Hi J Dee,
His behavior isn’t residue-based. There was something about you that wasn’t quite enough.
That is why he ended the relationship by text.
He didn’t even feel that the connection was worthy enough of a phone call or face to face meeting to let you know that he wanted to end the relationship.
He has always had doubts about his relationship with you.
He was initially too casual with the relationship to the point where you felt the need to challenge him in asking him about where the both of you were.
He made more effort after that but he eventually started backpedaling and then became distant.
Not long after this, you got the text from him letting you know that you should find someone who can invest more time and energy into you.
This lets you know that he didn’t believe that his relationship with you was worth his time and effort.
It was always about being casual.
He may have made more of an effort when you challenged him about what the both of you were.
However, he only did that because he was worried about losing the casual benefits that he had with you too prematurely or before he was ready to.
Even though, since the breakup, he has given you a ride home, at which point he suggested that the both of you can be friends and even told you that you were welcome to come by his place, this doesn’t indicate that he wants to get serious with you.
The new girl that you observed being all over him at that social meeting isn’t someone that he is serious about. If she was, he would have introduced her to you and most likely wouldn’t have offered to buy you a drink when he knew that she wasn’t around.
What he has most likely been doing of recent is trying to see whether he can reestablish a casual relationship with you.
It is not so much that his behavior is control-based, it is more so that he doesn’t want to let a good thing go.
You don’t do it for him emotionally, neither does this new girl that you saw him with.
However, you do it for him physically. That is what he desires the most.
His unwillingness to become more serious or committed could have something to do with a previous relationship that left him incredibly damaged emotionally.
He may have not gotten over it and has a protective invisible wall up to his emotions as a result.
He is hot and cold because he knows that all he wants from you is something casual.
That is why he hasn’t taken you up on your offer to meet for coffee. He would much rather you just come over to his place and get physically intimate with him.
He doesn’t want to put in the work on building a stronger emotional connection or level of trust.
He doesn’t want to expose himself to that nor make himself emotionally vulnerable by opening up to you.
He just wants to get physical. That is where he feels safest.
He doesn’t necessarily think that you are his backup plan. He sees you as being someone that he can have physical intimate relations with at the same time as he continues the same kind of relationship with the current girl that you saw him with.
In essence, he wants to have multiple intimate relations at the same time.
This way, he increases the chances that he doesn’t get bored.
He is holding on to the connection because he knows that you are a person that could give him the kind of affection, attention and physical intimacy that he needs without having to get serious with you.
At least, that was what it was like initially before you challenged him on what you both were. He wants to go back to that.
He wants to go back to the time that he didn’t have to commit or be serious about his relationship with you.
That is why he continues to hold on to this connection.
He is not looking at it as never having appreciated or valued the person when he had the opportunity.
He is more so looking at it as his opportunity to keep someone in his life that he hopes will revert to how it once was because that is all that he believes he is able to give her at this stage in his life.