'Boy Hours' Offers A New Way Of Dating That Lets You Prioritize Yourself

Today, one of the most popular ways of getting to know a potential partner is via texting or social media. Being interested in a new guy (or girl) is exciting, so it's natural to want to talk to him all the time, but before you know it, you realize you've been texting back and forth the entire day. This might sound nice in theory, knowing he wants to talk to you for hours on end. However, one of the major issues to arise from this is you start to form a digital or text relationship with this guy, when you could be taking the time to get to know him IRL.

Enter "boy hours," a new way to approach dating, made popular in a video by TikTok user Tess Higgins. The idea is to allot yourself a couple of hours to talk to the guy you're seeing or are interested in. This goes for texting, phone calls, Snapchat — or whatever your chosen way to communicate is. Set aside a specific time slot (for example, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.), and once those hours are up, that boy becomes out of sight and out of mind. It shouldn't be the same time every day; you want to keep him on his toes. Now, it might be tempting to text him right through the day, but there are a few good reasons to follow the boy hours rule.

The key benefit of "boy hours" is it gives you time to prioritize your needs. When you spend all of your time focusing on talking to a guy, it's easy to forget to put yourself first, and your mental health can likely suffer because of it. According to CalmClinic, spending excessive time talking to a potential partner online can cause a lower self-esteem, and in some cases, it can lead to anxiety and depression. By turning your boy brain off, you can focus on activities that improve your mental health, not deteriorate it.

Spend time with friends, take up a hobby, practice self-care — whatever will help satisfy your needs. Of course, when we're interested in a guy, our friends want to know all the details, but give them the heads up that girl time is girl time, and talking about boys is off-limits for the time being. Think of boy hours like office hours and you're the professor; students can come to you during a certain time slot only, and in this case, the student is your new guy.

You could argue that texting a guy helps him get to know you better, and you're right. But doing it 24/7 takes the mystery out of dating — you're pretty much giving him your life story through a bunch of text messages. However, talking to him for a few hours a day gives you an air of mystery and keeps him intrigued. In a way, setting boy hours is kind of like playing hard to get, which makes you seem more irresistible, and in a potential partner's eyes, you're worth the chase, per Psychology Today.

Like we mentioned earlier, be sure to switch up the times you've allotted yourself for talking to a guy. If he knows you're going to text him between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m., the mystery you've been trying to create is pretty much gone. You might even want to cut the hours shorter every now and then. It gives the illusion you have a lot going on (even if you're just chilling on the couch). You don't want to seem too available, and setting boy hours prevents that from happening. You'll get back to him ... when you have time.