Meet Joe Blank Screen

I'm a woman in my late 20s. The guy I'm seeing is "not a phone person" and hates texting. Our time together is wonderful. However, he rarely texts except to make plans. I am used to frequent contact throughout the day via text with boyfriends. My friends say he should be texting every day, multiple times a day. I'm worried his lack of texts signals a lack of interest.

--Disturbed

Technology was supposed to set us free, not dial back our personal autonomy to that of my late hamster. I didn't have control over much when I was 8, but I loved how at any moment, I could go all kiddie Mussolini, pull Squeaky out of his cage, and make him turn tricks (uh...do somersaults on a pencil). A smartphone makes constant communication possible; "it doesn't mandate it," I wrote in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck." Your friends' daily texting quotas aside, what might it mean that your boyfriend doesn't spend his entire day texting you? Um...he has a job? He prefers to communicate in spoken-word form, ideally in person? (See "not a phone person.") Frankly, maybe he's on to something, considering that so many text-versations, beyond the constant attention-hijacking, are basically conversational iceberg lettuce, amounting to: "I'm still alive!" "Yep, still alive here, too. LOL. LOL. LOL." Chances are your guy shows he cares in a number of ways. Take stock of those. Still feel a little underloved? Consider "the dependency paradox." Social psychologist Brooke Feeney, who coined the term, finds that in romantic relationships, the more an insecure partner sees they can count on the other to be responsive to their appeals for love and comforting, the less needy and clingy they end up being. (Ultimately, through repeated dependence comes independence.) You might ask him to be more cuddly-touchy-affectionate with you, which, Feeney finds, helps insecure partners calm down and enjoy their relationship. Assuming he cares about you (as "Our time together is wonderful" suggests), it's a relationship "task" he should enjoy. And though you're used to texts from a boyfriend, demanding texts from a man who hates texting is to be avoided. It makes a girlfriend seem less like a girlfriend and more like Mussolini with boobs and a phone seem less like a phone and more like a cattle prod that delivers dings, cat memes, and throw-up-face emojis. ... For pages and pages of "science-help" from me, buy my latest book, "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence." It lays out the PROCESS of transforming to live w/confidence.