Texting. The first mistake.

Texting pet peeves? Yeah, I've got one. Actually a lot, but I'll start with one. One word responses.

Here's one half of a text conversation I had recently. The responses to my questions were as follows: good, nothing u, fun, no, yes, idk, ok.

Hun, texting is difficult enough without you giving me zero feedback.

What happened to our interpersonal skills? Society is degenerating to the point where we no longer know how to communicate with each other. Haha, communicate? Let's start with the fact that we don't even know how to have a conversation, much less communication.

They say communication is key. Work on communication, strive for open communication, make sure you communicate, blablabla. Well what I've noticed is that the problem of poor communication starts a long time before we actually need to communicate. Now, the actuality of our texting each other is not the "first mistake" but rather how we do it.

Here's a question for you ladies out there. Do full sentences and punctuation turn you off? I think they do, for some of you at least. Let me show you what I mean.

I have an app called Tinder on my phone. If you don't know what that is then look it up. I did an experiment. I tried three different things while messaging different girls. With some I tried correct speech mechanisms, with some I reciprocated their speech patterns, with others I threw conversation to the wind.

These three conversation tactics had very different results. Which do you think got the worst result?
-When I was using proper grammar, punctuation, and placing complete thoughts in my messages then about 4 out of 5 times the conversation wouldn't progress past a handful of messages.
-When I reciprocated their speech (ie. they speak proper, I speak proper. They speak sloppily, I speak tots sloppily.) that seemed to work a little better. I got more responses and was able to communicate slightly better, albeit the conversation wasn't on the level I hoped it would be.
-Sadly enough, I got the most responses when I completely deteriorated my speech, got rid of everything from capitalization to punctuation to spelling and threw in an overabundance of acronyms. (ex. heyy ;), good u, lol nuthin, idk, r u serious, k, etc.)

Are we freaking serious here?? To get consistent responses to my messages I had to degrade my speech patterns until I was left with the equivalent conversation capacity of a neanderthal talking to a rock. And THAT's what got me the most responses. Sad.

Girls, if you are looking for a man who will actually communicate with you in a relationship, who will be able to place his thoughts in coherent order and seek to understand you then try and find a man who respects you and himself enough to text you a full sentence; complete with a capital letter at the beginning and a period at the end!

I don't mean to generalize and stereotype women in any way. I know a lot of you are rather turned off by acronyms and poor grammar, but I am merely relating a small sampling of the personal experience I've had personally. After trying this experiment I have reverted back to my personal standard of punctuation and capitalization. I want to date, and eventually marry, a woman who will do the same and this is a quick way to weed through those girls who haven't matured quite enough for that.

Now lets come at this from another angle. I've had girls who have asked me "Hey where did you go?" or something to that equivalent. My thought is usually, "Well after getting five one-word responses in a row I kinda gave up on our "conversation" if you can even call it that. If you want a man to respect you, your thoughts, your opinions, and your feelings, then you have to show him that you're more than "tots" serious about something.

Personally, I would rather you take a while to text me back something meaningful than texting back immediately with a one-word response. Now understand I am talking about when I'm first getting to know someone, or trying to have a conversation. If I text my brother to pick up milk on the way home from work and he responds with "k" then that is perfectly adequate for the situation.

Here are some tips and some rules for texting that would sure make things a lot easier.

- Who texts first? Generally the guy should text first, it's true. I completely agree with the fact that men aren't taking their roles seriously enough. But when is it ok, or even recommended, that the girl text first?
     - If a guy has been starting off conversations first for a few days in a row he may back off and not text first just to see if the girl will text him first for a change. This is a guys way of testing the water to see if she's interested enough to try and have a conversation or not. All a girl needs to do is say "Hey :)" or "Good morning!" just enough to open the door and let the guy know that she's interested in still talking to him.
     - After a date. The guy got up the courage, the funds, and the time to take a girl out. If she had a good time, and especially if she wants another date, she had better text him within about about a half-hour of being dropped off with something like "Thanks so much for taking me out tonight, I had a really great time. :)" I've taken out some girls that didn't text me a thing after the date so I just assumed that it didn't go well for them and I didn't ask them out again. But then a few weeks later one of their friends will hint to me that I should take her out again because "she had a great time!" Gosh, girls, if you had a good time then let the poor chap know!
     - If you've been talking to a guy fairly consistently and if you're interested in him then just go for it and text him first on occasion. It'll be a pleasant surprise for him and he'll be able to tell that your relationship is important to you. Guys should not have to text first 100% of the time. That's exhausting and can be frustrating.

Emoticons

- Emoticons. The largest communicators in interpersonal communication are 1- body language 2- voice inflection. Texting has neither of these. The best way to be able to communicate emotion (sadly enough) is to throw in emoticons.  I know, I know, it looks cheesy and somewhat teenage-girl-esque but honestly it really helps in communication!

- Use proper grammar, verbiage, and punctuation. You want to be respected as an intelligent human being, so text like one. (How people perceive your intelligence can be linked to how well you're using grammar while texting. See what I did their? Haha, they're, their, and there are also important.)

- If you want a conversation to continue you'd better give whomever you're texting something to go off of. If I say to you "What are you up to?" and you say "Nothing." then what the heck am I supposed to say back to that? Try this "Just chillin on my couch after a crazy morning. You?" That's so much better! You see that?? Let's try another one. "Do you have any pet peeves?" "lol not really" "Haha so you're a pretty chill person eh? ;)" "i guess." I feel sorry for whomever is trying to have a conversation with you if these are the responses you're giving. If you're wondering why no one ever texts you or why you never seem to have a real conversation with anyone you might want to check how you're responding to their attempts.

- Guys. We have a lot we can improve on in our texting conversations. In general texting is too  superficial. Now I know it's hard to have good conversation while texting, especially if the girl you're texting is not giving you much to work with. But most girls like having meaningful conversations. Discussing important things, feelings, ideas, passions. As men we tend to steer away from those types of conversations, we're not as in touch with out emotions as women are. But we're never going to get any better at talking about them until we start practicing. There are some pretty awesome girls out there. They deserve men who are confident and sure of themselves emotionally.

- Girls. Your turn. I've heard girls say that guys are boring when they text "get to know you" questions, or that they hate small talk. Well forgive me for not feeling much sympathy for you. Nowhere is it written than men have to constantly entertain you (and if you do feel that way then you have problems that I can't address here), and if you don't like small talk then take control of the conversation and talk about something you want to talk about! Don't act like you're just powerless and the only thing you can do is answer our questions! I'd like to see how you do if the roles were reversed. If the girls had to start the conversation and keep it rolling. Discussion goes two ways people, if you're not helping the conversation you're hurting it.

Now some of you my think that I'm throwing a little too much proverbial weight behind the psychology of texting, but if you want a healthy relationship it all starts somewhere. Texting has become the new "first step" of building a relationship. So don't build your foundation on meaningless acronyms and a lack of punctuation.

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