Love in the Time of Texting
By Greg Lalas
When Brooklyn film-programmer Clinton McClung first knew Margi over a decade ago, cell phones were still relatively novel and text messaging was only known to techno-geeks. In fact, Clinton didn’t start texting until he got an iPhone just last year – which, coincidentally or not, was when he reconnected with Margi. Now they were older, wiser and more technologically current. They started dating and began texting each other. It was a new and thrilling way to connect.
“I don’t always like to call when I just want to say I’m thinking of you,” he says. “Sometimes, it’s just easier to write my thoughts out, even in such a short form. Our texts weren’t just ‘Meet you at 5 in Union Square.’ They were a great, ongoing conversation. And what’s really cool is, I don’t remember every date we went on, but I have text messages about everything we’ve done – restaurants, bars, afternoons in the city.”
Eventually, Clinton realized that those messages would have to be erased to make room for others, so he decided to preserve them for posterity. He made a 20-page comic strip documenting their romance, using their text messages as dialogue – and gave it to her on Valentine’s Day.
Such is love in the time of texting…
The text message is an ill-defined form of communication. It is written, but its abbreviations, unique punctuation, emoticons, and gleeful lack of formal grammar make it not quite the written word. It has an oral, dramatic feel to it, yet is not speech either. It requires more thought than verbal dialogue; however artless, there is always artifice involved.
In short, a text message is poetic.
It was inevitable that texting became part of our romantic lives. Like every form of communication ever used by humanity in its mating dance, it holds endless possibilities for affection, humor, innuendo, contrition, lust, jealousy and anger. It can easily and inexpensively connect lovers on different continents – and as easily destroy everything for a couple living together.
“It’s just another version of courting,” says San Francisco web editor Jonah Freedman. “It keeps the contact going. I’ve gone out with some girls who absolutely LOVE it when you text them after your first, second, or third date just to say, ‘had a great time, see you again soon.’”
The text message’s most romantic attribute is its brevity. A short and sweet note, even when delivered with an annoying beep-beep, can make someone’s day. “My husband and I often apologize through text,” says Denise Carpenter, a Boston therapist. “We will start with the silent treatment. Eventually, one of us wears down and sends the other a text saying something like, ‘You were wrong, but I love you anyway.’”
“Texting is just one more way to say, ‘I'm thinking of you,’” says Vanessa McLean, a Los Angeles-based commercial director. “It’s sweet, and often out of the blue. A nice little kiss on the cheek as someone is going about their day.” But that’s for a serious relationship; she’s wary of texting when just dating casually. “It creates a false sense of intimacy that can fall flat when you are actually face to face with someone.”
For every tale of textual love, there is a nightmare. Many are the outcome of texting’s inherent drawbacks: the difficulty of striking the right tone when you have only 160 characters that appear on a matchbook-sized screen; and the illusory sense of distance or absolution from the consequences of words relayed by an inanimate object.
Louise, living in New York, recently met a man at a bar. After a few drinks, he gave her a ride home in his van. A van, she thought. Who drives a van except crazies? But Louise liked him and gave him her number. Over the next week they exchanged texts but never found a good time to meet for a proper date. This began to irritate her, and eventually Louise lied that she had taken up with her ex-boyfriend. Angered, the guy kept texting her, and when Louise left to visit her family in Arizona, she received a text at 4am on Christmas morning, reading: “Eat my c**k.”
In other circumstances, however, a sexually explicit text can be a turn-on. “I love it when a girl texts me something nasty,” chuckles Freedman. If a quick hello is like a kiss on the cheek, an overtly sexy text is foreplay.
Sometimes it’s just a tease, a hint of what you’re going to do when you get home or a recollection of what happened last night. Other times, it’s more interactive. Sex-texting (or “sexting”) can be difficult in practice – one only has so many hands, after all – but its sheer eroticism is hard to beat. If a text message is poetry, a sext message is erotica.
This can get you into trouble, as Detroit’s mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, discovered. Having denied having a sexual relationship with his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, in a court case last summer, Kilpatrick was mortified when the transcripts of their text messages were leaked to the press. “You made me feel so damn good the other night,” Beatty texted to Kilpatrick. “I need you soooo bad,” he replied.
But more often than not, romance trumps sex in the texting world. It could be a simple “Hi, I’m thinking about you” or an invitation to dinner. Or, as was the case with a young couple in Los Angeles, it was a Shakespearean tragedy. They were both in the movie industry, and after working together on a long project acknowledged the spark between them. But he was attached and they were already into the final act.
Him: i ♥you, timing sucks
Her: i ♥you :0(
Him: last night. follow your ♥. we could always have tonight
Her: just read the quote “the heart wants what the heart wants even if it is cruel and destructive” as much as i want it, i'm sorry, but i can't do it.
Him: i get it, just hope it's not regret. could be memorable
Her: that's the thing...think i would regret it afterward...would have a hard time just walking away
Him: i understand, could do it and enjoy the moment, use it as a memory, but that's me, it's cool. wish it was different
Her: i wish that too
Him: it will be a what if of ur life
Her: not a what if...you are with someone, you wouldn't throw that away over one night.
Him: it wouldn't be throwing it away. i'd just want to follow my feelings for the night. i can do that and leave it. i understand if you can't. wish it were diff
Her: i can't. maybe another time, another place.
Him: i hear ya. oh well
Her: :*0(
Him: sucks the way things work. really does
Her: definitely does
Him: another time another place
Her: let's hope so
