If you are reading this with a phone in your hand and a message from him open in another tab, I think I know the shape of it: one week he is warm and quick to answer, and the next week he goes quiet, and you find yourself rereading old texts to work out which version was the real one. Mixed signals is the phrase people use, and it is a good one, because what you are holding is a set of pieces that will not sit flat on the table.
Here is what I can say plainly. I cannot tell you why he does it, and I would not trust anyone who claims to from the outside. What I can do is show you how to read your own side of it, which is the side you can act on, and which turns out to hold more information than most people give it credit for.
Why mixed signals feel so loud
A steady no is easy to hear and a steady yes is easy to enjoy. It is the pattern of both together that gets into your head, because your mind treats an unfinished picture as a job to complete, and so it keeps working on it at the bus stop and in the shower and at two in the morning. That is not a flaw in you. It is what attention does with a question that keeps getting a different answer.
It also helps to know that warmth arriving in an unpredictable rhythm tends to hold us closer than warmth arriving on schedule. People who have lived through it often say the good days felt better because of the quiet days around them, and that is a real effect of how attachment works, so if you have been wondering why you are so tangled up, you now have a fair answer that has nothing to do with your judgment.
What you can actually see
When a picture is blurry, the most useful move is to stop staring at his side of it and write down what has really happened, in plain words, with dates. Not what you think it meant, only what took place. He texted on Tuesday and Wednesday and then not until Sunday. He suggested dinner and then did not name a day. He said he liked spending time with you and also that he was not sure what he wanted.
Once it is on paper, two things usually show up. The first is that the pattern is often much simpler than the story you have been telling yourself about it. The second is that the list describes what someone does, and actions are the one kind of information that is genuinely available to you, which is why I would trust them over any theory about a mood or a motive.
The reasons that people guess at
You will find long lists online of why someone sends mixed signals, and most of them read as if the writer had a window into his head. I do not have one. What I can say is that there are many ordinary explanations, that some are kind and some are not, and that you cannot tell which one applies by staring at the text thread, however long you look.
So instead of choosing an explanation, notice what the pattern does to you. Do you feel more like yourself after you have spent time with him, or more like someone waiting to be picked? Do you plan your week around the chance that he writes? That is your own experience, and it is worth taking seriously, because it tells you whether this arrangement is giving you what you came for.
What is yours to decide
There are really two choices, and both are fine. One is to ask him a plain question in daylight, something like what he is looking for and how he sees the two of you, and to listen to the whole answer, including the parts that are less comfortable to hear. I wrote about that in should I tell him how I feel, and the short version is that a clear question tends to bring a clearer picture than a month of interpreting.
The other is to decide what you are willing to have for now, and to say it to yourself without apologizing for it. If you want something steady, then a run of warm and quiet weeks is information about what you are being offered, and you are allowed to act on it whenever you like, without needing him to confirm it first.
If you would like a gentler way in, the short quiz on relationship or situationship asks the questions I would ask you at the kitchen table, and it hands the answer back to you rather than to a card.
What already belongs to you
You noticed the pattern, which many people spend months avoiding. You kept your attention on what was actually happening rather than what you hoped, and you are here asking a careful question instead of a frantic one. Those are the habits of someone who is going to make a good decision, whichever way this goes.
If you want the other side of this same coin, why did he pull away looks at what a step back can mean, and it may make your own week feel a little less like a puzzle.
One line worth keeping: clarity rarely arrives as a signal from him, it arrives as a decision from you. Tonight, before bed, write down three things that actually happened between you this month, one line each, and leave the meaning column empty. Come back and tell me what you see once it is on the page.
Clara
