How long is too long for the talking stage?

It’s too long when you’ve been texting for a few weeks, it feels like a lot of contact, and nobody has suggested a plan with an actual day on it. The fix isn’t a deadline or a rule. It’s one clear invite, and then you let their answer, or their dodge, tell you which way this is going.

The talking stage isn’t the problem. Getting stuck in it is.

Why does the talking stage drag on so long?

Because texting feels like dating. It has the jokes, the “good morning,” the little jolt when the typing bubble shows up. What it doesn’t have is the part where you find out what it’s like to be next to this person.

Take Camila, 24. She matched with Bailey, 25, in late August. They’ve texted every day since. Bailey sends a sunrise photo from the walk to their first job, Camila sends the cursed thing her roommate cooked, the streak is at 38 days. Twice, someone said “we should hang out soon.” Twice, the other person said “yes!!” Nothing is on the calendar. When her group chat asks “so when are you seeing them?”, Camila changes the subject. That’s the tell.

A team of communication researchers led by Ramirez looked at this exact gap in a national sample of online daters, asking how much they’d talked online before meeting face-to-face and how that first meeting went.1 The relationship wasn’t a straight line. Some time talking first helped. But daters felt most positive about their partner when they hadn’t wasted much time before meeting, and past a tipping point, more online contact started working against the date.1 That study surveyed online daters, not people keeping Snap streaks. The idea still travels: the longer you build someone in your head, the more the real version has to live up to.

Isn’t texting every day a good sign?

It’s a good sign that you both like the texting. It doesn’t tell you much more than that.

Closeness mostly comes from time spent together. Jeffrey Hall at the University of Kansas estimated that it takes roughly 50 hours together to go from acquaintance to casual friend, and more than 200 hours to become close friends.2 The time that counted was hanging out and joking around, not hours spent working side by side.2 Hall was studying friendships, not dates, so don’t read it as a romance formula. But it’s a useful reality check. Six weeks of texts can feel like a lot of hours. They’re not the same hours.

So when you’re sorting your thread, separate two things:

• Volume: how much you talk. Daily, all day, the streak.
• Direction: whether anything is moving toward a day, a place and a time.

Plenty of threads have tons of the first and none of the second.

Why would someone keep texting if they don’t want to meet?

You can’t know from the thread, and it’s worth not pretending you can. A few common, unglamorous possibilities: they’re busy and bad at planning, they’re nervous about meeting, they like the texting for its own sake, or they’re talking to a few people and haven’t picked.

That last one isn’t a moral failing, it’s how the apps are built. Tilburg University psychologist Tila Pronk and a colleague ran three studies on online dating and found that people grew more likely to reject partners the longer they browsed, with the chance of saying yes dropping 27% on average from the first option to the last.3 More options can make everyone pickier and slower, including the person on the other end of your thread.

None of that is about you. It’s also not something more decoding will solve. Only the first line of what you know is a fact: lots of texts, no plans. The rest is a reading.

How do you move it from texting to a plan?

You make it easy to say yes. Vague invites (“we should hang out sometime”) are easy to agree with and easy to never schedule. A specific one gives them something real to answer.

• Day, place, time. “Coffee Saturday around 2” is a plan. “Let’s get coffee sometime” is a mood.
• Keep it cheap and short. A walk, coffee, a night market, one drink. A first meetup doesn’t need to be a whole evening.
• Send it once. Then let it sit. You don’t need to follow up the same day.
• Read the reply, not the speed. “Can’t Saturday, how about Sunday?” is a yes. “Haha maybe! This week is crazy” with no other day is information too.

If they say yes, great, you’re out of the talking stage. If they dodge, you get one more try that’s more direct: ask what they’re looking for, and make it clear any honest answer is fine. A separate piece on this site covers the “what are we” conversation once you’re actually seeing someone. This is the step before that.

What if it’s going nowhere and you want out?

Then say so. Short and kind beats slowly fading.

It’s tempting to just reply a little slower each day until the streak dies. But a team at the University of Milano-Bicocca ran a multi-day experiment in which 46 people chatted daily with a study partner who, on day four, either stopped answering or clearly ended the conversation.4 Being clearly rejected hurt right away, then eased.4 Being ghosted produced a slower, longer slump, with more lingering confusion.4 That was a lab setup with strangers, not someone you’ve texted for six weeks. But the direction is clear enough: a clear ending is easier to recover from than a silence.

You don’t owe a speech. Two sentences that say you enjoyed talking and you’re looking for something that turns into actually hanging out are plenty.

What to do tonight, and this week

• Tonight, sort your thread. Scroll back two weeks. Count the plans with a day on them, not the messages.
• Answer your own question first. Do you actually want to meet this person, or do you like the texting? Both are allowed. Only one needs an invite.
• Take it out of the group chat. Your friends can’t tell you why Bailey never names a day. Neither can Camila. A plan can.
• Send one invite this week. Day, place, time. Use the first script or your own.
• If it gets dodged, ask once. The second script. “Either is fine to say” makes an honest answer easier.
• If it’s still going nowhere, close it. The third script. Then mute the thread so you’re not checking for a typing bubble.

Camila sent the coffee text on a Wednesday. Bailey replied “wait yes, finally” and suggested the place near their office instead. Not every version goes like that. But one text did what 38 days of streak couldn’t.

What doesn’t the research show?

• The modality-switching study surveyed adult online daters, and it measured how the first meeting went, not whether people ended up together.1
• The 50 and 200 hour figures are about friendships, not romantic relationships.2
• The rejection mind-set studies looked at browsing profiles, not people already deep in a conversation with one match.3
• The ghosting experiment was a short lab paradigm with a small first study, so it shows a pattern, not how any specific ending will feel.4
• No study can tell you what this one person wants. That’s what the invite is for.