Texting can be pretty great — the butterflies you feel when you hear your phone ping with a new message and the fun of having late-night conversations with someone who seems so interesting are exhilarating. The catch? Just because a guy’s great at texting, it doesn’t mean he’s great boyfriend material — and if he’s only texting you, but never calling or trying to make actual plans, you need to save your time and energy and move on. Here’s why:
- Texting is non-committal. Yes, you can have really deep and interesting conversations via text, but it’s never going to be as intimate as a call or face-to-face conversation. By sticking to texting, the guy can remain just out of reach of you. He can dodge personal questions and pretend to like you when he’s actually chatting to five other women.
- Texting is robotic. He can take minutes, hours or days to reply to your messages. This gives him loads of time to prepare perfect answers, which means you can never be sure if you’re getting authentic, spontaneous answers or if you’re dealing with a liar or someone who’s presenting himself as something he’s not.
- Texting means he can moon you. Mooning is when someone silences your texts on their phone without you even realizing that they’ve done this. When he doesn’t reply for a few hours, you might wonder if he’s actually rejecting your messages, but you can never know for sure. So you give him the benefit of the doubt and continue texting him. In other words, wasting your time. It’s so messed up.
- Texting should lead to more. You can start out with texting, like if you’re chatting to a guy you’ve just met, but as time goes on, you should be calling and seeing each other. If all you’ve got is texting, then there’s a huge problem here and you know what it is: he’s just not into you.
- Texting hides important clues. No matter how great his texts are, it’s not the same as chatting on the phone. You miss out on verbal clues, on how sexy or terrible his voice is, and more. Any guy who wants to avoid calling isn’t invested in the relationship because he doesn’t want to take things to a more personal level.
- Texting is not a real connection. Yes, you should have good chemistry via text, but even so, you’ll want to have other forms of connection — like the spark in real life. If he’s letting texting you replace face-to-face communication, then he’s being shifty. And no, emojis don’t make up for it!
- Texting is convenient. He can text you every single day and not actually want to date you. So before you waste all your data on this guy, consider asking if he’d like to take things up a notch so that you don’t have to spend time on someone who’s just in it for the convenient conversation when he’s bored at work.
- Texting means he doesn’t have to make the effort. It’s so much easier for guys to text instead of call. A lot of them will say they just prefer texting, but it’s really just a lazy way out. If a guy really likes you, he’ll want to make the effort to show it, like by calling you — even if it frightens him to death. So if a guy has been texting you for weeks, but doesn’t seem to want things to progress, it’s a sign that he doesn’t like you as much as he should.
- Texting can be done behind someone’s back. Think about this: what’s stopping the guy from texting you while he’s got a girlfriend? It’s not like you’re going to hear her voice in the background during a phone call. He can easily keep you hanging while he dates someone else without you even knowing.
- Texting and sexting mean he’s a player. If he flirts a lot via text and claims to like you a lot, he might try his luck with a bit of sexting and maybe — if he’s brazen — some penis pics. Ugh. When a guy texts and sexts without actually wanting to date you, he’s just looking for some quick action.
- Texting means he can be a jerk. If he says he’s more comfortable texting than using other forms of communication, don’t accept it. He should be able to meet you halfway if you prefer calling each other. Besides, any guy who becomes too comfortable with how he interacts with you is really not looking to make a grand effort to date you, so ignore his texts and move on.
