Dating/ Relationships are tough

[simome05]

Hi! I'm just trying to figure out this whole dating/relationship thing. Quick background I'm 28 years old with VERY little dating experience. I live in St Paul, MN and I'm a nanny for a wonderful family. I've been seeing someone for the past 3 months, but we are not exclusive and neither of us are seeing other people. He's a pilot and is currently being bounced around in Florida until a permanent bases is available. What I'm trying to figure out is communication aspect between the two of us. When we first started dating we communicated all the time and had amazing chemistry. Since he's completed training for this new airline, his communication is slacking. I understand that his line of work is extremely stressful and especially since he's new at this company. But it would be nice to hear from him more often. Is this being needy etc? We typically communicate via text, because I never know if he's in an airport, but I also try to call him. I can't imagine how much stress he's under and I want him to know, I'm here. But I'm trying to avoid being to motherly. Which is hard because my job is almost being a mom. Here's a questions how much communication is too much communication. We text maybe every other day, probably more like every two days. Is this two much? At this point should we be texting or calling each other all the time? Are texts are pretty simple asking about each others day. I try to be flirty but he's not into flirty texts. I'm assuming if he's not interested in me, he wouldn't text back or answer the phone? I'm so confused and I want to make this work. Please help!

My friends are concerned because they know this is weighing heavily on me and I over think everything. I want to be flirty etc with him, but I struggle with that and sometime don't pick up on his Occasional flirts. My other question is How do I step it up? I want him to know I really like him.

Thanks:-)

[Kaizen]

I'm going to quote my boyfriend here: "What makes a relationship good isn't codified in some book somewhere as 15% flirty conversation and 35% dates and blah blah blah. It's whatever it takes to make both people happy." In other words, the "right amount" of conversation for this point or any point of a relationship is whatever amount of conversation works for both of you and makes you happy, with room for compromise of course.
So if you'd like to have more conversation, it's perfectly okay to say something like, "I understand your job is busy, but I'd really like to hear from you more often. Do you think we could exchange at least one text a day?" or "Sometimes I'm not sure when I can talk to you or when you're busy, so if you could let me know as we go when is a good time to talk, that would be cool," or even (and I know this can be scary, I overthink things too) ask for reassurance that he is interested in you, and explain that contacting you first sometimes would be a good way to show you that he is interested.

About "needy"... Heather (I think it's Heather?) always says that "needy" doesn't really have a meaning because everyone has needs. Which pretty much sums it up. The only thing to keep in mind with needs not to let your needs overshadow someone else's. So, for example, if my boyfriend has asked me to give him the day to study, and I'm lonely and want someone to talk to, it's better for me to find someone in my house to talk to or call my mom or something rather than continually asking him if he can talk yet. Or if he gets bad news and calls me for consolation, and I'm in a house meeting and don't have my phone but call back when I get the voicemail, it's not really fair of him to get mad at me for not answering and say I don't really care about him. That sort of thing. But as long as you're just stating your own needs and wants, and you're willing to work with the other person, there's no such thing as needy.

[Mo]

One thing that's really great about relationships: there are no official rules! People can tailor things like frequency and style of communication to suit their particular needs!
One thing that's really frustrating about relationships: there are no official rules! It can be confusing to not know if your partner has a different style or expectations around communication, or to be unsure what their communication style means, without having a conversation about that. And of course, this can be intimidating.

Because there all no rules, it comes down to this: how do you feel about how often you're talking? If you'd like it to happen more often, either through texting or by scheduling a call once a week (or whatever works), then that's something to bring up with him. I like Kaizen's sample scripts a lot. There really isn't a "too much" in terms of communication, unless one of you feels like it is, and the only way to know that is to talk to him about it and where he stands on this. (And in the same vein, there's no point at which anyone "should" be communicating once per day, either. In some relationships, that might be the established pattern off the bat, and in others it might never happen, but that alone doesn't mean that one relationship is stronger or better than the other.)

To build off of your mention of wanting some reassurance that he is indeed still interested: I was in a long-distance relationship for a while and found that since our schedules also didn't always allow for a lot of communication, I would sometimes start to feel insecure when we hadn't talked in a bit, even though I knew from our conversations that he was still invested in the relationship. So I asked my boyfriend "hey, I know we mostly talk over long emails and you don't have time to reply right away, but can you try to send me texts or tweet something silly at me a little more often, so I know you're thinking about me?" And he stepped up on that, which really helped.

I think your next step here is to bring some of this to him, not necessarily as a problem but just as a check-in, to see how he feels about the level and amount of communication you have, and maybe suggest some changes that you might like, such as a scheduled call or a goal to talk a little more often, or about different things. I definitely agree with Kaizen here that "neediness" is kind of a bummer of a label because it IS important to advocate for your needs. I think the "needy" label often comes when there's a significant mismatch in what people's needs are, but it's often not very fair; if I only want to go on a date once a week but a partner wants to see me every day, it doesn't mean they're a "needy" person in a bad way, but we're probably not a good fit.