You Like Him. Welcome to Finishing School

A man you feel pleasantly neutral about sends a text and you answer it with the ease of a woman who has been using language since childhood. You see the message, you have something to say, you say it—sometimes five minutes later, sometimes after dinner, sometimes the next morning because you wandered off and forgot.

Your dignity survives beautifully.

Then you meet a man you actually like and, without completing an application, you are immediately admitted to an invisible finishing school where answering a telephone has rules.

Apparently a lady does not simply see How was your day? and respond.

Good heavens.

Were you raised in a barn?

Lesson One: Never Let Him Know You Own a Phone

The school appears to operate on the theory that men are deeply attracted to women who cannot locate their personal belongings.

You saw his message immediately, but this information must never reach him. He should imagine that your telephone was somewhere distant while you were occupied with a rich assortment of elegant activities—perhaps at an exhibition, perhaps dining with fascinating people, perhaps learning Italian on a terrace overlooking Lake Como.

What you must never allow him to suspect is that you were sitting two feet from the phone eating hummus.

The imaginary headmistress is horrified.

Alexandra, please. A little mystery.

And so you wait, not because you are genuinely unavailable but because availability has apparently developed terrible manners.

The remarkable thing is how quickly this begins to feel reasonable. A man has contacted you because he would presumably enjoy hearing from you, and you would enjoy hearing from him. Two human desires have lined up perfectly, which in dating is rare enough to deserve champagne.

Instead, somebody has to pretend she is elsewhere.

Etiquette demands sacrifice.

Lesson Two: Enthusiasm Must Be Served in Very Small Cups

Timing is only the beginning, because once enrolled you discover that the finishing school also has opinions about tone.

You cannot sound too pleased.

Pleasure must be present, naturally, but with restraint—enough warmth to reassure him that he has not accidentally texted a tax office, but not so much that he begins to suspect you are delighted.

This creates some exquisite little problems.

He asks whether you would like to see him Saturday, and you would—very much—but I’d love to! suddenly looks suspiciously happy. Happiness, according to certain ancient traditions, must be handled carefully around an attractive man.

Perhaps Sounds good.

Elegant. Controlled.

Unfortunately, you now sound like a woman approving a refrigerator delivery.

So you add an exclamation mark, remove it, put it back, and somewhere in Switzerland an elderly etiquette instructor quietly closes her eyes and prays for you.

The funniest part is that none of this happens with the man you do not particularly fancy. He gets spontaneous warmth, natural timing and completely unedited punctuation.

The man you actually want receives the graduate-level performance.

Dating has always had a sense of humor.

Lesson Three: Effortlessness Requires Considerable Effort

Finishing schools were traditionally supposed to teach young women how to look graceful while doing things that required enormous practice, and texting etiquette has preserved this noble tradition beautifully.

The goal is to appear effortless.

Achieving this may require considerable effort.

You must be naturally busy, but in a way that has been carefully scheduled; naturally confident, after reviewing the message twice; naturally mysterious, preferably between 7:15 and 8:04.

One begins to appreciate ballet.

At least the ballerina is allowed to admit she rehearsed.

And this is where the whole performance becomes so deliciously backward: the more interested you are, the more energy you may spend hiding evidence of your interest.

You want him to like the real you, so naturally you begin making small adjustments to the real you before delivery.

Nothing enormous. Nothing sinister. Just a little polishing around the edges—the emotional equivalent of sitting very straight because the headmistress has entered the dining room.

Advanced Studies: Unfortunately, He May Not Know the School Exists

The finishing school has one serious operational problem: nobody has confirmed that the men know it exists.

A woman may carefully delay a reply for exactly the right amount of time, imagining the message arriving with an invisible fragrance of independence.

He may read it while looking for parking.

She may spend twenty minutes selecting a tone that says interested but not intoxicated by your existence.

He may think, Great, Saturday at seven.

Years of imaginary etiquette, utterly wasted on a man who was trying to confirm dinner.

This does not mean timing never communicates anything. If somebody routinely ignores you for three days, you tend to notice, and if someone sends twelve messages before breakfast, that also makes an impression.

But ordinary responsiveness has somehow been placed under far greater suspicion than it deserves.

A woman can answer a message quickly without having abandoned her hobbies, friendships, standards, property holdings and personal identity.

She may simply have seen the message.

Radical.

Graduation: Eventually You Just Text Him About Lemons

The most amusing part of the finishing school is that women tend to graduate without realizing it.

Once you know where you stand with someone, much of the etiquette mysteriously evaporates. You answer because you want to answer, he replies because he wants to reply, and nobody examines the timestamp for evidence of declining romantic value.

The same woman who once waited forty minutes before sending That sounds fun will eventually text him from the supermarket asking whether they need lemons.

No ceremony, no strategy, no headmistress.

Just lemons.

Which rather gives away the secret.

The elaborate manners were never really about the phone. They appeared because liking somebody made you suddenly aware of yourself—how eager you looked, how available you seemed, whether your affection was showing before you knew what would happen to it.

So you enrolled in finishing school and learned to hold your enthusiasm with excellent posture.

Perfectly understandable.

Also extremely funny.

Because somewhere underneath all that elegant restraint was a woman looking at a message from a man she liked and thinking, I would love to answer this.

And an imaginary headmistress whispering:

Not so fast, darling. We do have standards.