When Sabrina Zohar first began dating her boyfriend, whom she refers to as a “tech guy” in her popular TikTok videos, she was skeptical about their connection for one striking reason. He barely texted her. After matching on Hinge in 2022, they went on several dates and saw each other at least twice a week, despite living about 150km away from each other. (He lived in San Diego, while she was in Los Angeles, United States, at the time.) But Zohar still questioned whether the “tech guy” was really into her. About a month into dating, Zohar told him that she wanted to communicate more – they usually texted every few days – between their dates so she could feel more connected to him. His response shifted her perspective.
“He set a boundary that I will never forget,” says Zohar, who’s a dating coach and host of the podcast “Do The Work”. “He said, ‘(Texting) is not a sign of my disinterest. I work in tech. I stare at my screen for nine hours a day. I have no interest in having a digital relationship or talking endlessly with someone via text’.
He preferred to spend quality time with her in person. “That’s when the stars aligned,” she says, “and I was like, ‘Texting doesn’t mean anything’. It’s low effort. It’s easy to do. You can be on the toilet texting someone versus having to actually show up for them.”
Shortly after their discussion, she began posting videos about her revelation on TikTok, where she has more than 620,000 followers.
When it comes to texting in the early dating stage (particularly when you’ve been on five or fewer dates), people have differing and often very passionate opinions on the topic. While some people expect their love interest to text them every day to show their interest, others don’t care to text at all, which can cause dating conflicts.
“I think everybody is different” when it comes to texting, says Traci Terrill, a licensed marriage and family therapist at Highland Park Holistic Therapy, “and I think you should give a little time and space to try to learn the other person’s text communication style.”
Terrill says she doesn’t agree with the belief that if the person you are dating doesn’t text you every day, then they don’t like or care about you.
No matter what, navigating texting and dating isn’t easy. Here’s what you should consider before cutting off the person you’re dating simply because they aren’t texting you as often as you’d like.
Long before cellphones were invented, people had fruitful relationships. However, for the last three decades, mobile texting has been a part of our digital lives, and it has become an integral part of the courtship process throughout the world.
“I get a lot of questions about texts. I even get people who read me their texts,” says Terrill. “I think in this day and age, texting is usually the first point of communication. “And there’s a lot of confusion about expectations and how to express what they want (and) how to handle not receiving responses when they think they should.”
