One assignment for Marie Claire magazine changed Kristina Grish’s’97 life forever.

The assignment: to write a story about going on one date each with four writers, all of whom considered themselves experts in the romance category. For the fiction category, Grish chose Scott Mebus, author of Booty Nomad, the story of a man attempting to recover from a breakup by falling in love again as quickly as possible. The book “made him sound like such a bumbling lady’s man,” says Grish.“I expected a total lothario, but he turned out to be a sweet and exceptionally bright man.”

Grish and Mebus celebrated their first wedding anniversary in May.

Grish’s career as a writer has taken similar unexpected turns.

She is the author of four books: Addickted: 12 Steps to Kicking Your Bad Boy Habit; Boy Vey! The Shiksa’s Guide to Dating Jewish Men; We Need to Talk, But First, Do You Like My Shoes?; and The Joy of Text: Mating, Dating and Techno-relating. She is also a contributing editor to Women’s Health magazine and has written features and essays forMarie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, Men’s Health, Shape and many others.

Following graduation from Albright with a major in English, communications and women’s studies, and a year at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Grish began her career as a fashion director at a top sports trade publication, followed by a stint as fashion editor at the now-defunct Sports Illustrated Women magazine. But after a few years she decided she had had enough of fashion.

“I wanted a more challenging, thinky job, so I decided to write about sex and relationships, celebrities, pop culture and the like. You know, the stuff that smart journalism is made of,” Grish quips. Her transition from fashion to writing wasn’t always easy. “It was very difficult to convince editors that someone who could match clothes could also compose a thoughtful sentence. So, in selling myself I found that a lot of ice breakers revolved around dating. Once we began talking about the subject, sooner or later, an editor would think I had a smart take on the dating psyche and I’d get an assignment.”

One of those assignments, her favorite, she says, was to do 30 things she always wanted to do before turning 30…and she had 30 days to do them. So, she bought $800 designer shoes, contacted a celebrity crush, painted a self-portrait for a UK gallery, confessed her feelings to an unrequited love, read War and Peace, visited a psychic, made page 6 of theNew York Post, attended a Hindu religious service, and the list goes on.

But it was relationship advice that Grish found herself doling out to friends on a regular basis. While sitting on a friend’s bed one day, helping her figure out what to say to a long-term boyfriend she wanted to break up with and choose the right outfit to say it in, Grish had an idea; that idea turned into her first book, We Need to Talk, But First, Do You Like My Shoes?

Now, in her fourth book,The Joy of Text: Mating, Dating and Techno-relating, Grish tackles the online dating phenomenon. “We have so many forms of technology at our disposal, and while it’s supposed to make communication, and therefore dating, easier, it’s actually made it a lot harder to understand each other. So, the book is like an Emily Post for the digital age,” she says.

While she says she doesn’t have any books in the works at the moment, she would like to tackle interior design as her next topic. “I am a bit tapped out on relationship advice,” she says. “It was fun in my 20s, but I am now 33 and it’s time to move on.”

An excerpt from The Joy of Text by Kristina Grish ’97

Type the Talk

When techno-relating with your hunk du jour, you’re interacting in a world that’s both familiar and intangible at the same time.  And as I’ve said before, using technology as a main vehicle for communication tends to warp time, escalate expectations, and create a sense of assumed intimacy.  This means that as the evolution of your relationship soars at an unfamiliar pace, so does the process of learning about your guy.  Consequently, how you understand your connection will inevitably affect your self-image, sexual excitement, and in general, who you are and how you handle living in a world on constant interruptions and compulsive energy.  The last thing you want is for your budding rapport to be clunky, misunderstood, unnatural, awkward, or uncomfortable.  When it comes to dating and technology, the words “go with the flow” have become altogether archaic.  Either that, or the flow’s morphed into a rush.

Though I could easily wax poetic on this topic, I’d rather mix things up with expert opinions for credibility’s sake.  “Couples send technology-driven messages out into the world without a lot of forethought,” says sex therapist Patti Britton, Ph.D., and president of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT).  “We’ve developed this manic finger behavior that’s very commonly a knee-jerk reaction to a feeling or mood someone’s sent our way.”  It’s so true, isn’t it?

