He broke up with you for someone else.
Four months later, he still says good morning.
He still says he misses you, even while he's with her.
That combination doesn't feel like closure.
It feels like a question you can't answer.
He never actually asks it.
What "Good Morning" Actually Buys Him
A text costs him nothing.
It takes ten seconds to type.
It takes zero seconds of follow-through.
It doesn't require him to explain the breakup.
It doesn't require him to choose between you and the new relationship.
It just requires you to still be reachable.
That's the trade he's making.
He gets the comfort of being missed back.
You get the job of figuring out what it means.
Why Consistency Feels Like Progress When It Isn't
Humans read repetition as intention.
If someone shows up every day, we assume they're building toward something.
That instinct works fine with new relationships.
It fails with exes.
The habit can survive without the relationship attached to it.
He can send "good morning" out of routine, guilt, boredom, or real longing.
The text looks identical in every case.
You can't tell guilt from regret by reading a single message.
You can only tell by watching what he does when the message asks something of him.
So far, nothing has asked anything of him.
Guilt Doesn't Look Like Regret, Even Though It Feels Similar
Guilt says, "I don't want to be the villain in your story."
Regret says, "I made a mistake and I want to fix it."
Guilt keeps you warm enough that he doesn't have to face what he did.
Regret would push him toward a real conversation, even an uncomfortable one.
He's had four months to have that conversation.
He hasn't.
He still has the new relationship.
That's not proof he feels nothing.
It's proof that whatever he feels hasn't outweighed the convenience of keeping both of you.
What Keeps Happening When You Keep Answering
You've replied because the texts have been the only warmth left from the relationship.
That's understandable.
But notice what it actually produced.
You got more waiting instead of more clarity.
You got more confusion instead of less.
Every reply confirms the current deal works fine for him.
He has no reason to change something you keep agreeing to.
Someone else, still fresh off a breakup, is running the same experiment.
They're hoping warmth eventually turns into a date.
It usually doesn't.
Warmth was never the missing ingredient.
Clarity was.
This is the same pattern behind a meme plus "good morning," or an every-other-day check-in.
The contact revives the routine.
It never states the intention behind it.
Without the intention, you're left decoding a greeting instead of hearing an answer.
The One Question That Actually Ends the Guessing
You don't need to disappear forever to get an answer.
You need one direct question a text can't dodge.
Something like, "Are you trying to get back together, or are we just talking?"
If he answers with a real conversation and a real plan, that's regret showing up as effort.
A real plan means a day, a time, a place.
Not "we should hang out sometime."
If he answers with "I don't know," or with another good morning, that's your answer too.
You're not risking the friendship by asking.
You're finding out if there's anything real left to protect.
That fear, that asking might end the one thread you have left, is exactly what's kept this going four months.
But a thread that never pulls toward anything isn't holding you up.
It's just keeping you in place.
You already know that.
You just needed a reason to say it out loud.