Is Texting Ruining Our Dating Lives?

First of all, I get that texting exists and it’s all I do and I’m really not proud of it. However, I would never come on to someone via text. Alright, maybe I would, but it’s only because I basically have to because that’s all everyone does, essentially. Granted, I am probably smoother via text because writing is my thing, but that’s exactly my point. All the people we talk to are probably smoother via text, too. And then you meet them and think, “Where is the person I was talking to? You can’t possibly be them.”

Texting fosters a reality in which people can say things that they don’t really mean because they have no real-time repercussions. You can take the time to think of a witty response, or say something that would never actually come out of your mouth because you have your phone screen to hide behind.

Texting is easy. Texting is safe. Texting is for drunk nights and busy afternoons, not for meeting and enticing.

I might need a glass of wine before I answer a call from you for the first time, but even still, that is better than me trying to get to know you by asking the, “What’s up?” “How are you?” “What have you been up to?” kind of questions, you know? I mean, where is the romance? Where is the love? Where is Justin Timberlake with a killer chorus when you need him?

Nothing is worse than the, “What’s up?” text. What’s up? You know what’s up? I’m texting someone who is a way better texter than you, that’s “what’s up.” (I’m really proud of that line.)

We all get nervous when we’re trying to flirt with someone. When we’re feeling out what the boundaries are. So messaging actually helps sometimes when we can’t find the right words to say or am inherently preoccupied and want to take a minute to think. Plus, we are all pretty busy. We don’t have the time to talk on the phone with one another all day. So texting is convenient, but does that make us lose some of the butterflies we would have gotten if we were in our 20s say, 50 years ago? Maybe I’m old fashioned, or maybe I just never want to be one of the ten girls a guy is texting simultaneously because…that’s not my style.

All I’m getting at here, is that we’ve become so used to texting that we can forget the kind of people we want to be with. Maybe you even make someone out to be someone they’re completely and totally not, just based on their texts. We read between the lines, we infer meaning, we finish thoughts and jump to conclusions — and all over what? A few characters on an illuminated screen?

Maybe we’re just in love with our phones, instead.