People vary greatly in their ability to express themselves via text. While it can be learned, some people are naturally good at it. There is a special type of interpersonal empathy that is unique to text relationships. People with insecurities about writing may prefer chat over e-mail. Text communication restructures the way people think about their relationships and themselves.
Some people experience their message as a piece of themselves.
Even though we may not be fully aware of it, we always develop a mental image of the other person in a text relationship. Humor, and especially sarcasm, is difficult to express in text relationships. Receiving no reply in a text relationship tends to result in projections as to why the person did not reply. A person's ambivalence about intimacy may be expressed in text communication, which is a paradoxical blend of allowing people to be honest and to feel close, while also maintaining their distance. The relationship between f2f and online relationships 2.1.