There are many parts of modern dating that aren’t all that fun, like receiving unsolicited dick pics or a sexist rant from some random on a dating app. But the part of modern dating that probably drives us all the craziest is the texting games. When you actually find someone you want to date, of course it still has to be complicated with all the mind games that seem cemented with our generation. If you want to avoid going completely crazy when he’s not texting you back, here’s some rules that will help you avoid the games.

Don’t follow suit when they take hours to reply

The thing we’re all probably most familiar with is this stupid game everyone seems to go along with. You text someone and then don’t hear back for hours, or even days, driving you crazy and making you second guess everything you said in that last text message. But you don’t have to follow suit, it’s time for more of us to break the mould. If they don’t text back until three hours later, it’s tempting to wait a similar amount of time. But if you text back sooner than that, eventually they might follow suit. Either that, or they’ll be aware you’re not hear playing silly games.

That doesn’t mean you have to text back a minute after you receive the message – you can still play it cool and wait 20 minutes. If the person thinks you’re “desperate” or “coming on too strong” for sending a message within less than an hour, he’s not worth wasting your time on.

Don’t assume tone

“Why the full stop? Why no smiley face or exclamation mark?! They’re being totally passive aggressive.” As soon as you read it like that, you’ll start to assume the worst and make up this story in your head that they’re not into this when that might not be the case at all. When you read a message and assume the worst, read it again to find out if it could be interpreted in another way. If you’re unsure, you can always suss it out with a follow up message.

Don’t respond with one word answers or emojis

I mean, at least give the emojis some context. Constructing a sentence that’s just made up of random emojis is even more likely to be interpreted incorrectly, or will just be plain confusing. If you’re mad at something they said, sending a snake emoji or the single letter “k.” isn’t going to help anything.

Don’t underestimate the importance of grammar

We get it, you don’t have to be on you’re A-Grade grammar game when you’re texting. You’re not going for a Pulitzer Prize here, so you’re allowed a few spelling slip-ups and shortening words to make it easier. No issues if you want to shorten totally to totes or definitely to defs, but that doesn’t give you any excuse to mix up “their”, “they’re” or “there”. They all take an equal amount of time to write. Bad grammar can make or break your dating success, as can an autocorrect error you didn’t proofread.

Turn off ‘read’ receipts

This is more for the sake of the other person than yourself, but treat others how you’d like to be treated, or something like that. If you read a message and can’t reply to it straight away, you don’t want to drive the person you’re dating crazy when they see the ‘read’ message. Just pray that they’ve also turned it off so you can avoid going crazy too – and maybe stick to text messages over Messenger.

Image: Giphy