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" I&amp;#039;m late on a deadline, waiting for several work-based communications, and my phone keeps vibrating. There&amp;#039;s a Kik message from Graham, complaining about the temperature in his office. Steve has WhatsApped me a photo of his lunch with a frowny face\u2014apparently, he&amp;#039;s unhappy with his sandwich selection. And over on Tinder, Colin is telling me that his mom&amp;#039;s birthday is on Sunday, so he&amp;#039;s planning to go home for a visit. I haven&amp;#039;t met any of these men, although, at one point\u2014before the constant stream of messages about the minutiae of their day flooded my phone\u2014I&amp;#039;d been actively looking forward to setting up dates with each of them. In most cases, we&amp;#039;ve only &amp;quot;known&amp;quot; each other for a week, ever since we swiped right on Tinder or exchanged an initial how are you e-mail on OkCupid. No one would know that if they read our pages of text exchanges\u2014they&amp;#039;d assume we were in a relationship or friends from way back. Related: Newest Tinder Trend: Marriage But we&amp;#039;re not. And while I know I have a choice to respond to these inane messages, I don&amp;#039;t want to seem rude by preemptively shutting down the conversation. After all, their profiles sound promising. I like their photos. And some of the texts are genuinely funny or interesting: I had a fun back-and-forth exchange with Dermot about the best coffee shops in our respective neighborhoods; Steve&amp;#039;s Golden Retriever looks nice. I also appreciate the validation, the feeling that some guy connects with me so deeply he simply can&amp;#039;t help but send me 20 texts a day. But, from a practical point of view, the torrent of texts is distracting me from work\u2014not to mention talking to my real friends. Related: Why American Women Keep Falling for British Dudes &amp;quot;I love meeting new people, and it&amp;#039;s sometimes fun to have a random dude to text with during my down time, but seeing so many messages build up on my phone is stressful,&amp;quot; says 24-year-old Tinder-user Ashley. However, &amp;quot;I try to respond quickly because I know how weird I feel when I write something and a guy I like doesn&amp;#039;t respond for hours later.&amp;quot; But it&amp;#039;s not only the time suck that&amp;#039;s a downside of exchanging too many texts before an in-person meeting. For me, I&amp;#039;ve found the more info I share with a guy in advance, the bigger my expectations become. And more often than not, those expectations only lead to letdown. I find the guy who is razor sharp over texts is bitter and angry over drinks; the one who seemed flirty in messages is pushy in person. And in turn, I become more sensitive from the outset: I notice if a guy seems acutely disappointed when we meet\u2014as if he&amp;#039;s more attracted to my avatar than me. And I hate the stilted conversations that occur when you already know everything about each other. And worst of all is how, immediately after a less-than-ideal date, the texts stop completely. Don&amp;#039;t get me wrong, I never liked them in the first place, but it&amp;#039;s rough to go from 20-plus messages a day to nada. It makes the rejection, or at least the disappointment that once again, this wasn&amp;#039;t quite the right match, hurt that much more. I&amp;#039;m not the only woman who feels this way. Callie, 28, once texted with a man for two weeks leading up to their first in-person encounter. &amp;quot;We met on OkCupid, but he was traveling abroad and couldn&amp;#039;t meet for a few weeks,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;We exchanged numbers and started texting a lot. I really looked forward to his texts and he actually helped me through a tricky work issue. But then when we met, we had nothing to say. Here was this guy right in front of me, and I wished I was back at home, texting with &amp;#039;him&amp;#039;\u2014his virtual self just seemed a lot easier to connect with,&amp;quot; she says. After drinks and dinner, the two headed home in opposite directions\u2014and Callie never heard from him again. Still, she hasn&amp;#039;t erased the text exchange, and occasionally re-reads them. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s so weird. He and I got along so well over text and it felt like an actual breakup when we stopped communicating, even though we only went on one date.&amp;quot; According to experts, that may be because a lot of guys prefer the texting to dating. Matthew Hussey, a relationship expert and author of Get the Guy: Learn Secrets of the Male Mind to Find the Man You Want and the Love You Deserve explains that, for guys, texting strangers serves a purpose that women, who tend to have a larger social network (both virtually and in person), don&amp;#039;t require. &amp;quot;Texting gives men a non-committal form of validation whenever they want to feel connected,&amp;quot; Hussey says. While an actual date can make a guy freak out about commitment and question whether he really wants a relationship, texting offers intimacy without the, &amp;#039;Is this going to be a thing?&amp;#039; uncertainty. &amp;quot;Guys may want fleeting moments of connection rather than the prospect of a real thing.&amp;quot; But if you&amp;#039;re not into a textlationship, Hussey says the best thing to do is let a guy know ASAP: &amp;quot;Tell him you&amp;#039;re going on a texting hiatus until he proves that he is indeed a real human being and not a figment of your imagination,&amp;quot; he suggests. And while he&amp;#039;s figuring out his own agenda, do yourself a favor and put your phone away. You&amp;#039;d be amazed by how much work you get done. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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