Seven Years In and I Miss the Nervous Texts

I know exactly the feeling you mean, and it has a texture. Those early messages, drafted three times, deleted twice, sent with a held breath, then the phone face down on the sofa as though ignoring it would hurry the answer. Seven years later your texts say pick up milk and are you home by six. Perfectly useful, and about as romantic as a parking receipt. Of course you miss the flutter.

Let me be a little sisterly and honest. You can't recreate that nervousness, because nervousness came from not knowing whether you were wanted. You do know now, and that certainty is a gift worth more than any butterfly. The trick isn't to manufacture doubt. It's to rediscover the delight of being a little bit surprised by each other.

So write the old way again. Draft the message. Take a breath. Send something that isn't logistics, a line that makes the other person put down their spoon. I can't stop thinking about your wrists this morning. Or something plainer and sweeter, like I'm still pleased I picked you. Then leave your phone alone and let the waiting do its quiet work.

Another small thing: stop answering instantly. I know that sounds like a game, and it isn't one, but a pause creates a little room for anticipation, and anticipation is half of what we're missing. A reply that arrives an hour later, with thought in it, is worth ten that arrive in four seconds with a thumbs up.

If you'd like to hear me tease more about this, TheFriend is where my voice lives. Your homework, then. Tonight, each of you writes one text you'd have been too shy to send in the early days, and you send them at exactly the same time from opposite ends of the sofa. Watch each other read. Do not say a word until both phones are down.

More like this: our virtual girlfriend online notes.