Finding the right writing tone and dealing with response anxiety can be difficult in online relationships; see what the experts say
Shortly after Abby Norton met someone she liked on a dating app last July, the 24-year-old editor took a two-week trip overseas. Due to different time zones, she and her boyfriend had difficulty establishing a messaging routine while she was out of the country, even though they exchanged few messages a day.
Once Norton returned to Minneapolis, where she lives, the two began seeing each other, but the text messages still seemed unsatisfying, continuing “only a few times a day despite being in the same time zone.” This made Norton anxious. “Things came to a boiling point one night when I found myself crying” after not hearing from him for “a day or two” — mostly, she said, because “it occurred to me that I probably needed to sort out the internal problems they had had led me to this point of insecurity and anxiety”.
She then decided to enlist the help of a professional in the emerging field of text-focused dating courses. She took a course called the Text Message Communication Healing Crash Course, offered by licensed therapist and dating coach Kelsey Wonderlin, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Wonderlin, which has been offering dating classes since fall 2021 but began focusing specifically on messaging issues starting in September, is one of many dating coaches looking to provide clients with the written communication skills needed to bring matches into the real world. Among the questions they seek to help answer: What is the most accurate first message to send on a dating app? How to flirt in a way that isn’t too scary? What if people just don’t respond?
dating coach
With 180,000 Instagram followers, Blaine Anderson, a dating coach in Austin, Texas, has always found texting videos a hit with his mostly male audience. That awareness, plus her own personal experiences receiving strange messages on dating apps, inspired her to launch a course in August called Text Messaging Operating System, “to take men’s stress and anxiety out of communicating with women.” women via messages or SMS”. said Anderson, 33.
According to Damona Hoffman, a dating coach in Los Angeles and New York and host of the Dates & Mates podcast, many people get stuck in what she calls “message relationship”. Texting has become a phase of the relationship, she said, and her Dating Accelerator program, which costs $1,297 and combines live sessions and video lessons, teaches people to avoid it.
Despite the widespread use of dating apps, experts like Hoffman, Wonderlin and Anderson believe our society still lacks digital communication skills. The reason, according to Wonderlin, is that there is no place for people to learn how to start and maintain a healthy relationship. Instead, they have to figure things out for themselves.
After all, text messaging is a relatively new means of communication. “Our brains aren’t wired to think” of messages longer than 100 characters, Anderson admitted. While texts are convenient, they lack the texture and depth of face-to-face conversations. “Distilling our complex and subtle feelings into text messages is difficult, and people end up saying the wrong thing inadvertently.”
Confusion
For Hoffman, it’s no surprise that people are struggling. While many people enjoy texting for the sake of convenience and efficiency, there is a lot of room for misinterpretation. And asking friends for advice can also open a “Pandora’s box”. While one friend might tell you to delay a reply to show no need, another might tell you to message more to show interest. This is where the confusion begins.
“Healthy communication education has always been lacking,” Wonderlin pointed out, “but as people meet online today and start texting each other,” they’ve become the means by which people form their communication patterns in relationships. And since many prefer to communicate via text rather than the phone before meeting, it’s important to set the tone in advance for a mutual and healthy communication“.
Anderson’s two-hour video course costs $149 and is divided into seven modules that cover common scenarios from chatting offline to getting a second date. The course mainly focuses on the psychology behind the different messages and provides text templates.
Wonderlin’s video course costs $333 and takes students through five modules. It starts by addressing the importance of creating healthy communication early in a relationship, then covers different types of messages – the dry text, the excited text, the compulsive text, the distracted text – and helps students understand what a flag is red and what your particular message writing style is. It also teaches you to avoid despair when someone sends you a one-word reply or doesn’t respond right away.
Dan Leader, a 36-year-old tech manager in Detroit, signed up for Anderson’s class in December “because I didn’t turn a lot of games into dates, and when I did have dates, they didn’t lead to a second date,” he revealed. when I took the course, ‘now I write with purpose and intention,’ she said. ‘I ask questions to get to know the person and so they can get to know me. Then I make a clear plan to arrange a meeting at an appropriate time. I no longer feel the need to keep up with small talk”. / TRANSLATION BY RENATO PRELORENTZOU
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Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
