Messaging is a funny thing. While some have a knack for it, others not so much.
Take Stephanie’s unfortunate encounter, for example: “I stopped seeing a guy because he straight up wouldn’t stop saying ‘Right.’ at the start of every single message.”
Or Bree’s: “I dated a guy who didn’t know the difference between ‘you’re’ and ‘your’. It had to end.”
Alex’s, too: “I once dated a guy who used my name all the time while texting me. He’d say things like ‘How was your day, Alex?’ At first it was just a little thing, then it started to bug me, then I asked my friends if it was weird and they started calling me “comma Alex”, because this guy’s grammar was impeccable and he would always use a comma. It was a huge turn off.”
[jwplayer gxLFr3ky]
Whether it be the grammar, spelling, consistency or the overall vibe, some people just have a flare for the ol’ cellular mobile. Other peoples’ texting games are certified boner-killers. But how important is it to feel some sort of chemistry with a potential suitor over the phone, and how much weight should we be attributing to text chemistry during those early dating stages? How much does someone’s texting game say about them, if anything? Does messaging matter at all?
Tom, for one, places quite a bit of merit on texting, and finds that he has to text people first to get a grip on who they are.
“With texting, you have time to think about how you want to present yourself to someone,” he considers. “Say someone’s quite boring/fuckboi/basic in messages and then you meet them and they’re completely different, open, and witty, I kind of go, well, your messaging personality is a liar because you’re actively choosing to be that boring way compared to in person when you have to be who you are in real time, on the spot.”
Daisy, on the other hand, reckons it was beneficial that she and her partner didn’t message that much at all during the early stages of their relationship. “It made me appreciated the time we hung out more, ’cause I feel like it can just get kind of fucking boring if you’re constantly texting. You almost run out of things to say, especially when you’re first starting to date.”
The dating world can seem just as confusing and opposing as these contradictory experiences above, and I think that’s the point – it goes without saying, but no two conversations, connections or relationships will ever be the same, so it’s important to figure out what works for you. Some people may do all the right things over messenger but may turn out to be really lacklustre in person, or vice versa. In fact, some of my best dates stemmed from super bland texts, and this proved to me that some people, despite their hearts of gold or how great they are in person, are just shit texters.
So, yeah, maybe you should give them a chance even if their texts make you cringe.
At the end of the day, you don’t want an online relationship, so, regardless of how shit their texting game is, there’s no harm in seeing how they are vis à vis…. unless their texts resemble something along the lines of ‘RAWR xP bb luv u 4EVA’.
In this case, you should run.
Run, I tell you.
