Quite frankly, today’s college standard of communication between men and women makes me sick. 

It’s hard to call it communication when most college relationships, big or small, begin with an extensive series of sterile and meaningless text messages. Essentially, the goal is to hinder your affection for the other person while still maintaining a sense of interest. Basically, your goal is to play catch up; never get ahead of yourself or the other person. The idea is that, with each exchange, you let a tiny portion of your affection leak through into the conversation. However, this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Let too much of your true intentions show and you’ve come on too strong. Let too little come through, and you’ll never gain any ground. 

Alas, this pitiful excuse for co-ed interaction has established itself as the most consistent method for creating relationships amongst college students. And while I maintain my disappointment towards today’s text messaging in our modern day relationship culture, here are a few tips I’ve learned over my career on how to successfully conjure a mutual sense of affection through text message conversations.

Initiating the conversation is half the battle. For some, merely getting a girl’s phone number can be tricky, but here’s a full-proof tactic that hardly ever fails. Granted, this is best suited for a party atmosphere. However with a few creative adjustments, it can also be used in other social settings.  

Politely ask your target girl if she could take a picture of you and some friends. This accomplishes two things. First, you’ve initiated contact with a seemingly random individual, yet the girl is likely to subconsciously comprehend that, of all the girls at the party, you chose her. Second, you’ve established a sense of social relevancy by presenting yourself with a group of friends.  After the picture is taken, return to the girl and offer to take a picture with her as a thank you. Pick a comical pose, and make it fun! Afterwards, offer to send her the picture, and voila, you have her number.  Now, this is important – don’t get overzealous and send the picture right away. Return to your friends, keep your distance for a while and look like you’re having more fun than she is. Now, if you’re lucky, and she comes back to find you that night, you’re in. No need for cheeky text message banter. If not, wait until the following morning and send her the picture, and let the fun begin.

Here are a few tidbits to get you started but, remember, be yourself. These are just a few tricks I’ve learned over the years. 

1. Ask questions. It’s a good way to get to know the other person and also asserts that you are genuinely interested in what’s going on in her life. 

2. Keep it simple. Don’t send novels. No one has the time to read them and sending massive texts indicates that you are putting way too much effort into texting this person, and it will seem like you are coming on too strong. 

3. Time of reply ratio. I credit the time of reply ratio to a good friend who has had great success with texting women in college. This rule simply states that if a girl takes an elongated period of time to respond to your text, let’s say 15 minutes, you must wait at least double that amount of time – in this case, 30 minutes, to text her back.  

4. Use “haha” and “lol" sparingly. Don’t be that guy who prefaces and concludes every text with one of these unnecessary declarations of humor. A good rule of thumb is only drop an “lol,” if you actually laughed out loud at something the person you’re texting said.

5. Make her text you. This is probably the best piece of advice I can give. Believe it or not, sometimes the most productive text is the text you don’t send. Don’t be afraid to take a breather. Sit back, relax and wait until she texts you back. The time it takes for her to respond is a great indicator of how interested she is. This gives you the upper hand in the conversation. And what if she doesn’t text back? Well, maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. Never try and force your way back in. If she wants to text you back, she will. If she doesn’t, there are four billion other fish swimming in the sea. Go cast a line and hook another.

Who knows? Maybe one day, young people will come to their senses and abolish the atrocious depersonalizing culture of text message affection.