You are carrying this one

What this means

What you described is lopsided. You set up most of the meetings. Plans happen on their schedule, usually late, usually short notice. You have not met the people in their life and you are not sure they know you exist. Asking for something clearer feels expensive, so you have not asked. And most weeks you spend more energy managing your feelings about this person than actually enjoying them.

Be careful about what this does and does not tell you. It says nothing certain about them. This page cannot know whether they are careless, or overwhelmed by something you cannot see, or simply less invested than you are, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. What it can say is that the effort is running mostly in one direction, and the terms are being set by one person, and that person is not you.

It is also not a diagnosis, not a verdict, and not an instruction. A quiz does not get to tell you to leave someone, and it does not get to tell you to stay. It is a mirror. What you do with what you see in it is yours.

Why this is so hard to walk away from

Unpredictable warmth is stickier than steady warmth. When affection arrives on an irregular schedule, attention narrows onto the person providing it, and the gaps make the good moments feel more significant than they are. This is well documented and it is not a flaw in you. It means the pull you feel is partly a response to the inconsistency itself, not a measure of how right this person is for you.

There is a related trap. Looking back, you tend to remember the best weeks rather than the average one, and the average week is what actually describes your life. If you are not sure what it looks like, count the last month on a calendar: how many times you saw them, who asked, how much notice you got.

What to do this week

Ask once, plainly, and only once. Something like: "I want something that is not ambiguous. Is that something you want with me?" Then pay attention to whether the answer is about what they want, or about managing how you feel. Those are very different answers, and only one of them is information.

Second, stop initiating for two weeks. Not as a punishment and not as a test to win. As a measurement. You cannot tell how much of this is mutual while you are the one holding it up, and two weeks of not reaching will tell you something no conversation can.

Third, tell one friend the unedited version. Say out loud: "I have been making this sound better than it is. Here is what it actually looks like." Saying the real version to someone who knows you tends to break the spell that comes with rehearsing the flattering version alone.

When this is bigger than one person

Months of reaching for someone who does not reach back leaves a mark on how you rate yourself, and people often mistake that mark for the truth about them. If you notice yourself concluding that this is what you deserve or the best that is available, the self-esteem check-in is a short way to see how far that has drifted.

And if this has been spilling past the relationship into your sleep, your appetite, your focus at work for weeks at a time, that is worth taking to a therapist rather than solving alone. Not because something is wrong with you, but because carrying this by yourself is heavier than it needs to be.