Why Do Tinder Messages Disappear and Reappear?

Messages that go missing and then show up again are nearly always a delivery problem on your phone or in the app, not a woman deleting you. Tinder's advice is to make sure you have a strong internet connection, switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data, and delete and reinstall the app to get the latest version. If a whole conversation is gone for good, Tinder says the other person most likely ended the match or deleted their account, and that removes the chat.

Men use the word "disappear" for two things that have different causes, so sort yours first.

In the first, a line you wrote does not stay put or does not go through. It sits unsent, or seems to leave and then comes back. In the second, a whole conversation with one woman is gone from your list.

Tinder's help pages treat these separately. The first is about sending. The second is about matches. Mixing them up sends men off to reinstall the app when the real answer is that a woman ended the match.

For a message that will not send, Tinder's first suggestion is to check that you have a strong internet connection and to try switching between Wi-Fi and mobile data.

A phone can show full bars and still be badly connected. Hotel Wi-Fi that stopped working an hour ago, a basement, and a crowded venue where every phone competes for the same signal can all do it. You type a line, and it fails to deliver. Flip Wi-Fi off and try on mobile data, or the other way round, and then look at the conversation again.

If the connection is fine and the line still will not go, Tinder suggests deleting and reinstalling the app. Reinstalling puts you on the latest version, and an out-of-date version is a plausible reason for basic functions to act up. Then resend the message.

If you wrote something you liked, copy it into your notes before you delete anything. Pasting it back in beats rewriting it from memory.

Once you are back in the conversation, find the message that did not go through.

• On an iPhone, tap the red exclamation mark next to it.
• On an Android phone, tap the message itself.

Resend it once, and give it a few seconds. Sending it four times in a row means she wakes up to four copies of the same joke.

If an entire conversation has vanished from your list, the cause is different. Tinder says that when only one or a few matches disappeared, they most likely ended the match or deleted their account, and either one removes the chat.

If all of your matches disappeared at once, Tinder says that may be temporary, and its recommended step is to log out and back in. Open Tinder, tap the profile icon, go to Settings, scroll down, and tap Logout.

The two cases look alike on your screen and mean opposite things. One woman gone points to her. Everyone gone at once points to the app.

The expensive part of this problem is the story a man tells himself. He sends a good opener, hears nothing, and decides she is not interested. Meanwhile the line never reached her, or the conversation went missing from his list while hers was fine.

So before you decide anything about a woman who has gone quiet, check whether your last message actually went out. A red exclamation mark settles it in a second.

a dating coach's view is that the apps reward men who keep women interested and punish men who annoy them. A first line that fails to send costs you a chance to start well. Make the resend a good one: short, about something on her page, and easy to answer in a sentence.

When a delayed message finally lands, some men add "sorry, the app ate my message." That puts you on the back foot over something that was not your fault, and it gives her a small reason to feel you are anxious.

If a day passed, just send the line as if it were fresh. If more than a few days passed, write something light and new instead of explaining the glitch. She is judging whether you are fun to talk to, not whether your phone works.

If sending still fails after the connection check and the reinstall, Tinder says to contact it and describe the problem in as much detail as possible. Say which phone you use, what version of the app you are on, what happens when you try to send, and what you have already tried.

And once a conversation is going well, get her number. A chat that lives in one app can be lost to a bad connection, a glitch, or a match she ends. A number in your phone cannot.

Check your connection, switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data, reinstall, and resend with the red exclamation mark on an iPhone or a tap on the message on Android. One chat gone for good means she ended it. Everything gone at once is on Tinder's side, and logging out and back in is the step to try.