My Daddy and I struggled with this a fair amount before we were able to figure out a middle ground. He knew from the beginning that it's important for me to be showered with affection and attention, and I knew from the start that he has a very busy and inconsistent work schedule. When he did put in effort, his affection gave me incredible pleasure, but then he could easily go several days without contacting me or respond curtly to my texts, without ever initiating conversations himself. But then, when we DID talk, his communication was always very affectionate. It drove me nuts!! The inconsistency constantly pushed me into a thought-spiral: Am I a burden on him? Is he deliberately ignore me? Is he playing me? Whenever I'd try to bring it up, he'd tell me he'd make an effort to text me more but that he was very busy, and I'd tell him I'd make an effort to back off. But then the whole cycle would start again and we'd always circle back to the dynamic. We almost broke things off until we finally had a long conversation about it with the intent of figuring out exactly what our needs were and how we could make this work to make sure both our needs were met. Here are some things we figured out: Our lifestyles are very different, and that contributes to our different communication styles. My working hours are much shorter than his, and my flexible schedule gives me a lot of free time (thus allowing me to think about him a lot.) Whereas he has an extremely busy and inconsistent work schedule, and He also opened up to me about his history of bad relationships where he was emotionally blackmailed into prioritizing his partner's wants over anything else, to the detriment of his mental health/personal life/work life. So, for him, being expected to text constantly, and being told that I need more attention was a red flag because he equated it with being expected to drop everything and compromise his responsibilities; and to me, him ignoring me was a red flag that he was just playing me and using me.

I made sure to tell him that I know he doesn't owe me shit, but that feeling ignored makes me question his affection for me. I clarified that wasn't expecting him to see me more often than he was able to, or to drop everything and text me back the minute I wrote him. Consistency in communication was all I was asking for - to put in an effort, when he was able, to show me that his baby girl is important to him. I gave him some hypothetical examples: if he's going to be really busy, no problem, what I'd like is to be sent a quick text, "thinking of you," or to be told that he'd call me in X days to catch up. I made sure to emphasize that I admired how dedicated he is to his work and to keeping a healthy balance between our relationship and all his responsibilities, and that I really wanted to find a balance between respecting that, and having my needs met. That conversation was a complete game changer and improved our dynamic immensely. He's made an effort to talk to me more and initiate conversations over text, and I make an effort to chill and space out how often I contact him. Even if he's too busy to see me for two weeks, he knows that me wanting him to contact me isn't an opening to . I now feel comfortable telling him "Daddy, I know you must be busy taking care of all your stuff, but when you do have time, I'm gonna need some affection :)" and he's happy to please me.