So you like a guy. Good for you, but what are you going to do about it? We all know you’re probably not ballsy enough to straight up tell him. And besides, there are rules, games, and boundaries to consider. Despite what we would have people think, we’re all still secretly 12-year-old girls. We still dissect every single interaction we have with the boy we like, only now there is more to consider than what he tells his friends, where he sits for lunch, and whether he invites you to his football game. You’ve got Snapchat, Facebook, Cyber Dust, and plain old texting to contend with.
Forget about reading between the lines. You’ve got the whole damn Internet to deal with, and as a girl, the subtleties of communication you used to be able to pick up on at a bar are now muddled, mixed, seemingly uninterpretable signals lost in a misplaced period, an out-of-place emoticon, or the dreaded ellipses. Also, ellipses always come across as bitchy or sarcastic. Learn the rules, people.
Once you’ve mastered the art of deciphering guy speak–made even less discernible by 140 character limits and inside joke hashtags–there is still the task of ensuring that the recipient of all your e-loving is capable of understanding what you mean. Guys are not masters of communication, college guys even less so, and that saucy, innuendo-laced text message you spent 20 minutes composing will probably fly right over the gorgeous, sunglasses bedecked head it was intended for. It’s indescribably difficult to be sultry via text without sounding like a complete hooker, and thanks to the ladies in Hollywood, I think we’ve all learned that dirty pictures do, in fact, reach a far larger audience than originally intended.
When it comes to flirting and relationships, there are few things as exciting as the little ping your phone makes when he texts you back. Ping him back. Snapchat him from chapter. Instagram the good times you have at a date party of a rival fraternity. Just know he’s doing the same thing and roll with it, and try not to get your panties in a twist when you see him on Facebook with a sophomore from the house next door.