An interesting fact: the madness that you fall into today simply did not exist 10, 20 years ago. In those days, you wouldn't be maniacally checking your phone every few minutes, falling into anger and despair, in agony just because a person didn't send you a short, stupid text.
Modern romance is stressful, especially when it comes to writing. In 2010, only 10% of young people used messages to ask someone out on a date for the first time. In 2013 - already 32%. More and more people are sitting alone, staring at the screen of the phone, and at the same time experiencing a whole range of emotions.
A few minutes passed and the status of my message changed to read. My heart has stopped. Here it is, the moment of truth. I braced myself and watched as these little dots appeared on the smartphone screen, indicating that someone was typing a response for you. Feels like from a slow ride to the highest part of the slide. But then a few seconds pass - and that's it, they disappeared. And no answer.
Hmmm... What happened? A few more minutes pass and... nothing. 15 minutes pass... Nothing. My confidence is fading, doubts begin to torment me. An hour passes... Nothing. Two hours pass... Nothing. Three hours pass… A slight panic sets in. I am rereading my post. I was sure of him, but now I'm starting to wonder what's wrong with him.
“I am such a fool! You should have typed "Hello!" with two "e"s, not one. I asked too many questions. What was I thinking? Oh, I should have asked about something else. Aziz, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU AND YOUR QUESTIONS?”
Aziz Ansari
Technological progress today allows us to contact the person we like instantly. But that doesn't make it any less of a problem. For example, how to invite a girl or a guy on a date? Worth a call? Or send SMS? Or add as a friend and send a message on a social network? How long do you have to wait before answering an invitation? Obviously, with progress came changes in our personal lives. We evaluate a partner differently, we start and build relationships differently.
Comedian Aziz Ansari decided to look into the problems of modern romantic relationships and, together with New York University sociologist Eric Klinenberg, developed a massive research project. From 2013 to 2014, they conducted focus groups and surveys around the world, as well as interviewing well-known romance researchers. The results of this research resulted in the book Actively Searching, in which, among other things, you can find the answer to the question of what to do as soon as you send or receive a message.
How long should I wait before replying to a message?
This issue caused the most controversy and disagreement among the respondents. And here are the tactics that people usually follow.
- The tactic of doubling the response time: they answer you in five minutes, you wait ten. In this way, you will always be in a better position because you will seem busier and less available than your interlocutor.
- Some people wait a few minutes to show that there is something more important in their life than a phone.
- Some respondents believe that it is better to double the response time, but sometimes you can answer quickly, there is nothing to worry about (as, indeed, in too long a response).
- Some people claim that they wait exactly 1.25 of the response time.
- Others argue that it is enough to wait three minutes.
- There were those who were already fed up with such games, so they responded immediately as soon as they saw the message. They find that their responses without feigned anticipation seem more lively and confident.
But do these tactics really work? And why do so many people follow them? Let's see if these strategies correlate with real psychological research.
Reply as reward
In recent years, behavioral scientists have studied why waiting tactics have such a powerful effect on people.
You will appear less attractive if you reply to messages immediately.
Psychologists have done hundreds of studies in which they have given animals rewards in a variety of settings. One of the most interesting findings is the “indeterminate reward”, that is, the situation when an animal, pressing a lever, cannot predict whether it will receive a reward. It turned out that uncertainty greatly increases the interest of the animal in receiving a reward: the level of dopamine rises, so that, one might say, it gets high from this sensation.
In lab animals that receive a reward each time the lever is pressed, interest eventually wanes. After all, they know that as soon as they want a reward, they will receive it.
The same principle applies in relationships: if you are a guy or a girl who responds to messages without delay, you begin to be taken for granted. As a result, you lower your value as a reward. This means that the other person will not feel a strong need to respond to the message. Or, as in the case of laboratory animals, the need to push a lever.
What do texting and gambling have in common?
Messaging is an environment in which our mind begins to work in a specific way. Before everyone had cell phones, people always waited some time (several hours or days) before calling back, but in such a way that the other person did not feel anxious. Correspondence has taught us to get faster responses. According to surveys, this figure varies from person to person in the range from 10 minutes to one hour.
Natasha Schüll, an anthropologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), studies gambling addiction, in particular, what happens to the minds and bodies of people who are addicted to slot machines. Unlike cards, horse races or the weekly lottery, which make players wait (for their turn, when the horses finish, the weekly draw starts), slot machines allow you to gamble without delay, as the player receives information quickly.
