The Loneliness of the Long Distance Texter

Modern communications technologies, especially text messaging, create the illusion of intimacy. It's important not to confuse it with the real thing.

Welcome to another installment of Life Its Ownself. If you like what you read, please 1) hit the Like button at the bottom of this installment, 2) subscribe to this newsletter, and 3) tell your 1,000 best friends to read and subscribe. Also, feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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But first, your moment of Zen … a magnificent buffalo, spotted on a ranch west of Hunt, Texas, June 10, 2025.

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Tuesday, July 1, 2025

“Loneliness is being on a text chain with a dozen people, and none of the messages are for you.”

— Unknown

I.

Except for drivers shooting the finger at each other, text messaging has become the universal means of communication between most of the world’s eight billion people.

Once upon a time, text messaging required skillz. To send a text message, one had to compose it, like coding messages on a German U-boat during World War I. For instance, the word “pizza” was created by pressing the following combination of alphanumeric keys:

7-p (pause) 4-g-h-i (pause) 9-w-x-y-z (pause) 9-w-x-y-z (pause) 2-a (pause)

This complexity forced text messages to be short and to the point, and even created a new syntax:

“R u going 2 game? What time?”

“Y. 7 pm. C u there.”

Eventually, smartphone keyboards made it possible to directly type text into a message. Messages became longer, and began to carry emotional as well as informational content:

“Did you pick up milk on the way home?”

“Sorry. Forgot.”

“Well, did you pick up the kids at day care?”

“Oops.”

“You sorry son of a b----!”

Eventually, voice transcription allowed text messages to be dictated, with the caveat that some editorial cleanup was required.

“For score and seven years ago, our feathers brought fourth on this incontinent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created. Equal.”

Although finger-banging out text massages while driving in Texas is illegal (one of the rare things about which I agree with Rep. Tom Craddick), the automobile and modern smartphones have combined to allow longer text messages, sometimes in a stream of consciousness that absorbs full minutes of transcription, spitting out messages like this:

“I will meet you at the restaurant at eight if you get there first order me that Jesus watch where you’re going idiot now you cut me off from the next exit what was I saying? Oh yeah shrimp cocktail.”

The message arrives in its colorful, uncensored form that nevertheless requires some “cryptologogic” skill to fully understand.

@independentDonald Trump butchered the word “cryptologic” during his Memorial Day address (26 May). The president was honoring Shannon Kent, a US Navy cryptologic technician who was killed in the 2019 Manbij bombing, in his Arlington National Cemetery remarks. Click the link in bio for more 🔗

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II.

These limitations have not prevented texting from becoming a dominant mode of communication, especially among young people. This year, the generation born into a world in which smartphones exist will turn 18. Text messages are so much a part of their communication style that talking on the phone can seem odd.

A former intern of mine recently texted me to ask if I would write a letter of recommendation. Wanting to know more about what her goals were, I suggested she call me to discuss what I’d say in my letter. I heard nothing for a couple days, then got a text saying she’d found someone else to write her letter.

The Washington Post published an article a couple years ago on the new etiquette of phone use. Among its recommendations:

· Text before calling (to ask permission to call and to schedule).

· Don’t leave a voice mail (no one’s listening; send a text in its place).

· You don’t have to answer every phone call (or quickly reply to every text message, I would add).

The most interesting suggestion contradicts the others in some ways:

Information is for text, emotions are for voice.

As addicted as we are to texting, text messages are not very good for communicating nuance or emotion. Which is fine, except when two people are trying to have a serious conversation, laden with feeling. In my experience, those efforts are often confusing and almost always unsatisfying.

One famous study suggested that, in complex communications involving thoughts and feelings, the words used only account for 7% of the information conveyed, with verbal tone conveying 38% and body language conveying 55%. You can quibble with those numbers, but anyone who has tried to argue the merits of the Texas Longhorns or the Houston Astros via text messages knows that words alone cannot do the job. (In fact, emojis exist to add informational/emotional cues to the dry words of a text message.)

Or when the subject is the emotional or romantic relationship between two people.

III.

It goes without saying that internet dating could not exist without text messaging. The general protocol is that two people “match” and then communicate via text messages within the app until they decide to exchange cell numbers, WhatsApp addresses, or the like. Even then, most communications remain via text messaging. Voice and even FaceTime calls are more infrequently used.

To the extent dating apps foster getting to know each other and developing sufficient trust to take the next steps, they are valuable. But the real goal should always be the rich levels of communication that can only occur in-person. Sadly, some people on dating apps do not actually want that level of connection, as many (most?) people who use dating apps can testify. Sometimes the miscommunication is deliberate and hurtful, as the brilliant writer Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez observes:

There’s a special kind of heartbreak that doesn’t come from being left. It comes from being unwritten.

Someone builds a world with you: texts, gifts, slow-burning intimacy, long calls deep into the night. You start to believe it’s real.

Then, the moment you ask, “Can we meet?”

They hit the kill switch—and tell you it was never what you thought it was.

Welcome to breadcrumbing.

That is why, in my infrequent ventures into online dating, I try to move as quickly as I can towards real communications – phone calls, video calls, and when the time is right, in-person meeting. This is a far more rewarding pathway than the interminable texting that has been my lot on occasions in the past.

IV.

Once upon a time, single people had ways of meeting others: work. church, sports, even the local grocery store. These encounters all had the advantage of combining words, tone and body language (and pheromones?) in ways that facilitated communication.

Now, though, many of us spend time in a virtual world, and use online dating apps to try and connect with others. The goal is to find companionship and even love in this world; a partner who cares about us and with whom we can build new, rich memories. My optimistic goal is to be in a relationships where we spend plenty of time together and we exchange our first text message of the morning and our last phone call of the night.

But then, I am a romantic and an optimist.