I’m sure you’re an ok person but I really don’t have time to give you the dignity of a phone call or talk to you seeing how many online dating options I am presently juggling and communicating with. So instead, I’ll placate you an SMS asking you What’s up?
Are you single and signed up to a dating site online? Chances are that if you have any personal experience with online dating, you are well aware of the texting and internet dating phenomenon. Suffice it to say that texting has become the bane of your existence if you date online. That means, text quickly becomes a constant irritant or source of misery. Normal relationships are seemingly gone and you get these drive by coffee meetings that very quickly quagmire into text relationships if you aren’t careful about how you act. It is imperative to learn how to set communication boundries with potential suitors.
Texting and Internet Dating
It is like a bizarre and alien dating experience. Granted, the internet is a fantastic way to meet people that you otherwise never would have met in a million years. Particularly for people who work from home or have fairly isolated jobs, its the venue for mingling with other singles in your area.
Unfortunately the great part of online dating which is that it expands your social horizons doesn’t speak to the potential weirdness of it. The problem is you are using this technology to meet a perfect stranger based on photographs and a gussied up description of their wonderful existence. You exchange a few emails, flirt, and then exchange cell phone numbers. Then, it starts. The texting.
Before you even get your first date and overwhelmingly in the new relationships formed online, texting because the natural transition off the email services provided by the dating site. For the lucky few where the relationship miraculously gets off the ground its a boon. For the rest, their online relationship has a high chance of falling dead in the water in the text lane. It starts with technology of electronic communication through the dating site, and dies with technology of sms short messages.
How does it come to this?
There mere alien nature of meeting singes cold turkey from the internet leads to seemingly promising connections that often never work out. They might involve one or a few semi-awkward face to face meetings but the gravitational tendency towards short messages and random texts make real communication fall by the way side. Often the romance gets stuck right where it started, in the electronic stratosphere.
Its only natural for the email exchanges online to trend over to text message exchanges between cell phones. The problem is that texting is not the most flattering means of communication. It’s fine for exchanging a few notes once you know each other but that’s really all its good for. Someone looking for love is trying to have a human interaction and texting is the exact opposite of that. It’s just a bunch of characters in an SMS message, 160 maximum to be exact. How can you possibly have a meaningful exchange between two humans. It’s ridiculous, yet we just accept it as the natural progression from two strangers online to two strangers texting about a date.
Benefits of using the phone
We know that after the initial introduction has been made and a few emails exchanged between people, if there seems to be an interest between the two the phone comes next. Since its awkward that first phone call, sometimes we use a text message to lead into it. Hello there just touching base when is a good time to call you? is a perfectly fine text. After that point however, the phone is better all the way.
First of all you hear their voice and will know much faster if the electronic click you felt translates into actual conversation with one another. Second, the person you call will like it a whole lot better than a text. This is particularly true if they have seen that people go overboard with the texting. Chivalry is not dead, they’ll think when the phone rings. Lastly, you’ll get to a date a lot faster on the phone. You have less chance of getting stuck into the flirting text mud. On text you say things you wouldn’t over the phone. It’s incredibly easy to compliment each others physical attributes using text message to the extent where you become too embarrassed by the stuff you revealed to ever really talk to or meet the person. Text encourages you to say things you probably shouldn’t. It makes it easy to forget you are dealing with essentially a stranger. Using just the words gives you a false sense of comfort.
When they just don’t get it and you find yourself dealing with a serial texter
We extol the virtues of how the phone feels better and works better in the initial states of dating (and even beyond). But just because we know this doesn’t mean the person who is asking us out knows this. So what do we do when we don’t want to text but we are stuck with someone who clearly does want to text.
If you notice that before the first date and even after and between the first few dates that this person is preferring texting and attempting to communicate with you via a flurry of SMS messages, you’ve got to put your foot down. You’ve got to hit that don’t text me ball right out of the baseball field. And you have to do it early on. The sooner you establish the guidelines you desire for communication the better, hopefully before there is any emotional involvement at risk.
You see you’re getting little messages on the phone before or after the date. The follow up is on text about getting together again. The best way to nip the problem in the bud is to tactically start ignoring those little text messages. As soon as you engage in texting, you are tacitly approving the texting as a means of talking. Don’t lead them on into believing its ok and that they can get away with skipping out of the phone calls and texting you instead.
Recognize the behavior you want to encourage positively. That means, be really nice on that telephone. Ignore the behavior you want to make go away. That means ignoring the texts or not responding to them. To be nice about what you want, send simple conversation closing texts that say something to the effect of Give me a call when you get a chance. If that isn’t a blatant way of setting a guideline nothing is.
Dump a Texter
If you get someone who mixes texts in equally with phone calls then you be the judge of whether you are cool with that. As long as there are other means of communication happening which includes phone calls to make plans with them not texts, you should be ok. Texting is popular for sending flirtatious messages and a few here and there are pretty par for the course. They have their place and can even be fun so long as they don’t take over.
But if you tell this person you prefer a phone call because you are planning a date or just wanting to talk, and they don’t get it, you should ditch them and ditch them so fast. Who would sit there and text back and forth for all morning, or evening, and not think you deserve a phone call? It’s silly. If you have to choose between enduring text communication to plan anything with this person, let that potential romantic interest go. If this person can’t understand to give you a call you won’t be a good match in the long run and before you get attached to their beauty, how fun they are, how they seem perfect, the chemistry, the things you think you have in common, you should bail. Being treated with respect is the fundamental in any relationship and without it the relationship is doomed.
If this being cut throat? Yes it is because if you are someone like me that wasted time in a go nowhere text relationship you understand it perfectly. Try to jump forward and understand in your brain that the future brings a person who doesn’t even like you (or have the common sense) to communicate with you respectfully or to hear your requests for phone calls and normalcy not pure texting. A serial texter who doesn’t get the message to call or is too much of a creep to give you what you want (a phone call) will never in a million years be able to make the type of compromises that are required for an actual real relationship to thrive. Not only that, they don’t even want a relationship with you either since if they did, they would call you not text you.
If all you want is an intimate encounter and disrespect, keep planning that date on text message. If you really want to get to know someone and they want to get to know you, you’ll talk on the phone. Texts are horrible as a means of getting to know someone and the odds are that a serial text junkie is not just addicted to texting. They are actually running a hostile interference with the texting. They are keeping anything real with you at bay while they do the balancing act of everything that goes on in their life that is so important that you aren’t good enough to call. Chances are they are balancing more than just responsibilities, they are balancing other people too.
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