Sometimes you just have to say to hell with the rules and text the guy you’ve been wanting to chat to. Other times, it would be best to put your phone down and walk away, like if he’s being lazy and doesn’t get in touch. Here are 12 scenarios and how to figure out if you should text him or pretend he doesn’t exist.
- If he hasn’t replied to your last message, leave him alone. He obviously doesn’t want to have a conversation right now for whatever reason. Maybe he got called to do something at work or he’s driving back home after meeting up with his friends. Maybe he’s playing his PS4 and is in the middle of a game. If you keep trying to make a conversation happen, it can be annoying.
- If he initiated contact last, then go ahead and text. Although it might seem silly to follow some texting rules like waiting for him to text you first, sometimes that can help you figure out if you should text or not. If you want to see how he’s doing and he was the last one who initiated contact—in other words, you’re not hounding a guy who hasn’t texted you in ages—go ahead.
- If he hasn’t replied and you haven’t finished your thought, text him. You know how sometimes you don’t want to send large bodies of text in one go so you send bits and pieces? If you’re telling him something via text and he hasn’t replied to any of the parts of your message even though you’ve asked him questions in some of them, go ahead and finish what you have to say. Don’t wait for him to answer. He might be waiting for you to finish!
- If he hasn’t replied and you want to say goodnight, leave him alone. It’s tempting to want to draw a line under a conversation with a goodnight message, and you might think the bonus is that it’s sweet. But you know what? It’s not. If he hasn’t replied to your previous messages, then sending him a goodnight text is the same thing as asking why he hasn’t answered you.
- If he hasn’t replied and you want to double-text, leave him alone. Seriously, sending the exact same message twice won’t make him answer you any quicker. In fact, it’s annoying as hell, especially if you don’t even know the guy.
- If you want to text him when you’re drunk, don’t. But you knew this already. You might regret it when you wake up the next day with a massive hangover.
- If your friends encourage you to text and you wouldn’t normally, don’t. Being in a group can make you do things you wouldn’t usually do, like texting the guy who’s gone AWOL to find out where he is and if he wants to go out for drinks sometime. Just don’t do it because later your friends will be sitting pretty and you’ll be regretting it.
- If he isn’t giving you more than one-word answers, give up. There’s nothing worse than texting someone who seems to be going through the motions during conversation by answering with “cool” or “k.” Argh. Don’t torture yourself by trying to make him talk to you. It’s not worth it.
- If you just had a fantastic date with him, text him. You might think it’s best to wait for him to tell you if he enjoyed going on a date with you before you get in touch with him, but honestly? If you felt it was amazing, express yourself! The worst thing that can happen is that he’s actually not interested in a second date. So what?
- If it just feels wrong, don’t do it. Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with texting the guy you recently met, but you can’t shake the feeling that it’s not cool to do so. Maybe your gut’s screaming at you to leave him alone. Whatever the case, listen to that inner voice. You want the energy you send with your text to be positive, not uncertain or forced.
- If he asked you out on a date but hasn’t texted you, go ahead. Maybe you met online or in RL and he asked you out on a date. You exchanged numbers but he never used yours. Should you text him if you want? Sure. It’s always a good idea to chat to someone via text before meeting them for a date so you can tell if you have a connection or not.
- If you recently ghosted him and now you miss him, don’t text him! Seriously, there’s nothing OK about doing this. If you ghosted the guy, leave him alone. He doesn’t need the reminder of what you did. Deal with your feelings of missing him but let the guy find his happiness elsewhere. Besides, he obviously wasn’t what you wanted, so don’t go back there.