What the card describes as a feeling
The state is deliberate solitude. A person reading here has pulled away in order to work something out, and the pulling away is the feeling rather than a symptom of one. They may care and still need the distance.
Received from outside, this is nearly indistinguishable from being dropped. That ambiguity is the honest content of the card and no reading resolves it, which is worth admitting rather than reading around.
Upright
Upright the reading is thoughtful distance. Reflection, taking stock, sometimes a sincere attempt to understand what they feel before acting on it. Regard may be present and it is not being expressed at the moment.
There can also be loneliness in it that the person is not admitting to. The Hermit chooses the withdrawal and does not always enjoy it, which is a distinction people inside it rarely make out loud.
Reversed
Reversed two opposite readings are in use. One is isolation that has gone too far, where withdrawal has become a habit and the person cannot easily come back from it. Loneliness rather than solitude.
The other is a return: someone ready to rejoin, having finished whatever the retreat was for. A third handling is a refusal to be alone with a difficult feeling, avoidance dressed as busyness. Look at whether the spread points inward or outward.
Outside romance
In a friendship this is the person who goes quiet for months and reappears unchanged, which some friends find restful and others find hurtful. At work it can be a colleague who needs to think before committing and looks disengaged while doing it. Within a family it often describes a relative who copes by removing themselves, and whose absence is read by everyone else as judgement.
What a feelings position can and cannot tell you
Positional feelings readings are a modern habit rather than an old one, and they ask the deck to do something it was not built for. The card provides a quality; the identity of the person feeling it is provided by the reader.
So the card cannot tell you whether someone has withdrawn from you or from everything. It hands you a description and you supply the subject. Using it as an answer means the question is not being asked, and that is precisely how a reflective practice turns into an avoidance one.
The Hermit's practical suggestion is unwelcome and clear. Distance is best clarified by a direct message rather than by waiting and drawing cards, and if the answer is that the person needs time, you now know something the deck could not tell you.
Questions people ask about this
Does the Hermit mean they have lost interest?
Not necessarily. It describes chosen distance for the person's own reasons, which can coexist with regard and is impossible to distinguish from outside.
Is the Hermit reversed better or worse?
It reads either as isolation that has gone too far or as someone ready to return. The rest of the spread has to decide.
Should I wait when this card appears?
The tradition reads it as a period of retreat. How long you are willing to wait is a decision about your own life rather than something a card determines.