I and my friends have been involved in enough text post-mortems to have learned some of the basic rules of the road, and because I’m a generous soul, I’m passing them on to you.
You only have to go on a couple of dates before you discover that people have wildly different ideas about how to appropriately communicate. There is the man who begins carrying on a full conversation with himself in the texts thread when you don’t answer quickly enough. Or the man who texts repeatedly at 3 a.m. when he is high, and then, when you stop responding, starts in with the phone calls.
And these were the supposedly better times the times when someone actually designed to text after a date at all. So what kinds of things should you be texting? You can gauge that by how well you know the person you’re messaging with. There is some clear don’ts, too.
The appeal of texting is obvious, but its casualness inevitably leads to a lot of ambiguity. How much is too much when it comes to the volume of messages? How long should you wait to text after the first date? How quickly should you reply? Is there such a thing as “too soon” to contact someone you like? Do you need to brush up on your grammar before making your move? And what about emoji?
It’s also important to pay attention to the cues you’re getting from the conversation. Don’t be a freak and blow up someone’s phone. If you’re sending way more messages than the other person or getting mostly short, non-encouraging replies, the person’s probably not as into the conversation as you are, so stop pushing.
