u/After-Wall1404

For some background, I met my boyfriend in September 2025. We were lab partners, it was his first year of college and my second, and I immediately had the biggest crush on him.

When I first met him he was very nonchalant. Like genuinely impossible to read. I honestly thought he found me annoying and only hung out with me because he felt bad.

We got close around mid-October, and I invited him to spend Halloween with me and my friends. That was the first time we got drunk together. We were both completely blacked out and barely remember anything, but apparently he spent the whole night holding onto me, staying by my side, and being all over me even though he was also drunk out of his mind.

Since then, him and I grew very close and started hanging out frequently by this one spot on campus just to sit and talk for literally hours.

Then winter break came and we were apart for a month because he lives far from campus. At that point we weren’t anything other than friends, and we never really texted unless it was one of us asking to hang out so I didn’t expect us to stay in contact much, but he actually texted me constantly. He’d send me reels all day, we’d stay up all night talking sometimes, and we talked basically every day. We never really had any meaningful or romantic conversations, it was literally just us bullying each other and calling each other names for 6 hours straight but that was just our dynamic.

Toward the end of winter break though, the texting slowed down a lot. Fewer reels, fewer conversations, and eventually barely any texting at all. Once spring semester started, we saw each other every day anyway because we shared a ton of classes, so there wasn’t much need to text.

Fast forward to March: I invited him on a trip with me, and while we were there we shared our first kiss right before spring break. It was a really intimate moment for me and it meant a lot. But after he left the trip, I texted him about something we’d been talking about earlier that day, and instead of continuing the conversation, he just liked my message and left it there. During the entire week of spring break, I barely heard from him besides a couple TikToks.

That honestly hurt my feelings because my brain immediately interpreted it as regret or him not caring, especially after sharing a such an intimate moment.

But when we got back from break, he acted completely normal, affectionate, touchy, close to me, like nothing was wrong. From there we started hanging out even more and slowly got a lot closer emotionally. Over time I broke through a lot of his “nonchalant” walls. He became way more expressive, emotionally open, sweet, and vulnerable with me compared to when we first met.

We’ve basically been dating since early March, and a day before leaving for summer break he officially asked me to be his girlfriend.

Yesterday he left to go back home for the summer. Before he left, we talked a lot about visiting each other, going on trips together, and making sure we call/text consistently. I also brought up how his lack of texting during winter/spring break made me anxious, and he admitted he’s just a really bad texter but said he’d try harder with calling and communicating.

I know it’s only been one day but things already feel awkward between us over text. We barely talked, and when we did text it felt kind of forced because neither of us knew what to say. It’s weird because in person we can literally talk for hours effortlessly. We did call for a little bit and that felt a little more natural but still sort of awkward, but it only lasted like 10 minutes before he had to go.

I know I’m probably overthinking because it’s literally been one day, but I’m scared our terrible digital communication is going to mess up our relationship long-term. I genuinely want to talk to him all the time, but when I open our messages I suddenly don’t know what to say.

How can I make communication feel easier and less awkward?