You are used to expecting instant results, so you start to lose patience with any slightest delay. When you text someone you like but don't know well yet, it's very much like a slot machine. There is also a lot of uncertainty, anticipation, anxiety. You are set to receive a message. You want it, you need it right now. But if you don't get a quick response, it will throw you off track.
Natasha Shul
Text messages are different from the messages people left on answering machines before the advent of smartphones. A message on an answering machine can be compared to buying a lottery ticket. You know in advance that you will have to wait until you know the winning numbers. You don't expect to be called back immediately. You can even enjoy this feeling of uncertainty because you know in advance that you will have to wait a few days. But in the case of text messages, if you don't get a response after 15 minutes, then you start going crazy.
How to appear more attractive in the eyes of another person
The psychological principles associated with waiting can be a very useful strategy for a single person who wants to appear more attractive.
For example, let's say you are a man who met three women at a bar. The next day you write to them. Two respond quickly enough, and the third does not respond at all. The first two women showed interest in you, and your brain, having received the answer, calmed down. But the third woman, without answering, created uncertainty, and your brain begins to look for an explanation for her act. You don't lose interest: “Why isn't she answering? What is wrong with me? Maybe I did something wrong? This uncertainty, social psychologists have found, can lead to strong romantic attraction.
A team of scientists - Erin Whitchurch, Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert - conducted a study in which women were shown profiles of different men on the social network Facebook, who in turn told what they think about their profiles.
- One group of women was shown the profiles of men who rated the profiles of the subjects from this group as the best.
- The second group was told that they were shown profiles of men who rated their accounts as average.
- The third group was shown profiles of men who could not decide whether they liked these women or not.
Women were expected to give preference to men who rated them as the best over the average (by the principle of reciprocity - we like people who love us). However, women were more likely to prefer men from the undecided group. Later, they also reported that they thought more about men who were undecided in the assessment.
When you think a lot about a person, their image is firmly established in your head, which, ultimately, can lead to attraction.
Another idea from social psychology that concerns our expectation games is the principle of scarcity. Usually we perceive something as more desirable when it seems to us beyond our reach. So when you rarely get messages from someone, in effect, that person is artificially creating scarcity and presenting themselves in a better light.
Don't take it personally
You wrote to a person and invited him on a date, but there was no reaction from him. What to do in such a situation? Certainly do not sprinkle ashes on your head and think what you said or did wrong. Remember that sometimes it's not about you, it's about other factors that come into play. There may be something going on in a person's life that you have no idea about, but this can affect his desire to start a relationship.
So you met a man. He has a dazzling smile. He does wonders in bed, he likes all the same things you do, except for a few that are not so important, and keeps communication interesting. In a nutshell, it's a match made in heaven, except for one super-annoying thing... You've texted him and he's not replying to messages.
There's nothing more frustrating than meeting someone you've connected with and then discovering that the partner has no intention of ever contacting you again.
It's pretty typical to play romantic games when you're single. It's all part of courtship, a kind of dance that turns our lives into a romantic comedy or drama. It's fun and exciting, but also exhausting. Once you and your man have reached any serious status, all this drama should just evaporate. Unfortunately, life isn't always that way.
Could it be that his phone is broken or unavailable? Maybe he's in the hospital? Maybe. But more often than not, text messages go unanswered because whoever reads the message simply doesn't respond right away. A man should not instantly send SMS. After all, he can drive a car or perform heart surgery.
To get to the bottom of the "why men don't text back" mystery, we asked an anonymous group of men to answer the question, "Why did a man stop texting a woman?" By and large, everything we heard came down to one of the following two reasons.
He doesn't want to see you anymore
If your friend has decided to keep quiet and you know he wasn't keen on the job, it's possible that the partner is trying to break up with you by simply disappearing. He's immature, cowardly, and you deserve so much more, but anyway, that's what's happening right now.
Here is what some of the men said:
“The relationship is over. I'm just too cowardly to say it out loud and I want her to do it."
"I dodge female text messages when I want to"
“The main reason is probably that he doesn’t like you as much as he thought. I know it's cruel, but at least he doesn't waste any more of your time."
"Men usually don't ask for a second date if they don't get sex on the first"
“It just wasn't as good for him as it was for you. If he liked you, he would answer"
“There can be many reasons. The reasons why I stop calling or texting a girl are always different. Maybe I just wasn't in love with her and was only interested in sex. The goal has been achieved and I don’t want to anymore.”
“If she texts me once and then a couple more times before I reply, or through any other channels like Facebook, I will definitely put her on hold.”
He is too emotionally immature to talk to you about something that is on his mind.
