To keep calm after sending a dating message, put the phone down, give her reasonable time to reply, and carry on with your actual evening. One message is an invitation to converse, not a demand for an immediate answer. Avoid interpreting silence as rejection, don't send a string of follow-ups to fill the gap, and decide in advance when you'll check your messages again. If she replies, lovely. If she doesn't, you still have a perfectly respectable life to get on with.
There. Your message has been sent. The screen has gone quiet. Nothing has exploded.
Unfortunately, a gentleman I knew called Barnaby once regarded this exact moment as the beginning of a national emergency.
Barnaby had met a woman named Lucy at a supper club. They'd talked about terrible holiday photographs, excellent Italian food and her unusual ability to identify a song from its first three notes. The following afternoon, he sent her a perfectly pleasant message: “I enjoyed meeting you last night. I still think your taste in holiday destinations is outrageous. Fancy a drink next week?”
Then he took the telephone into the bath. Not to call her. To supervise it.
By half past six he had checked whether the signal worked in every room, including the downstairs lavatory and a cupboard where his housekeeper kept the ironing board. When the screen finally lit up, it was a notification about a discounted garden hose.
“My dear Barnaby,” I told him, “you have invited a woman for a drink. You haven't launched a submarine.”
What does waiting for a reply actually mean?
Very little, on its own. You know that you sent something; you don't know what she's doing at that moment, whether she's seen it, or when she wants to answer. Some people reply in minutes. Others finish work, eat dinner, speak to family, or simply dislike living at the mercy of notifications. Neither the response speed nor the typing indicator is a reliable measurement of attraction by itself.
A lively conversation might make a quick response encouraging, certainly. But a delayed reply with warmth, a thoughtful question and an actual suggestion for meeting can be more promising than twelve instant messages containing nothing but “haha”.
Look at the whole exchange rather than the stopwatch. Does she engage with what you say? Does she make room for conversation? If you're arranging a date, does she help settle the details? Those are better clues than whether the little screen goes green at precisely 6:14.
And when there's no answer at all, acknowledge what you know: she hasn't replied. Resist adding a fictional explanation involving your haircut, your joke about Italy or another man with a suspiciously magnificent sports car.
Give your message a proper chance to breathe
Suppose your note is an ordinary invitation and no particular deadline is involved. Give her time to see it and consider it. You don't need to send a second message after twenty minutes asking whether the first one arrived.
If you met on a dating app, remember that matches aren't always sitting there waiting for a conversation. Someone might check the app once a day, have notifications switched off or be managing a hectic week. And some matches simply don't develop into conversations. It can be disappointing without being a verdict on you.
The exception is a practical arrangement. If you're meeting tomorrow and need to confirm the time, a clear follow-up is useful: “Just checking we're still on for seven tomorrow at the gallery café. Let me know by this evening so I can plan.” That's logistics, not pleading.
What I wouldn't send is: “Hello?? Have I said something wrong? Sorry if I annoyed you. I know you're busy. Ignore me. Actually don't ignore me.”
That is five separate messages, one imaginary offence and the sort of correspondence that makes an ordinary Tuesday feel like a hostage negotiation.
Why your phone suddenly becomes irresistible
A message creates a small unfinished story. You made a move, and now another person decides whether the story continues. It's natural to feel curious about the answer, especially if you really fancy her.
But curiosity can become the whole evening if you give it command of the sitting room.
You check once. No reply. You check again because perhaps you didn't notice the first time. You start reading your original message as though it contains a hidden diplomatic insult. Was “fancy” too direct? Was the joke about Italy too much? Should there have been a smiley face? Would two smiley faces have suggested an excess of teeth?
None of this changes the message she's received.
The solution isn't to pretend you don't care. You can care a great deal about a possible date and still refuse to spend three hours refreshing the same screen. Interest is perfectly attractive. Self-imposed surveillance is merely exhausting.
What to do in the first hour after you send it
Give yourself something specific to do that belongs entirely to you. Not “distract yourself somehow”, which is about as useful as advising a man standing in the rain to consider being drier.
Finish making dinner. Go for a walk. Play a game. Call a friend whose company you genuinely enjoy. Watch the match. If you're getting ready for work the next morning, sort out your things. The point is that your evening already has a shape.
Put your phone somewhere you won't touch absent-mindedly every ninety seconds. If important calls need to come through, leave those available; you needn't vanish into the wilderness. Just stop opening her conversation out of habit.
Choose your next check rather than allowing your fingers to choose for you. Perhaps after you've eaten or when the film has finished. There's no scientifically perfect interval. Pick one that prevents compulsive checking and doesn't make you miss a genuine arrangement.
Barnaby tried leaving his phone face down on the dining table. Within four minutes he was bending sideways to see the glow underneath it.
I eventually persuaded him to go downstairs for dinner. The salmon was excellent. His company, once the phone was out of sight, improved considerably. No woman should be required to compete for attention with an electronic rectangle before she's even agreed to meet him.
