Hi, everyone, I am relatively new to poly. I started dating as a solo poly about a year ago and met this guy, let's call him Oak, on OkCupid. He is in an open marriage and we hit it off sexually, but beyond sex tbh there is not much, which is fine with me. He started out texting me frequently, but I guess he sensed that I wasn't keeping up with his energy and maybe 1,5-2 months in, his texting frequency dropped to almost 0. 

I guess what happened then was my first experience of deescalation. At first, I felt a bit weird because it felt like he lost interest. But then I asked myself, wasn't this exactly what I wanted? A relationship that didn't take too much bandwidth. So after a while when I got used to the new frequency of communication, it was all great. We meet maybe about once a month, have a little chat and have sex. We barely text in between - basically just to arrange our meetings and for feedback about the sex we have. And it works great.

Now I met another guy, let's call him Willow, a couple of months ago here on reddit. We started texting frequently. We share a few kinks, and he is crazy but also very interesting. There is much more connection between us, but he lives far away, so it's a LDR, and we haven't met in person yet, but it has been the plan all along. And now that I've finally booked my trip to go visit him, his texting frequency suddenly drops dramatically. And again, on the one hand it hurts because it feels like he either got cold feet, or he doesn't like me as much as it seemed in the beginning, so I can't help feeling let down. On the other hand, again, isn't this what I wanted? Because when he texted me frequently I tried to keep up but felt like it was too intense. 

So I guess, this is my second experience of deescalation, and right now I'm just in the wait and see mode, but I wonder if this is the right way to go about it. With Oak, I just let it happen and we didn't communicate about it much, and it was okay, but it's not like we've intentionally figured it out. With Willow I'm just noticing that it hurts more. I'm getting over it, but still I wonder: Should we have communicated somehow about the imminent deescalation to make it hurt less? I don't want to just let it happen again, I want to have agency in the process, if you know what I mean. So what would you do in my place? Or how should I approach my future relationships knowing that this sort of "early" deescalation keeps happening.

To all those who are going to shout that this is not polyamory but just casual fucking around, well, you are right - de facto it's not polyamory in these two relationships. But I'm open to polyamory: if feelings develop great, if not also great. I need a lot of space and I have a busy life, and I'm happy to have small relationships, but if I come across the right person I would definitely give love a try, though very slowly.