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"  Text messaging as a form of communication between your family, friends, and peers is an efficient means of relaying thoughts, information, and tiny pixelated images of sushi and cats wearing sunglasses. But texting when you&amp;#039;re dating someone new? Pure torture. While it may, at first, seem like a smart way to avoid the awkwardness of those first stilted &amp;quot;what&amp;#039;s your favorite color&amp;quot; phone calls, in reality, texting while dating can be emotionally and mentally exhausting. To wit, here&amp;#039;s what I go through pretty much every time a guy I like texts me: After the initial elation of seeing his name flash up on my phone screen, I reread his words several hundred times before consulting with one or more of my female friends regarding the TRUE meaning of the text\u2014either in person or via screen grab. There&amp;#039;s a lot to interpret: Why did he put &amp;quot;K.&amp;quot; instead of &amp;quot;K?&amp;quot; What does &amp;quot;haha&amp;quot; mean in that context? How come all his texts are so much shorter than mine? He hates me, right? Related: iDating&amp;#039;s New Rules Then, I must painstakingly compose a response, which comes with even more questions. How long should I wait to reply? Is my delightful demeanor and sense of humor obvious? Am I coming off too eager or clingy? Does that exclamation point sound too enthusiastic? Is it too soon to be using emojis? I don&amp;#039;t have that &amp;quot;show when I&amp;#039;m typing&amp;quot; setting enabled, do I? Let me check. Oh shit I do. No, wait, I don&amp;#039;t. Thank GOD. Hold on, what did we agree I should type again? Of course, none of that awfulness comes anywhere close to the despair of seeing your open-ended text to your crush go unanswered. The struggle is real, people. Related: Aziz Ansari Schools Four ELLE Editors with Digital Dating Dilemmas In 2014, the act of texting our way through the start of a relationship often feels like a hellish yet inevitable rite of passage\u2014what with the waiting, the wondering, the reading between those tiny little lines. And there&amp;#039;s hard evidence to back all that misery up: A study conducted by Brigham Young University researchers Lori Schade and Jonathan Sandberg in October 2013 found that, unless a text message between partners is blatantly positive, encouraging, or lovey-dovey, it&amp;#039;s not doing anything to further their bond. (As Schade and Sandberg put it, &amp;quot;If you don&amp;#039;t have something nice to text, better not text at all.&amp;quot;) The same study also concluded that about 82 percent of couples text each other multiple times a day\u2014making for quite a few unhappy customers. Myself, often included. But some frustrated women have finally had enough. While speaking with relationship expert and Psychology Today contributor Peg Streep for another dating story, she mentioned a new trend she&amp;#039;d encountered among those ladies who are fed up with dissecting texts from the opposite sex: No-text dating. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve had a number of young women in their 20s tell me that now, when they&amp;#039;ve met someone who seemed like a person they could actually see having a relationship with, they institute a no-text rule,&amp;quot; Streep told me. &amp;quot;The opportunity of reading into the unanswered texts, the missed texts, and then the texts that someone has just sent unthinkingly\u2026 it brings on a lot of drama. Particularly when it&amp;#039;s mixed in with liquor.&amp;quot; (You mean, drunk texting isn&amp;#039;t a legitimate communication method?)  Streep put me in touch with her daughter, Alexandra, a 26-year-old New Yorker currently instituting her own ban on texting while dating. &amp;quot;Meeting men in the city is so difficult,&amp;quot; Alexandra laments. &amp;quot;One of my coworkers in her 30s mentioned recently that she doesn&amp;#039;t give out her phone number at bars anymore\u2014she&amp;#039;ll give out her e-mail address instead. So that&amp;#039;s what inspired me to do the same. It kind of discourages the people who weren&amp;#039;t really interested in actually dating in the first place. If a guy won&amp;#039;t take the time to e-mail me, then he&amp;#039;s probably not someone I want to see again.&amp;quot; Whether entering the text-free zone a few months ago has boosted her love life, Alexandra can&amp;#039;t say for sure. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know if not texting has made my dating more successful, but it definitely makes me feel more in control. It&amp;#039;s also helped me realize that I&amp;#039;ve become a little too crazy about texting.&amp;quot; She references a past relationship with a teacher whose unpredictable texting patterns drove a rift between them. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;d text at, like, 6:30 in the morning, and then if I didn&amp;#039;t hear from him after work, I&amp;#039;d be like, &amp;#039;well, what&amp;#039;s wrong? He&amp;#039;s not in school anymore, so why couldn&amp;#039;t he have responded to me a few hours ago?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Another proponent of no-text dating, 27-year-old New Jersey resident Julia, says she made the decision to forge a relationship minus the texting in order to make sure her long distance relationship stayed strong. &amp;quot;When my fianc\u00E9 and I first starting dating, I was living in Pittsburgh and he was living in New Jersey. Since we were starting off long distance, we kind of were like, &amp;#039;let&amp;#039;s make it a point to talk on the phone and connect that way, since we can&amp;#039;t physically see each other all the time.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; She insists that nixing impersonal text messages in favor of plain, old fashioned phone calls is what kept the relationship going. &amp;quot;In the past, I&amp;#039;d had so many negative experiences texting guys\u2014just being a woman, over-analyzing every text that came through\u2014or on the other end, the guy being like, &amp;#039;you didn&amp;#039;t text me back quick enough.&amp;#039; It&amp;#039;s just a lot of drama,&amp;quot; she explains. The lack of drama clearly paid off\u2014three years later, she&amp;#039;s engaged. That said, there&amp;#039;s no way being a text-free dater in a sea of smartphone wielding iMessage users is easy. And while I one-million-percent applaud and adore the idea of going textless\u2014and the brave females with the chutzpah to do so for their own well-being\u2014I&amp;#039;m not so sure I&amp;#039;d feel confident enough to try it out myself. For one thing, giving out my e-mail address would simultaneously alert men to my full name, therefore allowing them to Google me even earlier on (and see that I&amp;#039;m dissecting their behavior in articles like this one). And secondly...how would I possibly spend all that new-found spare time typically reserved for crafting meticulous text messages? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/sex-relationships/advice/a12873/givng-up-texting-for-love/>