Everyone has had this happen: you’re in the middle of the text thread with a cutie and suddenly he stops responding. He’s part of a breed single people know as “the Vanishing Texter.” Typically, he only answers direct questions. So, you can text him, “hey, what’s going on?” And he will respond right away. But the minute you try to keep the thread going he falls off the face of the earth. The question becomes, why does he bother responding if he’s not interested?
The answer is the same for just about every situation where the guy you like is either unresponsive, slow to respond, or sending mixed signals: he’s just not that into you. It’s not that he doesn’t like you. It’s that he doesn’t like you enough to keep texting after his initial response. The “vanishing texter” is often confused with the “string along texter.” This guy likes to respond initially but doesn’t like to follow up because the truth of it is that he likes the fact that you text him. It makes him feel wanted (even though he doesn’t actually want YOU).
It’s a bitter pill.
Is there a way around it? Can you get a vanishing texter to reappear? Can you get the “string along texter” to commit? Yes but you’re never going to do it through text. The only way out of a texting problem is a phone call. Or a face-to-face. Why? Because texting allows him to put you in a preconceived box. Texting allows him to control the situation (he who does not respond controls the situation). Ah, But a phone call! That’s different. Now he hears your voice, your energy, your personality. That is much harder to ignore. True, he could let it roll to voicemail but even then your voice might do the trick. See, one of the reasons he vanishes is because texting itself is kind of an apparition. If you’ve got any chance with him it’s going to be when he puts his phone to his ear or the coffee cup to his lips when you have a live conversation with him.