Don't edit the message in your imagination
There's a temptation to repair a perfectly adequate message before it has received a response. You remember a more amusing line. You decide your compliment was too mild. You wonder whether “next week” sounds insufficiently enthusiastic and consider sending an additional paragraph explaining your intentions.
Leave the original alone.
If you sent something rude, confusing or factually wrong, correcting it may be sensible. “Sorry, I meant Thursday, not Tuesday” is a useful correction. “Just to clarify that when I said I enjoyed our chat I meant I enjoyed it very much indeed” is a performance review nobody commissioned.
Read the original once, if you must, and ask a simple question: does it sound like a considerate adult who would be pleasant to meet? If so, you've done your part.
Do not hold a formal enquiry into each comma.
Should you send another message if she hasn't replied?
Sometimes, yes. Not endlessly.
If you've enjoyed a genuine conversation and it goes quiet, one friendly follow-up after a reasonable interval can be fine. Make it easy to answer, and give it some purpose. “You mentioned that exhibition last week. I went past the gallery today and remembered our conversation. Hope your week is going well.”
If you've already asked her out, a simpler follow-up may do: “No worries if you're busy. If you'd still fancy a drink sometime, let me know.”
Then leave the decision with her. If she doesn't answer, don't escalate into repeated reminders. Romantic interest cannot be negotiated through sheer persistence.
There isn't one universal number of hours that turns a follow-up from thoughtful to desperate. Context matters: how well you know each other, how she usually communicates, and whether you've already made a clear invitation.
When she replies, don't play games with the clock
Now comes the delightful possibility that Lucy has answered, but Barnaby decides he must wait exactly three hours to appear mysterious.
Why? Has he been elected custodian of Greenwich Mean Time?
Reply when it's convenient and you have something genuine to say. If you're free and interested, you're allowed to be responsive. If you're halfway through dinner with friends, finish enjoying their company first.
Artificial delays don't create character. They create unnecessary choreography.
A good answer moves the conversation somewhere. She says Wednesday might work? Suggest a time and place. She asks about your weekend? Answer and show interest in hers. She can't make the date but proposes another? Excellent: make a plan.
If the message is left unanswered
This is the part nobody enjoys. You've shown interest and received silence. You may feel embarrassed, disappointed or simply annoyed that you don't know where you stand.
Don't invent certainty about her motives. She could be overwhelmed, distracted, undecided or uninterested. You probably won't know. What you can decide is whether continued waiting is a good use of your time.
If you've sent one clear invitation and perhaps one respectful follow-up, you have enough information to stop investing energy in that conversation for now. Leave it alone. Don't keep the chat open as a monument to what might have happened.
If she returns later, judge the new conversation on its merits. You aren't obliged to pick up immediately, and you needn't punish her with a rehearsed lecture either. You can be cordial while deciding whether her communication suits you.
You've expressed interest. That was a normal, reasonable thing to do.
Learn the difference between waiting and putting your life on hold
Waiting briefly for information is part of any new connection. Putting your whole romantic life on standby for somebody you barely know is quite another arrangement.
You don't need to become cold or cultivate an enormous collection of other conversations just to prove you aren't bothered. But you should still make plans with friends, pursue interests and meet people at a pace that feels honest to you.
If a woman is interested and available, she'll have opportunities to show it through conversation and, eventually, agreeing on a date. If you're consistently the only person suggesting anything, you're allowed to notice the imbalance.
Similarly, once you've agreed to see each other exclusively, the expectations around communication may be different. Talk about them. What seems like ordinary silence to one person can feel distant to another. A grown-up conversation is more useful than secret tests of response times.
Before you press Send again
Try this small test. Are you writing because there's something kind, interesting or practical to say? Or are you writing because you want an uncomfortable feeling to disappear?
The first reason often leads to a good message. The second often leads to several bad ones.
For a first invitation, be warm, specific and uncomplicated: “I had a lovely time talking to you. Would you like to visit the wine bar by the station on Friday?” No essays required.
For arrangements already in motion, confirm details plainly. For an ongoing conversation, respond to what she's actually said rather than treating each exchange as a chance to win a prize.
And when you've said your piece, let her have hers.
Barnaby's greatest romantic achievement
Lucy did reply, just before nine. She had been helping her sister move flat and had barely looked at her phone. She'd enjoyed meeting him and suggested Thursday.
Barnaby announced this news with the gravity of a man learning that an endangered royal had been safely recovered from the mountains.
“Wonderful,” I said. “Now ask her which time suits.”
He began composing a paragraph about the immense pleasure of their previous conversation.
“Barnaby. Thursday. Seven o'clock. The wine bar. Try those words.”
They went for a drink. Whether romance followed is their affair. The important point is that no amount of staring at the telephone would have moved Lucy's sister's furniture any faster.
If you'd like to grow more comfortable with the parts of dating that happen before the phone starts buzzing, my free free 14-page introduction to dating with a little more charm guide is a rather entertaining place to begin. You'll find it through the free-guide invitation on this page.
Send the message, old boy. Then go and live a life worth telling her about when she answers.