Good morning, ladies! I’ve been reading posts for a while and not commenting, but admiring from afar. I really need some advice from you wonderful ladies today though.

Last year I dated this guy for about six months. Things were great between us, including communication. We broke up last October though, due to him not being able to maintain the relationship like he wanted. He couldn’t make me a priority in his life at the time, and he told me exactly that. He honestly did have so much going on in his life that even I contemplated giving our relationship a break prior to him even saying anything. Anyway, we continued to stay in touch with each other. Our friendship strengthened; we spoke at least once a week from then, until maybe last week. We’ve been telling each other a lot; both of us have a lot going on, and we’ve been through some hard life circumstances, so we vent. We talk about good things too though.

However, last Saturday I was watching this show Married at First Sight, and there was an exercise that couples were doing by trading phones to their spouse could look through it. I told him what I was watching, and how I felt about that exercise. Which was, I feel that’s intrusive and it’s not something I would want to do, but I would do it anyway because I wouldn’t want my spouse or sometime I was in a relationship with to feel I was hiding something. He shared how someone in the past had done that (like not sharing her phone when he shared his phone), and he never spoke to her again.

The next day, I asked him how his uncle was doing, who was recently admitted to the hospital. He gave me an update, but was short with me in that exchange. Usually I know when something is wrong and I’ll ask him so we can talk about it, but that day, I was getting ready to study for my nursing class and I figured he just needed some space. So I told him that, and he responded completely normally. But ever since then, whenever I’ve texted (twice) just to see how everything is going with himself, his uncle, and his father (his dad has some medical issues too) he hasn’t responded to me at all. At first I was worried, but when I’ve answered other people on IG, and once I’m on the thread that shows all my open conversations, I can see that he’s been active. He’s never ignored me before, and I can’t help but feel hurt by this.

Now, I know that he’s not obligated to answer me, and I should not feel entitled that he should answer me. He’s free to not do that. It doesn’t make it hurt any less that he’s intentionally ignoring me though. My question is, should I reach out one final time to ask what is wrong? Or should I leave it be?

TL;DR My ex and I remained extremely close after breaking up. He started acting strangely after I told him how I felt about swapping phones as a therapy exercise and has since stopped responding to me which is very uncharacteristic of him. Yet, he’s active on social media.