I don't reply to the men who give me their phone number immediately. J and I were communicating almost daily over email for about a week and a half before he asked me if I wanted to have dinner the following week, and when I had to reschedule due to having stomach flu (gross lol), he was incredibly gracious, rescheduled immediately, and gave me his phone number at that point so that we could just text instead of continuing to communicate through email. But no, he wasn't very open in email communication. I gently called him out at one point. He told me that his lack of questions weren't a sign of lack of interest, he was afraid to come on too strong. He said that his experience with online dating was relatively short and he'd had experience coming on too strong, not strong enough, too needy, not interested enough, and wasn't sure where the balance was. I can understand that, especially if he's been doing it for even a year. Heck, I've been doing it on and off for a decade and I don't totally know where the balance is.

At his core, this is a good guy who has good intentions. He is not emotionally available. But he is not a bad guy, and he's not married (lol). He's someone who volunteers regularly, helped three friends through hospice, and from what I can tell reading between the lines of what he tells me, takes on a lot of familial responsibility that he shouldn't. He has some healing to do from some loss, and I think he would benefit from a T. I think that Molinit is right, there are a lot of emotionally unavailable men online (I've met many of them) and I think they are looking for healing within a relationship when they should be in counseling. I wish I hadn't been the one he chose to try to get close to and then had a failure-to-launch, but we had chemistry and as he even said, it's nice to find that mutuality with someone. I'm mad at him, and I think he needs to get it together, but I don't think he meant to hurt me and I don't think he's malicious. I think he's like any of us, just looking for connection.