Among the other various "rules" of dating, there exists the idea that the guy should call the girl a day or two after a date. I guess that is supposed to be his signal of continued interest. Although I have always been aware of this custom, until recently I never really applied it. One reason for this is that I rarely viewed these planned events as "dates," in regards to all of the extra baggage, (including this idea) that is attached to that term. In my mind, I was just going somewhere to hang out with a girl. So I wouldn't necessarily follow up with a call or other message a day or two later.
Not only that, but I actually would do the opposite. If I spent a few hours talking with someone, they should be all caught up on any "news" in my life, so it will be a while before I have anything else significant to tell them. Since I don't really make small talk all that well, (which is all that follow up would be) I won't have much to say. Instead, I wait until it is time to catch up or get together again before contacting them. I have no idea what impact totally ignoring that custom may have had on my potential relationships, but I will try to be more conscious of it in the future.
That leads to the question of how best to communicate with people in that regard. This is where I see an option like Facebook as a valuable tool. It is the least intrusive form of communication that is still reliable. Email has become very business oriented, at least to the under 40 generation. (Those over forty seem to use it primarily to forward pictures of cats) Sending an email without much content besides: "Hey what's up?" will stand out in certain circles, same as a phone call can. Either one can get the legitimate response: "You know, I am at work" but if someone is checking their Facebook messages, clearly that is not an issue for them at the moment.
As an aside, I used to consider text messages to be inherently urgent, back when I was paying ten cents apiece for them. I was stunned to find out that certain friends in college had forwarded their AIM accounts to their phones, while I was sending them "How's it going?" type messages because I thought they must be bored in front of their computer at the moment. While there is nothing wrong with any of that, the fact that it bothered me probably says something about how I view my value in regards to other people's time. But it may just be that I didn't like the idea of crying wolf, because normally when I am trying to get a hold of someone, it is for something important.
Anyhow, so Facebook provides a method of communication that only intrudes into someone else's attention when they invite it to do so. This has given me a forum to do much more social communication than I ever had in the past, and splitting my time between two geographical locations means that all of my friendships are long distance about 50% of the time. In regards to dating, my only "relationship" since Facebook was invented, involved communication evenly split between phone/txt, Facebook, and Skype chat. I have over 500 texts accumulated with another friend, since that is her preferred form of communication. But not much real communication takes place in that medium, especially compared to the extended dialogs I have with people on Facebook over many months. It is interesting to scroll back through them and see what I was thinking about in the past, and how things have changed since then. I anticipate a similar experience someday re-reading what I have written on here.
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