[Sent: 1:07 a.m.]
“Heyyy how’ve you been”
How do you evict someone from your heart? How do you get over a stranger? They say time heals all wounds, but I’m still reeling. Texts start to blur together. The routine of ‘What’s up?’ and ‘What’re you doing tonight?’ feels like a programmed response. It’s not a fight or a breakup. It’s a steady erosion. Words lose their weight, the connection fades without ever fully dissolving. You’re talking, but are you really saying anything? In the silence between messages, you wonder how you ended up here. You’re holding onto someone familiar and foreign, a stranger who’s made a home in your heart.
[Delivered]
Modern dating is a still battlefield. A cold war of unsent messages, mixed signals, and a cat-and-mouse game of who-can-care-less. We don’t break up, we fade out. We don’t communicate; we overthink. We say we want connection, but we fear vulnerability. We talk for hours, but we never say what we really mean. We orbit each other’s axis without ever landing.
Growing up, I always thought love was about understanding. About knowing someone so well that their pauses, their quirks, their inflections, even their silences had meaning. About fireworks every time you see them. But you never take into consideration the fact that sometimes all that meaning can get lost in translation. Sometimes, it feels like you’re playing a game of chess while the other person is playing checkers.
[Sent: 2:35 p.m.]
“Hey, wanna hang out?”
[Read: 5:36 p.m.]
“Maybe I’ll let you know.”
We keep telling ourselves it’s casual. That it doesn’t matter. That we don’t care. That we’re just “seeing where it goes.” But deep down, we want something more. We want everything that comes with it: the honesty, the vulnerability, the certainty. We convince ourselves that keeping things light is easier, but we’re only fooling ourselves.
The silence between ‘maybe later’ and ‘I miss you’ says everything, even if we refuse to fess up. We tell ourselves we’re fine, but we wish for something real. Because when someone walks away, you can mourn it. When someone disappears in slow motion, you start questioning if they were ever really there. In the absence of clarity, we create our own narratives.
[Sent: 11:52 p.m.]
“Hey, I just wanted to say…”
The thing about miscommunication is that it doesn’t always look like a fight. Sometimes, it’s a slow unraveling. A series of almost’s, maybe’s, and what-if’s that never become anything more. It’s the way someone can look at you from across a crowded room but never say a word. An unspoken rulebook filled with: don’t text back too fast, don’t seem too available, keep your options open, don’t ask for too much. But in trying to play it cool, you freeze yourself out from the possibility of a real connection.
Modern dating thrives on unspoken subtleties. Half-typed messages deleted before ever being sent, the quiet hesitations that say more than words ever could. We talk about ghosting and breadcrumbing and situationships like they’re part of a silly game of push-and-pull, but no one ever tells you how easy it is to fall into miscommunication without ever meaning to.
[Typing…]
Maybe this is what dating is now. A constant game of waiting and wishing and wondering. Staring at a screen trying to decode something that isn’t there. A series of small missteps that lead to you and another person standing at opposite ends of the same street, waiting for the other to cross first, to make a move. Maybe we’ve all convinced ourselves that feeling something is a weakness. That clarity is too much. Maybe we’re all scared to say what we really feel.
[Sent: 3:00 a.m.]
“I miss you.”
I don’t think we’ll ever truly get an answer from modern love. I don’t have an answer yet. No one does. But if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that love isn’t about keeping score. It’s about putting down the phone, stepping out of the cycle, and finally saying what we truly mean. Silence is rarely closure. Sometimes, the hardest thing isn’t letting go, it’s knowing when to speak up.
There are things I should’ve said. “I’m sorry’s” that still linger. But in the end, love can’t be about being perfect or who’s winning. It’s about being real to ourselves and each other, even when it’s messy. Love is a two-way street. When we realize that we need to put less effort into crafting the perfect text, then we’ll be more willing to open up, vulnerabilities and all.
[Not delivered]
They may say that love is a battlefield. But maybe now it’s more of a series of misunderstandings. Maybe, at the end of the day, all’s fair in love and miscommunication.
Can’t get enough of HC UMass Amherst? Be sure to follow us on Instagram, listen to us on Spotify, like us on Facebook, and read our latest Tweets!