For most guys, expressing emotion is absolutely unheard of. Sadness, or any other sort of grief are typically looked down upon as emasculating. Certainly, guys are able to laugh, have a good time, and kick back with a couple of beers--the manly things; however, anything else….no. Which is one of the reasons why text messaging can be so difficult. Unfortunately, it’s almost unavoidable. And with it, comes the difficulty of being able to say everything that a person wants concisely while also being able to convey all the same emotion a person would normally in a given conversation.

Unfortunately, for many guys, this can also be emasculating. It’s those smiley faced emoticons and LOL’s that seemingly only girls use. The same things that any guy would never EVER text to another guy. And yet, without them, any sentence can be taken as being serious. The jokes that are meant sarcastically. The backhanded compliments, which she would always find as being funny or would be ill-advised. All of it comes off as being mean or rude or insensitive unless there is some sort of emotional “guiding” behind it.

So, because her typical texting vocabulary includes the smiley faces and the LOL’s, each guy needs to add it to the repertoire simply because that’s what she understands. And, no girl will think any different of any guy because of it. In fact, the fact that you’re communicating at her level, it will also probably help to diffuse any resistance that she may have. Face it, when you meet someone for the first time in nothing more than a friendly environment, you’re more likely to get along with someone who shares similar interests. If nothing else, it allows for the conversation to flow freely. The smiley faces and all that other crap just allows for it to lighten the mood, which should still be light from the first time you met her, since sense of humor is actually one of the main things girls do look for.

But, of course, to regain some masculinity, you can always throw a HAHAHA in there instead of a lol every once in awhile…………………..

Jesse.