So many books have been written about the communication difficulties between men and women, and I believe email, text messaging and IMing make these problems even worse.
Over and over again on-line I hear women saying things like "I had a date with this guy, and then he sent me this text message, what do you think it means?" Or they tell you a long convoluted story about their crush, about emails they've sent back and forth between them and text message they got, and they want help interpreting what the other person meant. Or they send the guy an email joking around about something and suddenly the guy turns cold on them, and they want to know what they said wrong.
It seems to me that people rely too much on email and texting in the beginning of a relationship. I've been with my husband for thirteen years, and we still end up calling each other all the time because one of us misunderstood something in an email, thinking the other person was mad when they were just joking, or misunderstanding the entire tone of a message.
It is so difficult to communicate when you can't see the other person's face or hear their tone of voice. Sarcasm, irony, and satire don't translate well into the written word for one thing. When it comes to texting, many people try to cram as much meaning into as few words as possible, like a telegram. This leads to much confusion as well.
My advice for people who have started dating or are interested in someone is to stick to the phone and face to face meetings as much as possible, and to not stake as much importance in the meaning behind emails and text messages.
I also think that if you're confused about something a person wrote, it's best to just be honest and ask them what it means. by Helen Richardson
& if you get really bored you can read "Social Effects of Text Messaging" a study done in 2004! very interesting! http://www.160characters.org/documents/SocialEffectsOfTextMessaging.pdf
MUCHO AMOR ~z.Lo
