertain time, like it’ll sound too pushy and drive him away.

The question boils down to: ask or not, and if yes how to ask. The way I see it: if he’s not going to commit, he’s an honest enough person to tell me straight up, so that would be in favor of asking. Then we’d never talk again, it’d be a minor awkwardness but nothing lost because we’d never interact again. If he says no, I’ll move on. But, if there might be a chance he’s maybe open to something more, I’m not sure if asking too early could be too pushy and be coming on too strong.

Also, we’re both on the younger side. I think we are both people who will commit to someone eventually (as in if you individually asked us whether we expected to be in a marriage with someone, who knows who, in 10 years, we’d both say yes) and both who still have time to be young and have fun, so neither of us have that no-nonsense, no-casual attitude that some people in different situations might have.

I agree, calling would show more commitment. Finding ways to see each other is difficult, I don’t fault him for not doing that. I don’t know why we haven’t called since the pandemic started — we did talk about virtual dates before the pandemic (and before we really knew much about the virus) if say someone one of us knew or interacted with got sick. Without giving too many details, there was a reason that was out of both of our reasonable control at the beginning of quarantine that the most we could discuss was not ending things, and investment in the face of a lot of uncertainty just didn’t seem like the way to go. I wanted to suggest a call after these circumstances were no longer a factor, like ‘it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, want to do a video call’, but held off since by then it had really been 2 months with just texting, so that would feel out of the blue. And given we’ve both been staying with family for parts of quarantine, I think privacy would be an issue for video chats (at least from my side, privacy would have been a concern for video dates and probably why I didn’t do video dates with anyone over quarantine)

I also want to know because I don’t know if I’m a backup for him while he goes looking for other people. It might be less likely given he’s quarantining somewhere temporary while I’m back where I normally would be living, so between the two of us I might be the one with a greater chance of being unavailable by the time we both end up in the same place again.

Tallspicy I like your suggestion. I feel like it’s hard though because I think any way I phrase this question will come across either as a dtr or as me sounding like I’m saying goodbye because I’m not interested in him anymore.

If I wasn’t afraid of coming across as a bit harsh, I’d say that it’s been a long time to leave something up in the air, and I’m glad we stayed connected because I enjoy interacting with him both in person and through messages, but I want to know how he’s feeling about it, and if we’re unsure of whether we’ll continue something or it’s something purely casual that we’re going to continue, it might not be worth doing this. But my problem with just saying this outright is my goal isn’t an ultimatum, it’s a conversation. However I do want to give some sort of explanation, just so it doesn’t come on as a surprise dtr and instead comes on as a reasonable request to discuss things in the face of this pandemic situation.