I’ve been re-reading this and it strikes me how much Sparkly is like that– except that I never really see her being distant. Somehow it isn’t a problem between the two of us.
Why does it work so well/so much better between Sparkly and me?

I guess partly because of how I deal with my emotions. Partly just by habit, I tend to go off by myself and think things over, instead of talking to other people. And partly because of weirdness, it takes me time and effort to be able to explain my feelings out loud. So, I rarely go to Sparkly for help with my feelings, and when I do it’s very explicit, “Can I have a hug? I’m stressing out about ____.” I don’t go to her in the midst of big emotions. I don’t throw my emotions at her.

We’ve found a decent way to deal with Sparkly wanting to run away but get chased. Namely, she freely admits that that’s what she’s doing, and I have a pretty good idea of how to tell when she means “please follow me” and when she doesn’t.

I guess my willingness to ask questions out loud is a big part of it. Sometimes we actually get by on nonverbal signals, but it works well because we have had actual in-words conversations about what the signals are. And mainly we’ve done that because I’m willing to ask the “What does it mean when you ____?” “How do I tell if ____?” questions.  (Though Sparkly sometimes asks me about things like that too, which is good.)

Also,  she is better at getting over embarrassment/reluctance in text than she is face-to-face.  So I guess us being long-distance helped.  And having Big Important Conversations in text is generally better for me, too, so I was happy to do that where I guess someone else would have insisted on phone calls or something.