I Made One Of The Biggest Mistakes You Can Make While Texting. Learn From My Mistake.

It was a normal Friday, nothing special at all. I was in my room, putting in some post-5 p.m. work hours (necessary? No, but I'm a hard worker) and chatting with a friend on FaceTime when the topic of a woman who I have recently become emotionally and romantically involved with came up. (Don't you dare ask if I have ever had sex, please respect my privacy). It was a pretty normal, informative exchange. Where she's from, what she does, what she's like, etc. Then, as any man as cripplingly horny as most of my New York friends who have been unable to get their rocks off over the last handful of months and desperate to see anything with a female form would, he requested to see what she looks like.

Easy! I headed over to her instagram page to copy the link, but then remembered she is on private. We are not at a level yet where my friends can just go requesting to follow her out of the blue, so I moved onto plan b. I scrolled around to choose what pictures I figured were best to send, snapped a couple screenshots and sent on over. These pictures ranged in dates from as recent as a few months, to over a year ago.

Now, at this point in the blog, you're probably asking yourself, "Bailey, did you spend time to write this entire blog just to brag about how you have talked to at least one woman in your life?" or "How can you screenshot an instagram profile that most certainly doesn't exist?" or simply "This headline implied some sort of colossal mistake, but you're clearly crushing it!" Let me assure you, that was not the case. Back to the story.

So, I said to my pal "What do you think?" regarding the appearance of the woman. He replied "I didn't get anything." Hmm, strange, since I have excellent wifi in my home and pictures always send through very quickly. I pull up the messages and it says "delivered" under the pictures. Slowly, my eyes trace up the screen until they reach the top. Weird, that isn't my pal's name atop the messages, that is her name. Why is that there? That is there because I sent those pictures directly to her instead of my friend. Now, I have committed similar mistakes before. A screenshot of messages sent directly back to the person, an errant text about a person meant for someone else, but this one was new. What does one do in this situation? I sure as hell didn't know, and I knew she was napping at the time, so I took to twitter and subsequently got some truly horrible suggestions.

This is creepy, no? Also doesn't exactly work considering some of the pictures were from eons ago. What the hell would that say about her recent pictures? That she looks terrible? Not an option.

In theory? Sure. In practicality? Absolutely does not work. While she could potentially be flattered I was thinking about her, I'm not just going to very clearly lie and double down on my own mistake.

Then, one special suggestion came through. Something I never would have guessed. Something that was new, unfamiliar, exciting. Telling the truth. To someone I was trying to convince to like me? The truth? What the heck?

I gave it a shot. I wasn't really flushed with other options at this point. 

She responded well and I survived to see another day of an outward chance that a woman will continue to pay attention to me, thank goodness.

My advice to all of you? Double check your messages before sending. It's worth the check and lack of overwhelming stress that exists for those moments when you realize you have fucked up.

What is the moral of the story? What is the overarching point I learned here? Is it that honesty is the key, or that you gain nothing form lying? Probably not.