So, maybe you’ve managed to bag your crush’s phone number (yay!), or perhaps you’re in the early days of dating and hoping to take things a step further. NEWSFLASH: your textiquette could be ruining your chances. One mistimed message or idiotic pun, and you could be condemned to a life of singledom. The pressure is immense. Even the slightest deviation from the approved rules will destroy your chances – we all know you need to keep in mind when you text, how you text, what you say, how keen you seem, how many characters you use, which emojis you deploy (if any), wind direction, the next full moon, and current trends – but there’s so much more to it than that. There’s a lot riding on this – for the love of god, don’t fuck it up. Here are our tips on how to get a guy to text back.

Play hard to get

You may think: How can he text me back if I never texted him in the first place? You’re thinking too much – it’s best not to. One thing you should be focusing your brain energy on, though, is the fact that men love a woman who plays hard to get. Nothing drives a man wild quite like a lady who never speaks to him, ignores all his advances and answers any communication with stony silence. He’ll just have to have you!

If you must respond, keep it short

This is an extension of playing hard to get. At some point, you’re probably going to have to say something. Monosyllabic answers tell him you don’t care about him at all, and so he’ll be dying to impress you. You. The lady he knows literally nothing about. The less you have to say, the more attractive he’ll find you.

Take an interest in his interests

Now that we’ve established your personality is irrelevant, the only way to communicate is by making it all about him. Does he like football? Of course he does! Study the game as though you were studying for an exam, and then make sure all future correspondence is about the intricacies of the latest match, your excitement over transfer deadline day and your feelings about any controversial managerial changes. He’ll be powerless to resist.

Let him rebuild you

Men are all about fixing things – cars, tech stuff, their potential dates. Give him something to solve, such as your mind, and he’ll be putty in your hands.

Don’t be needy

Guys hate it when women need them. They need to know that you will never want to rely on them for support, and that there is no long-term responsibility attached to their actions. So if you haven’t heard from him in a while, don’t ask what he’s been up to – he’ll take that as a sign that you need him, and flee for cover. It’ll take years of ignoring him, and possibly a move to another country or brief marriage to his arch nemesis to coax him out again.

Take your mind off the text by living your life

So, he hasn’t texted back yet. It may appear that the only logical step is to sit quietly in the dark near your phone – after all, you need to be there ready and waiting to ignore him at a moment’s notice. But you’d be surprised to find that the best manoeuvre is to craft a life for yourself so that if he ever does text back you can say you’re too busy for this crap right now, Greg, you have shit to do, goddammit.

If you’re not sure where to start, try a club or class where you can make friends and contacts. Throw yourself into a career that you enjoy, work at it for several years until you’re top of your field, travel the world winning the esteem of your colleagues and the admiration of your peers. Maybe invent a cure for something – but leave time for fun! Interesting fun, like climbing Everest or swimming with sharks. That way, if he does ever contact you, you’ll have plenty of interesting things to not share with him.

Have you bagged a man yet? No? Get on it – your ovaries will thank you.