Why would he suddenly start ignoring my voice notes and messages?

[Anonymous]

I’ve been talking to a guy for a while during lockdown quite intensely. He really opened up to me, we were talking on the phone / speaking every day through the day via text / voice note, and he said he had become infatuated with me. The messages from that point became quite serious and we planned on meeting after the second lockdown. We became really close, which I guess sounds ridiculous given that we met online, but we did develop a strong emotional connection.

Our messages became very lengthy after a while and they took quite a long time to reply to, and a few days ago he started saying things like “don’t worry about replying immediately, I know you’ll always get back to me and I’m not going anywhere”. I had a gut feeling that he was trying to prepare for something, which came from nowhere so I ignored it. Fast forward a couple of days and sure enough, on the Tuesday night he didn’t read my message to him from the Monday afternoon until the following morning, he then completely ignored me and didn’t respond. I sent him one voice note on the night saying I hoped he’d had a good day etc, which he then ignored for another two days, and only today has he opened it but not “listened” to it.

To any guys out there, can you think of any reason why someone would do this? He does have a very demanding job, but I’ve seen him online and I know for a fact he’s ignoring my messages.

Sending this out of complete curiosity!

[Anonymous]

This year has been the worst for making romantic connections, especially online. You case sounds like what I’ve seen a few times amongst my friends, and it’s that you spent lockdown talking to this guy who was completely interested, but as restrictions lift and we somewhat return to normalcy, he can go back to doing his old thing and doesn’t feel so inclined to talk to you all the time. I had a guy do this to me recently. We met through a dating app and he’d talk to me nonstop throughout the day, and we were leaning towards dating. But I didn’t know he was being allowed to work from home, then once he went back to work, it was like a complete 180.

[spartan55]

Because online communication is BORING to guys. I'll say it for the millionth time, you CANNOT form a significant, meaningful relationship online only, you. just. can't.