I've never texted while dating

(an oldie. newly dating in Dominican)

I have a semi-rant about texting. I am a texting fan because it is sweet to keep in touch with my bff and my sister during the day about stupid things like what I am having for lunch or what they are wearing. I am not a fan because it's so hard to read people's emotions. Read on, if you want....

One of my coworkers is a young, smart, beautiful, successful single lady who is deep into the dating pool. She tells me tidbits about her escapades, which I live for. She was talking about this dude she has been on a few dates with. The dates are awesome, but the texting is bad. He seems bored and boring in the texts. I thought back to my dating life, which was not that long ago (Jon and I have been together for maybe 6 years). The weird thing is, texting wasn't a thing at that time. Not at all. People were just getting into texting at that time, 6 or 7 years ago. I remember the last few months before I started dating Jon, guys asking me for my number at a party, then the next day the phone ringing. I would answer, and a recording would say, you have a text message: Hi, what are you up to? Bla, bla, bla. LOL. The recorded voice (always a female) would say LOL as if it were a word. Needless to say, I never called those guys back. At the time, I thought, what wimps! Man up and call me with your voice, like a normal guy. 

But now, I am pretty sure that texting is the main form of communication in the beginning of a relationship. And I feel kinda bad for all these texting daters. Sometimes I get a text from a friend, and it sounds like she is pissed, so I call her, and actually she didn't mean it that way. It's really hard to get your point across with texting.

When Jon and I first started dating, he would call me, we would chat for a few minutes, he would ask me on a date. He would have already prepared the details of the date. He would be like, there's a show at this bar on this date. Would you want to go? And then we wouldn't talk again until that date. And that's how it always was for me during my 10-ish years of going on a ton of first dates. I guess I just feel lucky that I was able to skip this whole getting to know each other over text thing. I kind of wish that guys would go back to calling girls for the sake of my amazing single friends who have to try to read into what a guy is trying to say with a tiny text message. Rant over.


PS: When I was talking to Jon about our lack of texting during dating, he reminded me that we used to send each other emails sometimes too. I really think emails are different. They are longer. You spend more time composing them. You send one, and maybe you get a response a few days later. They are more like letters. Texting is a whole other thing.