There comes a moment in every man's life when he scrolls back through his own dating app messages and is forced to confront the fact that he is the problem.
Mine was on a flight to Denver. I was bored. I started scrolling back through six months of conversations on Hinge. Match after match. Some that had gone well, plenty that had gone nowhere. I was reading them with fresh eyes for the first time.
I wanted to throw my phone into the Continental Divide.
Pattern one: the dry hello
Roughly 40 of my opening messages were some variation of "hey" or "how's it going" or "hey what's up." That's it. That was the whole opener. No reference to anything in her profile. No question. No hook. Just a syllable.
Of those 40 "hey" messages, three got responses. Two of those three didn't go anywhere. One did. So my hit rate on the dry hello was about 2.5 percent for an actual ongoing conversation.
Meanwhile, when I'd actually written a real opener — referenced something from her profile, asked a specific question, made a small joke — my response rate was over 60 percent. I had this data sitting in my own phone and I was apparently incapable of looking at it.
Pattern two: the question avalanche
Once I'd corrected the dry hello and started writing real openers, I'd then immediately ruin it by sending three or four messages in a row before she'd had a chance to respond.
Like I'd write a thoughtful opener. Then thirty seconds later, before she'd even seen it, I'd add "oh and how was your weekend." Then ninety seconds later "sorry that's a boring question lol." Then "anyway hope you're having a good week."
By the time she opened the app, she had a wall of nervous text from a stranger and zero motivation to wade through it. Just wait. Send the opener. Close the app. Come back in two hours. Stop spiraling.
Pattern three: the question without commitment
I'd ask things like "what are you up to this weekend?" and let her answer it without any signal that I might want to do something with her.
She'd say "oh just hanging out, might go to that new ramen place." I'd say "nice, let me know how it is." Conversation over. She had no idea if I was interested in meeting up. I had no idea I was supposed to actually say anything.
The fix is to follow her answer with a clear move. "Want some company at the ramen place?" "I've been wanting to try that, what about Saturday?" "That sounds way better than my plan, can I crash it?" Be light about it but be clear.
Pattern four: the apology spiral
If I didn't hear back from her in 24 hours, I'd send another message. Not a chill follow-up. An apology. "Hope I didn't say something weird." "No worries if you're busy." "Just wanted to say hi."
These are the messages of someone who is auditioning for her approval. They radiate insecurity. They make her job harder, because now she has to either ignore you (rude) or reassure you (exhausting).
If she hasn't responded in 24 hours, just wait. If she hasn't responded in 72 hours, she's not going to. Move on. There's no apology that fixes this.
Pattern five: the conversation that never ended
Some matches I had where the conversation was actually GOING. Real questions, real answers, both of us writing real paragraphs. And then it would just slowly trail off because neither of us actually proposed meeting.
Looking back, the conversations were almost always going dry around message 12 to 15. That's the window. If I hadn't asked her out by then, the energy died. The lesson: when a conversation is going well, ask her out. Don't wait until it's perfect. Don't wait until you have the perfect line. Ask her out.
What good texting actually looks like
After two months of practice, here's what good texting looks like for me now.
Open with something specific from her profile. One sentence, one question. Send it once. Don't follow up immediately.
Match her energy and length. If she writes a paragraph, write a paragraph. If she writes one line, write one line.
Mix questions with statements about yourself. Don't interrogate, don't lecture. Trade.
By message 8 or 10, propose a specific thing on a specific day. "This place looks great. Want to check it out Thursday?" Specific is better than open-ended.
If she says no, don't apologize. "All good, hit me up if you want a rain check." Then unmatch or move on. Don't dwell.
The platform thing again
One thing I'll say. A lot of these texting problems were specific to apps where the women weren't really there to meet. The apology spiral, the conversations that never ended — these all happened more on apps where matching is the dopamine hit and meeting is an afterthought.
When I moved to DatingAbove, the conversations were shorter and the dates happened faster. People were there to meet, not to chat indefinitely. The good text habits started actually paying off because there was someone on the other end ready to act on them.
Read your own texts
If you're stuck and don't know why, do what I did. Scroll back six months on whatever app you use. Read your messages with fresh eyes. Pretend a friend wrote them. Notice what you would say if a friend showed them to you.
The patterns are all there. They're embarrassing. That's what makes them fixable.