These are the moments when he doesn't know how to talk to you and can't or won't learn to be smart about such important things.
Here is how the respondents answered:
"If someone else attracts me, I can be with someone else"
"When I don't answer someone, it's because I don't want to talk to them at the moment"
“The only time I will ignore a text from a woman is when there is something big to talk about with her. I feel like I'm not ready for something big."
"He probably just wants to have fun with his friends"
Women extremely often fall into hysterics because their men do not want to respond to messages that are sent to them. They ask a completely logical question: why the guy does not answer. Immediately thoughts such as “he doesn’t love anymore”, “he thinks I’m annoying”, “he’s bored”, etc. burst into his head. Most girls also think that if a young man does not answer, then he has found another passion and is busy with her. But usually the problem lies elsewhere.
Often, when sending SMS, girls are waiting for a lightning-fast response. If he does not appear, they begin to worry. But this should not be done. The reason may be as follows:
- 1. The man's phone is out of charge, so he cannot answer the message or call back.
- 2. Free time is what a guy sometimes lacks. He is at work, so even the most romantic and sensual message will not be able to let him break away from business. More often than not, guys are so engrossed in their workflow that they can't even read incoming messages, let alone reply to them. We need to take it more calmly.
- 3. Lack of interest. If a man is a person whom the girl met recently, he does not respond to SMS, because he is not interested in further relations with a particular woman.
- 4. Some men don't realize that girls need an instant response to their messages. They don't understand why they panic like that. If they are busy with something, they will not stop to write a few sentences or send a simple emoji in response. Many understand the desires of their soulmate and listen to them.
- 5. If the husband does not respond to messages after a quarrel, he is very offended by his other half. In this case, he will ignore all calls and messages until he calms down.
- 6. Some women write messages in such a way that they have absolutely nothing to answer. Men do not want to waste words in vain, so they do not understand why come up with some kind of response to a meaningless message.
What to do if the man did not answer?
It is necessary to behave calmly, not to throw tantrums and scandals, because this will not help to find out the reason and improve relations with the young man. You should forget about the existence of the guy for a while. Go to work, meet friends, visit a park or a good cafe. You can arrange a meeting with another guy, because men feel rivals.
You have to be inaccessible and mysterious. Then men will begin to pay attention to such an interesting person and respond to SMS instantly.
What to do:
- It is worth analyzing what exactly was written in the message sent to him. If literally everything in him is saturated with adoration and addiction, this greatly repels the guys, because they are hunters. A man is not too interested in watching girls hang around his neck. He is more interested in seeking location.
- Asking a question is the best option in this situation. You should ask him about something, come up with an interesting and unusual question that is simply impossible not to answer.
- Brave girls can call the object of their love. But in this case, you need to be prepared for the fact that he may not pick up the phone.
- After the young man returns home and receives a lot of reproaches in his face, he does not quite understand why the scandal is happening. That is why you should first find out the reason for ignoring, and then deal with the second half.
- If the reason for ignoring is resentment, you should write to him that the guilt is realized. It is necessary to ask for forgiveness and try to smooth the corners of the situation. Next, you need to wait until the young man calms down and answers.
You should not be too intrusive person who tries to constantly control a man. In this case, you need to stop yourself or contact a psychologist who will help get rid of this problem.
Or he likes you so much that the most important thing for him is to be in touch with you. Or this is a fool who has no job, no hobbies, no friends, no important things, no purpose in life, and he is busy all day long just sitting and waiting for at least someone to write to him. And your message for him is like manna from heaven, on which he immediately pounces, like a starving man in the desert.
2. He answers in a few minutes.
This is a fairly common weekend option among people who love each other, because it means: he is not constantly on the phone, but often enough to check if someone (like you) has written to him.
Well, either he sits with the phone in his hand and waits for your message, but hesitates a little with the answer, so that you do not think that he is sitting like a fool with the phone in his hand and waiting for your message.
3. He sends an answer in an hour or two.
Sometimes we see that someone has written to us, but we are so tired that we don’t have the strength to answer right away, and we want to at least take a break from communicating with people. And that's okay. Or we were distracted by something (cooking, taking a shower, watching an interesting program) and did not hear how the SMS came. This is also normal.
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4. He constantly answers you through the same length of time.
It happens that you leaf through messages from a young man and discover an amazing coincidence. For example, he always answers you 66 minutes after you text him. What the hell? Either this is really an “amazing coincidence”, or he read some crappy book from the “How to Become a Pickup King” series, the author of which advised you to wait just long enough for you to think about him all the time, or some kind of satanic ritual. Or maybe he suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder and counts the minutes for an answer the same way he counts all the cracks in the asphalt on the way home?
