When She Sends You Too Many Messages

You swapped numbers and have been on one date, and all of a sudden she is filling up your inbox with pointless messages. What does it mean, and how can you make it stop?

She might think you?re her boyfriend

You may think that you are casually seeing her, but the deluge of messages suggests that she thinks it is more serious. Texting you to ask how your day is going, or worse, sending you cutesy emojis, is too full-on for a casual relationship. Either she thinks you are together, or she is going to act like it until you cave in and make it official. That is great if it is what you want, but the fact that you are so annoyed by her many messages would indicate that it is moving too fast for your liking.

She has a lot of spare time

Who has the time to craft text messages constantly? While it does not take long to tap out a message, you can bet that she is spending much longer agonising over what to send, and staring at her phone waiting for it to buzz with your reply. Text conversations can be quite time-consuming. Her propensity for conducting pointless text conversations indicates that she is probably quite bored, and does not have many others to text. While this is not a big deal on its own, you should be looking out for other red flags.

Making it stop

It takes two to have a text conversation. The most effective way to make her messages slow to a trickle is to be non-responsive. You may choose not to reply at all to the majority of her messages, although she may then send you more messages asking why you are ignoring her. It would be more effective to give only brief replies, and to know how to end a text conversation. Signals for the end of a conversation include ?see you on [whatever day]?, ?I have to go now?, and ?time for sleep!? so if she replies to any such conversation-ender, it would not be rude at all for you to ignore it. If you are concerned about being rude and putting her off, you could end the conversation with ?talk to you later?, which implies that you are still keen.

Only use texting to set up dates

Messaging can be used for banter, but should mainly be used for practical purposes, like setting up the next time you see each other. An efficient way to discourage her from sending pointless texts all the time is to take control of the text conversation and steer it to organising your next date. Reply to her texts by asking when she is free or confirming your next date. If she texts to ask how you are, reply with ?Good thanks, are we still on for Friday?? and make sure you do not return her question by asking how she is. She will soon get the idea that you are not keen on having text conversations about how your day was.