Dear Guy: Phone Etiquette

Dear Guys,

Please do not bombard a girl you barely know’s phone with messages and missed calls. If you like her, it’s fine to show your interest but no overkill! It’ll backfire and she’ll ignore you even more. Also, you come off as clingy and pathetic, which is terrible. If she does not respond, resist the urge to send her more texts and consider a different tactic or a different girl.

If you have no idea what I am talking about.. read below. If this sounds like you, while you would never admit it, please take my advice and seriously.. stop.

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So.. this is what’s happening. I received a text message from this guy I met recently. It was a pretty standard text message and I didn’t reply because I was in the middle of something at the time. A few minutes later, I saw my phone ringing (the same guy was calling) but it stopped almost immediately after it rang. A missed call. “Weird” I thought and put the phone away. When I finally paid attention to my phone later that night, this is what it looked like. (timestamps estimated)

10:26am: Text #1 – “Hello Good morning, how are you? I hope you are doing well.”
10:35am: Missed Call
11:00am-ish: Text #2 – “Hello..busy? Kumusta?”
3:00pm-ish: Missed Call
7:00pm-ish: Text #3 – “Hi, where are you? You must be busy.. Hope you had a good day. Goodnight!”

What the!? Does anyone else think this was a little much? I certainly thought so. I’m instantly a little creeped out. Geez dude. Chill out a little. What I initially didn’t understand is, why the missed calls?

I consult my male cousin to figure out why. He thinks that the person is probably calling to check if my phone is on. But why? Maybe to ensure that I receive the text messages? So they take this as a signal to send me more text messages? Huh? I don’t know. If anyone out there has any other theories, please share them.

What’s worse is when I logged onto FB, I had a private message waiting from him to say that he had text me (yes dude, I know) and that he just wanted to say hi. Little did he know his actions were actually saying “bye.”

I didn’t reply to any of these messages because it weirded me out. I replied the next day, a simple single message to let him know I received his messages and that I hoped he had a good day. I also then proceeded to change his name in my phone from “********” to “******** – the creepy dude.”

Ladies. Beware.