What texting is for
Between the first date and the next, texting has exactly two productive jobs: keeping a light connection alive and arranging the next meeting. Everything else — deep conversations, conflict, defining the relationship — degrades badly in text and belongs to voices and faces.
Communication researchers keep finding the same thing: text strips tone, and people fill the gap with their own mood. The same message reads warm to an optimist and cold to a worrier. Important things deserve better bandwidth.
Cadence without game-playing
The old advice — wait three days, mirror her response time, never double-text — is choreography, and adults generally see through choreography. A simpler standard: text when you have something to say, don't when you don't.
A message the day after a good date ('Really enjoyed that — the story about the sailing trip especially') is not overeager. It's clear. Clarity is the whole brand at this age. If the interest isn't mutual, no cadence trick was going to fix that.
Reading silence sanely
A slow reply is data with a very wide error bar: work, kids, a phone left in a coat. A pattern of slow, flat replies over a week or two is data with a narrow one. React to patterns, not incidents.
And when a conversation is clearly dying, letting it die without a bitter closing message is the grown-up move. Every ending is also a reference.