When we don’t balance cyber and live interactions, Dr. Britton asserts that one-dimensional communication devices dehumanize the initial dating process.  So even if you’re essentially having more human contact with more people via technology, it’s a very thin slice of the real thing.  She warns against expecting too much, too fast—and adds that just because you’re connecting multiple times a day with a crush doesn’t mean your interactions are meaningful.  “Techno-relating can throw a relationship into overdrive before you’re even in first gear,” she says.  “It takes time to know somebody and develop a relationship beyond quips and flirtations on a screen.”  Consequently, Dr. Britton says we need to be incredibly self-aware about how we feel every step of the way—because it’s easy to substitute real knowledge about a person with an “idealized fantasy.”

So how should you acknowledge these tricky psychological elements—yet still build interest while maintaining sanity?  As you know, the ability to connect with (and even better, arouse) a person over technology is incredibly powerful, especially since so much is left to the imagination.  Yet knowing how to make this work for, and not against, your intentions is what will separate you from the competition and keep you off your analyst’s couch.  There’s something to be said for romantic anticipations when baiting and snagging a mate—and in case you haven’t realized it yet, techno-relating is an exercise in extremes.  If it doesn’t speed the courtship process, then it forces us to slow down.  There’s no middle ground, no sense of controlled pacing.  I can’t stress enough that the most reliable way to understand the quality of your coupling—every step of the way—is to use online communication to reinforce, not define, your relationship.  This minimizes trust issues and tone misperceptions: major stumbling blocks when noting the difference between a progressing relationship and dots on a matrix.  An alphanumeric keypad isn’t going to make your relationship, but it could break it if you’re not careful.  Ultimately, you want a substantial bond.  But you won’t reap the benefits of patience, love, trust, and empathy in the real world, if you don’t know how to define these in relation to cyber boundaries.

Baby, You Can Trust Me

Techno-relating takes trust issues to a whole new level, especially since it’s impossible to determine the dynamics of relationships beyond your own when you and your guy obviously connect with people outside your happy duo.  How can you trust that your lover won’t forward a note to his friends and neighbors?  How can you trust that he’s not flirting with other women without scrolling down his text message inbox to invade his privacy?  How can you trust that the dirty photos you took last night on his digital camera won’t be posted on his blog the next day?  The new means by which trust issues have expanded throw insecurities, violations, validations, intrusions, and various levels of perceived risk into overdrive.  It can make a girl nuts.

Remember the bright side: New modes of technology add a new dimension to your relationship, so that even on the busiest days or at the most inconvenient times, you can check in and say hi.  You can receive a one-liner that says “You’re beautiful” and then smile through a grim five p.m. meeting.  The sweetest text I’ve ever sent was at a packed, loud party in which my boyfriend was on one side of the room, and I was on the other.  I couldn’t see him through the sea of black, so I sent him a note: “Missing you, even if we are in the same room.”  Two minutes later, his hand was on my shoulder.  In this type of situation, techno-relating adds an extra level of intimacy because you’re secretly communicating in the company of others—without subjecting strangers to your mush.  It’s the equivalent of exchanging glances across a crowded room; only this time, you’re reaching out with discrete words and not shmoopy facial expressions.

Of course when you share info over a phone or computer, you do place your faith on an unstable precipice.  We’ve all seen the nasty fallout of trust gone sour when personal sex tapes are posted on the Internet or scorned exes forward break-up emails as revenge.  And when it comes to cheating, skimming a cell phone bill can be as tempting as digging through a man’s pocket for an unaccounted-for jewelry receipt.  Even call and text messages logs can be the demise of a relationship.  My friend Charlie’s roommate, who we’ll call Smarmy Bastard, learned this lesson all too well.  He and his regular sex buddy, who also had a boyfriend, often exchanged a simple “Come over” message via text when either was in the mood.  Cut to a random Saturday afternoon, when SB answered his mating call—and received a serious beat-down by the girl’s boyfriend.  Evidently, the smarter BF hacked his girl’s text log and sent the repeat message to confirm his suspicions that she was unfaithful.  SB escaped with limbs intact—though his dignity was shot to hell.

