How To Deal When His Energy Randomly Shifts

You’ve been seeing and talking to him for a few weeks or maybe even a couple of months, and things are going so well. For starters, you have so much fun together. The chemistry is undeniable. You text and FaceTime daily. You’ve met his friends, and he’s met yours. He’s emotionally supportive and you trust him.

Until one day, something changes. It’s subtle at first. For example, maybe he doesn’t call you on his way home from the office like he usually does. No biggie, you figure he probably just had happy hour plans with his friends or had a seriously bad day and needed to decompress solo. You don’t take it personally and move about the rest of your evening without overthinking a thing.

Until you check in the next day. This time, he takes way longer to reply than normal. When he finally does text you back, the content of his message seems off too. You can’t put your finger on what exactly, but something has changed with him, and the only way you can describe it is an energy shift.

So you give him space because you figure that’s what he needs. You focus on yourself. You throw yourself into your own work. You prioritize your friends and family. You also check your phone constantly to see if you hear from him. Nothing. You then start to feel that sinking sensation in your stomach, that gut feeling that tells you you’re not reading too much into the silence but assessing it appropriately:

It’s over.

After another week passes and you still get no text or call from him, you decide to reach out one more time to test the waters. Maybe you share a new song you thought he’d like or simply ask him how he’s doing. Again, he takes forever to get back to you and his text back is a dead-end reply.

You stop trying. You never hear from him again.

We’ve all experienced it. The dreaded energy shift, that palpable yet not entirely definable change in chemistry with someone we’re seeing that signals our time with that person is done.

While the energy shift seems random since it’s often so abrupt, it actually always occurs around the same time: when shit started to get too real for him. When it was time to commit.

Maybe it was because of cowardice or cold feet, perhaps it was that he had one foot out the door all along or simply changed his mind. It could have been bad timing for him, he may have been going through something emotionally that made him unavailable.

But honestly? It doesn’t matter was his reason was. Getting caught up in the potential explanations for why he pulled away only keeps you hung up on someone who didn’t choose you back. It distracts you from what is by focusing on what if.

And I know. I know it hurts so much. It feels like you wasted so much effort on someone you maybe didn’t really know at all. But you’re not foolish for believing things were going well. You’re not pathetic for letting someone in. If anything, your willingness to share your heart with someone, no matter how temporary, shows your strength and bravery.

Whatever you take away from this situation, do not let it make you fearful to try again. Don’t let his inability to commit prevent you from keeping yourself open to someone else. Because when he let you go, he set you free. He wasn’t it for you. He was just a stop along the way.

Let him go.