FROM the day the first caveman hit a prehistoric hottie over the head and dragged her back to his place, romance has been an aspiration fraught with difficulties.

As time passed, mankind thought up increasingly complicated ways to woo lovelies – now there are social networking sites, chat rooms and email.

However, with the arrival of opposable thumbs the text message could not be far behind and it has created new annoyances for the singleton to fret over.

For example, cretinous friends who think it is acceptable to spend a whole night out frivolously texting.

Few things in the world irk me as much as waiting patiently for someone to finish textually seducing their girlfriend only to hear their phone buzz moments later.

When I see the simpleton’s look of happiness on their face at the latest epistle I just want to club them to death with the handset.

Of course, some naïve lonely hearts may embrace the textual revolution – and there are advantages.

It gives you the opportunity to alter plans or let someone know you are thinking of them without the pressure of being interesting for an entire conversation.

A carefully crafted text can make even the dullest person appear to be jam-packed with charisma by the time they have completed their fifth draft.

However, a text is sent and received out of context and devoid of tone.

The recipient doesn’t know if that flirty message was flippantly sent as a joke in a snatched 30-second break or the product of an hour’s careful thought.

It can be even more troubling for the sender if you don’t get an immediate response.

I know myself after sending a frisky text message I imagine the sexy chicklet in question reaching for her buzzing phone and my honeyed words eliciting a seductive smile.

However, after an hour of text silence my confidence melts and I imagine her in tears being consoled by friends and the police taking the phone away in an evidence bag.

This fear is infinitely worse if I was drunk and can’t really remember the content – I long for the day a company brings out a handset with a breathalyser.

Messages are made even more perilous by the dark mysteries of predictive text.

I recently sent a girl a text message saying I had spent the previous night ogling her mum – I have no idea why I thought she would find this charming.

However, predictive text got its evil tentacles into my text.

I then had to send a series of apologetic messages explaining that I held her mother in the highest regard and had never entertained any notions of milking her, regardless of any texts she had received to the contrary.

In the early stages of a budding romance I am also neurotic about receiving messages.

If I am waiting for a text from a girl I like I will check my phone every few minutes, my body conspiring against me to make feel hoax buzzing sensations and clutch at whichever pocket my phone happens to be in.

Occasionally, I will nonchalantly leave it in another room as if to convince myself I don’t care but sure enough within a few minutes I will be scampering to collect it.

When the text eventually arrives I will read it several hundred times.

Then it is time to bask in my text glory and know that, as she sent the last message, I am winning the relationship.