We all know him. He’s cute, and he knows how to use that smile. Every time he sees you, he’s right there, grinning, talking about how he wants to take you out. Coffee, dinner, “whenever you free.” Then you get home, and the texts start.
“Good morning beautiful.”
“Wyd.”
“How was your day?”
“Wyd now.”
Two weeks go by like that. No day picked, no time set, no restaurant named. Just good morning and what you doing, so regular you could set your watch by it. Meanwhile, you’re running a business, closing out the month, answering emails at 11 p.m. and trying to remember to drink water. You mention you had a long day and you’re exhausted, and the reply comes back, “Oh ok. Wyd later tho?”
And somewhere between the good morning and the wyd, a lot of us have caught ourselves wondering. Do I even like him, or am I just bored?
Getting to Know the Smile
It’s a fair question, and it usually starts with a little inventory. What do we actually know about him? We know the smile. We know the good morning text shows up before 8. We know he thinks we’re beautiful, because he says so every day.
But the bigger picture is still blank. Is he responsible? Is he honest about whether he has children or a family at home? Where did he grow up, and what’s his family like? What does he do all day, what’s his background, and what is he building? Two weeks in, those answers haven’t come up, because “how was your day” can only take a conversation so far.
None of that makes him a bad guy. Plenty of men were never taught how to get to know a woman past the small talk, and plenty of us were never taught to ask for more. It just means the getting-to-know-you phase hasn’t really started yet, even though the texting has.
Dr. Natalie Jones, PsyD, LPCC, an Oakland-based licensed professional clinical counselor with a doctorate in clinical psychology, has been talking about this exact pattern. In a TikTok video tagged #goodmorningbeautiful and #wyd, she put it plainly: “Low effort dating is on the rise through dating apps and social media.” Dr. Jones specializes in helping women heal from narcissistic abuse, and her work is a good reminder that those getting-to-know-you questions aren’t only about compatibility. They’re about safety, too.
On her podcast, A Date With Darkness, she has walked through the red flags women sometimes miss or ignore early in dating, describing them as “indicators that a person is not who they portray themselves to be.” Two weeks of good morning texts can’t tell you who someone is. Real conversation and time can.
Why the Back-and-Forth Feels Good Anyway
There’s no shame in enjoying it. A cute man saying good morning feels nice. It fills the quiet between meetings, and it’s a little bit of attention at the end of a long day. Dating is thin out here, too. A national survey of 5,275 unmarried adults ages 22 to 35 from the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute found that 74% of the women had not dated at all, or had dated only a few times, in the past year. When real dates are that rare, a steady stream of texts can feel like something.
Psychology even has a name for part of what’s happening. It’s called the mere exposure effect, a term coined by social psychologist Robert Zajonc of the University of Michigan in a 1968 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Zajonc found that simply encountering something over and over can make people like it more, even when nothing else about it changes. In one part of his research, people rated photos of faces more favorably the more times they had seen them. Later research found the effect tends to peak somewhere between 10 and 20 exposures and then level off. Two weeks of good morning texts lands right in that range. So that warm feeling when his name pops up might be real interest, or it might just be familiarity doing what familiarity does.
That’s where boredom comes in. Sometimes the back-and-forth is fun because we’re genuinely curious about him. Other times it’s fun because it’s easy, it’s there, and nothing else is happening. Both feelings are human. The trick is being honest about which one it is.
A few quiet questions can help sort it out. When his name pops up, do you smile before you read the message, or only after? If the texts stopped tomorrow, would you miss him, or would you just miss the attention? When you picture actually sitting across from him at dinner, are you excited, or are you mostly curious whether he’ll ever make it happen? There are no wrong answers, only honest ones.
What Courting Looks Like Going Into 2027
Women have been clear about what we’re hoping for. Hinge found that 72% of women care more about a partner putting in effort to build a relationship than about him earning more than they do. Effort doesn’t have to be fancy. It looks like “Are you free Saturday at 7? I’d love to take you to this spot.” It looks like a question that shows he remembered what you said last time. It looks like reading the room, so when you say you’re tired, he says “Get some rest, I’ll call you tomorrow.”
BLK, the dating app for Black singles, surveyed more than 4,000 of its users, and the message was that people want dating that feels safer, more honest and grounded in real life. That’s the kind of courting so many women are asking for right now, and it’s a beautiful thing that we’re asking out loud.
Letting Him Show You
The good news is that the answer is usually one text away. Next time the good morning comes through, it’s perfectly fine to say what you’d like. “I’d love to get dinner. Pick a day.” Or ask the questions you’ve been wondering about. Tell me about your work. Tell me about your family. What are you building right now?
And when that first date does happen, keep it somewhere public. When a user asked Dr. Jones about it on TikTok, she offered a word of caution about going to someone’s house on the first date, noting that “there are many activities that can be done outside of someone’s home when dating.” Coffee, dinner, a museum, a comedy show. Let him plan something you can both enjoy out in the world while you get to know the man behind the smile.
Then let him show you. If he plans the date, asks real questions and opens up about who he is, you might find out you like him more than you expected. If the conversation stays at “wyd,” that’s an answer too, and nobody has to be the villain. Some connections are just a pleasant way to pass the time.
Do Your Homework Before You Say Yes
Here’s the part nobody likes to talk about. Even entertaining a man you’re not that interested in, or saying yes to a quick coffee, means meeting someone you don’t really know yet. In today’s world, a little homework before that first date should be standard for every woman who is serious about dating. There are things a man should never lie about, like being married, having children he supports, or having a criminal record, and some of that you can check for yourself.
Start with the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website, run by the U.S. Department of Justice. It’s free, and one search by name covers the public sex offender registries in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., the U.S. territories and participating tribes. There’s a free mobile app, too. From there, look up whether your state or county court offers an online case search, where you can type in a full name and see if anything comes up.
Paid background check sites can help you see even more of the picture in one place. Reports from these services can include details like address history, relatives, phone numbers, arrest and criminal records, and even social media and dating profiles. Run his full name along with the city he says he lives in, and use what you find alongside your state or county court records to make sure everything lines up with what he’s told you.
Then trust what you see in person. Meet somewhere public, drive yourself, and tell a friend where you’ll be and who you’re with. Keep your home address to yourself until you know him. And pay attention to whether his answers about his work, his family and his relationship status stay the same over time. A man who is who he says he is won’t mind the questions.
Either way, wanting to be courted, not just texted, isn’t asking too much. It’s knowing what feels good and what keeps you safe, and as we head into 2027, more women are saying it with their whole chest.