We could easily extract that the obvious lesson here is “don’t cheat.”  But more to the point, if you don’t want something read, don’t write it—or in SB’s friend’s case, delete it immediately.  This not only goes for text messages, but for notes sent over work IM or email.  If you treat every message you receive with the assumption that it will be read by strangers with a bucket of popcorn, your edits not only decrease reasons to doubt your trust in another, but also help you establish communication boundaries without actually saying them.  Even if you’re saying less, your sense of intimacy will inevitably increase because you’ll become comfortable with your digital dialogue.  And once you establish a comfort zone, trust and respect will follow.  By nature, we believe in people who exhibit honest qualities—and the Internet lends itself to brutally honest disclosure because of the anonymity factor.  So if your guy’s a good one, his sincerity will only help support the trust you two are working to establish.

Once you’ve done this, questionable trust caveats of techno-relating, like cutting and pasting emails of a friend’s advice, won’t feel like sneaky or insincere moves.  If you think about it, poaching a girlfriend’s wisdom is no different from—and actually an extension of—asking her opinion over Sunday brunch, and then reciting her words as if they’re your own in a tense situation.  Ideally, all communication would only be kept between you and your partner, but techno-relating doesn’t lend itself to that pact.  Yet once you establish boundaries, the trust issue becomes more about your relationship and less about the communication mode.  Distrust of any kind, cheating or otherwise, really comes back to the people in the relationship:  If you’re one to engage in shady practices, you’ll always find a way to sneak around.  The “T” word always circles back to a person’s character; blaming the ease and frequency of new mediums is too simple.

In other words: The simplicity with which you build trust in your relationship parallels your demonstrated convictions in the cyber world.  According to relationship therapist Joy Davidson, Ph.D., who also hosts the online video series The Joy Spot about human sexuality, reliability doesn’t become more precarious because we have new and more abundant ways of breaching it.  “In any relationship, there’s trust or limited trust or boundaries of trust—and all of that comes from the same experiences in one’s life and relationships as it did in the old days before technology was a prevalent communication medium,” she says.  Multiple messaging options serve to validate our trust in someone or provide opportunities to show they’re untrustworthy.  If anything, Dr. Davidson feels we’re better off now than we were before these mediums existed.  “A person’s character has more ways to shine through in the manner in which they use technology,” she says.  And the way a person uses technology (his behavior) says just as much about him as the message (or words) he’s sending.

Dr. Davidson, however, does forewarn against abusing the ease and immediacy with which we trust another person as we build tech-driven relationships.  “Having multiple options can mean using them in lieu of genuinely connecting,” she reminds.  “There’s a misunderstanding that if we send five emails, we’ve connected, but we’ve just exchanged information in isolation.  Don’t mistake techno-connection for genuine connection.”  Toss the illusion that you’ve spent more time with this man than you have.  According to Dr. Davidson, there’s a tendency among women to imbue a partner with more faith this way than if you were to have spent just as much time with him, minus techno-intervention.  So while it’s true that emailing and text messaging can help you know someone better, it doesn’t mean you’ve known them longer—or have been able to learn anything about them that they aren’t willing to share on-screen.  “Real trust is developed over real time, based on behavior,” she insists.  “It’s about how it comes through for you in actual practice and what you intuit about a person in actual behavior.”  Trust is not wishful thinking, but based in action and self-confidence, that coveted POV which refuses to let an outside force knock your soul off balance.  The amount of heartfelt belief you have in each cyber relationship is proportionate to how much trust you invest in yourself.

From the book The Joy of Text by Kristina Grish. Copyright © 2006 by Kristina Grish. Reprinted by permission of Simon Spotlight Entertainment, New York, NY. All rights reserved.