The Real Time Romance Chase

In 2017, we are cushioned and swaddled by technology like little adult-babies of the future, creating a filtering barrier around us, through which we feed all of our communication. The romantic chase for millennials occurs mostly online instead of the real world. Instead of peeping your crush in the supermarket, you see him “like” a recent Instagram post, or worse yet, you see his handle in the “seen” section of your Instagram story (this feature takes my neuroses to a whole new level like you wouldn’t believe).

So this is our reality now, all communication and information is received in real time, which plays into the psychological tailspin that I find myself in any time I’m forced to wait hours or even days for a guy to respond to me. For my part, when I receive a text from a guy for whom I don’t reciprocate interest, I am very slow to respond, if I respond at all. So that MUST mean that when I don’t hear from a guy in a timely manner, that he must not be interested in me either?

Well, not necessarily. One big mistake I’ve made in the past is to impose my texting habits and philosophies onto other people, and holding them to what ends up being excessively high standards. I’ve done this even after a guy has prefaced, “I’m really bad at texting, please don’t get mad at me.” My knee-jerk reaction to this kind of remark is, well if you’re so bad at it then why can’t you CORRECT it?? Certainly it must just mean he doesn’t like or respect me enough. This thought process has predictably got me nowhere with guys and has even driven men away in the past. While I do still grapple with understanding certain men’s lack of text responsiveness, I have learned (the hard way) that the benefit of the doubt is good for myself and for him.