Texting is one of the ways in which we communicate with the people in our life. For us women, it has turned out to be extremely important in determining a friendship or relationship with someone. We tend to take unanswered text messages very seriously. Thoughts such as, Why didn’t he text me back? and Does he hate me? occupy our minds, causing us to become anxious and question if we should jump off the nearest cliff. We are all guilty of sitting in our room and anxiously waiting for his name to pop up on our phone. I’ve been there and done that. However, we need to take a deep breath and relax. Here are a few reasons why he probably didn’t text you back:

He's busy.

Believe it or not, the guy you texted has a life. You have a life as well. There are days when we are occupied with classes, meetings, or other events where we do not have our phone on us 24/7. We all have been guilty of not replying to texts or of answering texts many hours later. Just because a guy doesn’t answer your text doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care about you. You wouldn’t be texting/communicating with him if he didn’t have any interesting hobbies or goals. Just relax and wait for him to get back to you. However, if he doesn’t answer your texts most of the time, then there’s a problem.

Your message didn’t require a response.

As women, we think that every text you send someone has to have a response. It doesn’t! If you send a text to a guy saying “Okay,” “Sounds good!” or “Yeah,” there’s a 99 percent chance that he's not going to respond. The same thing goes for other one-word answers. If you want to keep the conversation going, I would recommend bringing up another topic, or asking him a question.

They aren’t interested in you.

This is mostly for girls who want to pursue a relationship with a guy. As hard as this sounds, there will be guys who are not interested in dating you or looking for a committed relationship. It even happens to the prettiest and most outgoing women. Rejection truly hurts, but how we deal with it defines who we are. In this situation, we have to accept that a relationship with this guy wasn’t meant to be and that it is his loss for not wanting to get to know you more. We must be patient and trust that the right guy won’t have to make us second guess anything.

Whenever a guy doesn’t text back, or when it takes forever for him to text back, my advice is to wait until he contacts you, and not to take it personally. If he doesn’t get back to you, then you can reach out again after a few days or a week.

Never send him a million text messages in a row. That will cause him to think you are needy, and he will push you away. Nobody wants a clingy person in their life, whether it is a close friend or significant other. Instead of waiting for his name to appear on our phone, we should take a chill pill and go live our lives. He’ll get back to you, don’t worry.