What to say when she says she's super tired after work lately

If she says she's wiped after work and her replies have slowed, the most likely reading is that her job or her commute or her evenings are eating her energy. That's a fact about her life, and it usually isn't a verdict on you. People who are interested often still go quiet when they're depleted. What you can read from it is her bandwidth. She may have room for short, easy exchanges and not much room for planning, long messages, or anything that feels like homework.

Look at the pattern rather than the single message. If she's still replying, still making small jokes, still asking you things back, that's someone who's tired but engaged. If the replies are getting shorter and she's stopped asking questions, that's a slower fade and it's worth giving her more room rather than less.

A reply here has to do three things. It has to acknowledge what she said without making it heavy. It has to take the pressure off, so she doesn't feel she owes you an explanation or an apology for slowing down. And it has to leave a door open that's easy to walk through, without requiring her to choose anything.

Acknowledging it means responding to the tiredness as a normal, human thing, the way you'd respond to a friend. Taking the pressure off means signalling that slow replies are fine. Leaving a door open usually means a small, low-effort hook: a question she can answer in a few words, or a comment that invites her to keep talking if she wants to. Keep the whole thing short. A long reply asks her to read and respond, which is exactly the thing she's saying she doesn't have much of.

Reply in daylight and in the same general hour she usually messages, so you're not showing up at 2am with something intense. After you've replied, leave it. Don't send a second message the same evening to check that you're okay. If she replies warmly, you can keep the back and forth easy and short. If she replies with one word or doesn't reply, wait another two or three days before any follow up, and make that follow up light, something that doesn't ask for a plan or an answer.

If there's still silence after a week or so, stop chasing. Don't send a message asking if she's alright or whether you should stop texting. Let it sit. If she comes back later, you'll be in a much better position than if you'd pushed. If she doesn't come back, you've learned she wasn't going to have energy for this anyway, and you can stop spending it on her.