Just in case, ask him in between times what that means.
5. Sometimes messages come immediately, sometimes he responds as if nothing had happened only the next day.
Educated young men, having been delayed for an unusually long time with an answer, nevertheless ask for forgiveness and explain that they urgently left for their grandmother in a village where the phone does not catch, or something like that. Otherwise, you start to puzzle over whether he was with another or whether you wrote him something so idiotic that he preferred to remain silent.
6. He always writes only the next day.
A bit of a strange habit, but it happens. Perhaps he is so busy that he puts off answering and then just forgets.
7. He answers in a few days.
It's even weirder since almost everyone is online 24/7 these days. So if he's been waiting days to send a pathetic 'Fine' to your 'How are you?' he's either trying to play some weird game or he's really not interested in you, sorry.
8. He writes in a week as a support person in a large corporation.
One of the two: either he had a tragedy and was unable to do anything and talk to anyone, or he simply wasn’t going to answer, but then he needed a girlfriend for the night, and he decided that it was not too late to answer.
9. If he writes when you have not heard from him for so long that you have already managed to delete his number.
This is the previous point multiplied by a thousand. Most likely, he didn’t really like you, he decided to leave you, perhaps he managed to change several girlfriends during this time, part with them, and then one lonely night he remembered you and decided that this was an option, and that you would squeal from happiness, having received from him “Hello, how are you?”
"Hi, how are you?".
"Did you get my message?".
"I do not understand what is going on. Reply as soon as you receive this message!
“Okay, I get it. Bye".
We've all experienced the uncomfortable silence of someone we like or would like to have a relationship with.
You sent him a message or SMS and you are sure that he read it (damn technology), but there is still no answer and no. Panic seizes you, and your friends become witnesses of your despair.
Why don't men reply to messages?
First you need to realize that men have a different approach to communication (and even more so to written messages). Women tend to exaggerate the importance of this medium, believing that it clearly demonstrates our attention and interest. Men, on the other hand, don't take text or other small messages as a relationship barometer.
But don't despair, there are several other possible explanations. Here are the 10 most plausible reasons for silence!
1. He prefers live communication
The man doesn't answer right away because he knows it will lead to a conversation and he doesn't want to start a text chat. Or he just doesn't like texting and prefers real face-to-face conversation instead of deciphering the meaning of your emojis. Hence his concise answers (if any).
2. He doesn't really know what he wants right now, so he's avoiding you.
You texted all day for a week and suddenly there was dead silence. In fact, he may feel some pressure from you, as he understands that everything is moving quickly and he needs to make a decision regarding a possible relationship. In short, he does not yet know what he wants and therefore prefers to remain neutral.
3. He tests you to see if you're really interested in him.
We're not alone in wanting to feel like the prey, men love to play cat and mouse too. If he feels that you are not too interested in him or show little initiative, then he may try to revive interest by playing silent.
4. He is (really) busy
He saw the message, but after work he was captured by the whirlpool of meetings, events, and therefore will answer late at night or the next day. Have patience!
5. He is offended by something
Try to remember if you said or did something hurtful. Men are not very good at expressing what they feel and prefer the easiest way out - ignoring. Give it time to cool down!
6. He loves to win a woman
Perhaps this man loves to conquer, but in your case he feels that everything has been won in advance. In other words, don't chase him, but play and keep some secret.
7. He doesn't want a serious relationship and tries to make you understand it.
If you spent the night together and it seems to you that this is the beginning of a serious relationship, then this is not at all in his plans. When responding to messages, a man will give false hope, which is why he chooses a strategy of silence, believing that this is more eloquent than any words.
8. He is not free
It's sad, but at least it won't hurt your ego so hard. The other girl turned out to be more fortunate, being ahead of you at the right time and in the right place. If a man periodically appears from time to time and offers to meet, we can conclude that he often walks. Do you need such a relationship?
9. He is no longer interested in you.
Yes, it's terrible, but sometimes it's the simplest explanation. If you feel that the relationship cannot be returned, the best thing to do is delete his number and move on. Brace yourselves, it happens to everyone!
10. He thinks his silence will signal your breakup.
Even worse than being abandoned by texting is being abandoned by not texting. The cowardice of people sometimes reaches unprecedented heights simply because it is easier for them! They know full well that a ton of explanations will be required and that they will have no arguments. And silence seems to be the best solution, because this way they will avoid scandals and tears.
