Nowadays, no one has the patience to wait for much at all: Everything is fast paced. Long gone are the days of flipping through a little black book to find a date for next weekend.  Welcome to the days of swiping right and securing a date for that same night within two minutes. We eat fast food (or fast casual), we  go to Quik Trip, we speed date, we make 30-minute meals, and we work out at 20 Minutes to Fitness. But… we are also told that you can’t hurry love.

So how does this all affect your dating life? More specifically, should the world’s fast pace inform your response time to JDate messages?

I’ve definitely asked myself this question before — when you feel the excitement from seeing a new message in your inbox — do you open it, read it, and respond right away? Do you play it cool and wait to open it so the sender can’t tell that you read it immediately? (Because, you know, you are way too busy doing important things and can’t be bothered to check your messages regularly.) Do you read it right away, but wait a while to respond? Do you Google the person’s username, try to figure out their actual name, and head straight to your online county court’s records to investigate? Does anyone else even think about these things?

After considering the pros and cons of each scenario, I realized that so many people walk around with their phones glued to their hand that it’s safe to assume most people are receiving messages instantaneously. So there’s no shame in reading right away! And while you’re on the message page, you may as well respond, too — the speed of your reply builds momentum and sets the pace for subsequent replies. After all, the sooner you read and reply, the sooner you can hopefully meet in person, which is usually the point of online dating. My conclusion: no sense in waiting to reply. Speed skating, anyone?