We Need to Stop Mistaking Texting for Dating

Why constant digital communication creates the illusion of intimacy

A strange thing happens in middle age. You exchange a few messages with a man and suddenly you’re discussing his favorite band, how many concert T-shirts he owns, his ex-wife’s grievances, and his opinion on intermittent fasting.

You still haven’t actually gone anywhere together.

Congratulations. You are now emotionally involved with a tiny glowing rectangle.

There is something undeniably nostalgic about writing back and forth to each other. Long before texting existed, lovers exchanged letters. We picture F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda pouring their drunk hearts out on paper. We think of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks bantering through dial-up internet in You’ve Got Mail. We love the idea of two people slowly getting to know one another through words, falling in love with minds before bodies and personalities before appearances.

Perhaps that’s why so many of us idealize texting. We imagine ourselves starring in our own modern love story. We tell ourselves we’re building a connection. We convince ourselves that all of these messages mean something important.

The problem is that Fitzgerald and Zelda actually met. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks eventually closed their laptops and showed up in real life.

Instead, we spend days or weeks exchanging messages. We know each other’s childhood wounds, from the scars on our knees to the trauma we discuss with our therapists, favorite bands, attachment styles, and opinions on whether pineapple belongs on pizza (by the way, it does). We laugh at the same memes and wish each other good morning with pet names we’ve only typed but never said aloud.

By the time we finally sit down across from one another for coffee, we feel strangely invested in someone we haven’t actually experienced.

We treat texting like a cheat code for building intimacy.

We confuse access with effort.

We assume that because someone knows our stories, they know us.

But relationships are not built in message threads. They’re built in shared experiences. They’re built in awkward pauses, lingering eye contact, road trips, inside jokes, and learning how someone treats a waiter when the order is wrong. They are built in the ordinary moments that can’t be transmitted through a screen.

Words can create anticipation, attraction, and sometimes even romance.

Sometimes they can also create an illusion.

When we were younger, we sat by the phone hoping the boy we liked would call. Now we carry our phones with us everywhere like emotional support water bottles. We listen for the familiar ping and stare at the typing bubbles like they’re stock tickers announcing the future of our love lives.

Unlike a phone call, texting offers all the access with very little vulnerability. We can send a message without having to hear someone say they’re busy, distracted, or simply not interested. We toss our thoughts into the digital ocean and wait for a reply to wash back to shore like a message in a bottle. At a minimum, we get excited to see a little heart attached to our last text. At best, an actual message with words.

Maybe that’s why it feels so intoxicating. Not because we’re building something real, but because we’re constantly anticipating the next little hit of hope.

And perhaps that is why modern dating can feel so confusing. We set ourselves up with a false sense of connection before we’ve even gone out for coffee together.

In our twenties, we complained that men disappeared after sex. In our forties, we complain they disappear after 10,000 text messages and three discussions about attachment theory.

I once found myself in a situationship where 3,000 text messages were exchanged in the span of two weeks. We discussed tacos and meat preferences (I stand firmly with carne asada) and whether guacamole belongs on the tortilla or on top of the meat. We scrutinized the cost of divorce litigation and the alarming inflation of piroshki at Pike Place Market. Somewhere between “Good morning, beautiful” and “You are the last woman I will ever make love to,” I found myself emotionally invested in a man whose eye color I couldn’t recall.

I knew his attachment style.

I just couldn’t remember whether his eyes were dark brown or light brown.

These days, I don’t need a man to text me all day. I don’t need hourly check-ins. I don’t care that you took a shower, went through the Popeyes drive-thru, or are stuck in the pickup line at your kid’s school. I don’t need memes or “At gym. Leg day,” greetings sent with military precision at six in the morning.

What I want is much less cinematic and far more real.

I want someone to say, “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

Because phones create connection, but shared experiences create memories. And memories, not message threads, are what relationships are built on.

I don’t want a pen pal. If we’re exchanging forty-seven texts a day, we should probably just get tacos and find out whether we both like guacamole in real life.