Even though he may be online, he may not be able to open your message at that moment in time.
You are clearly expecting him to respond to your message the moment that you send it.
This is part of our immediate gratification culture.
Thanks to technology, we expect to get an instant response once we press that button.
Whether we are ordering something online or sending a message to someone on an online dating site while they are online, we just expect to get an immediate response.
When we order that item online, if it is something digital, we instantly receive it.
If it is something that needs to be shipped, we are instantly given a message letting us know that our order has been received and is in the process of being shipped.
That instant gratification has become such a dominant part of our culture.
However, when you message someone on an online dating site who happens to be online, try not to forget that you are dealing with a human being.
They may not be able to respond to your message at that moment in time.
You may have caught this person at a time where they were briefly checking their account but without the time to actually construct a response to anyone who so happened to send them a message at that moment in time.
This guy may have been online, but he may not have had the time to construct a proper message to you.
He may have merely been briefly checking his account or even doing a quick browse.
Try not to make the assumption that a person is always available to interact with you simply because you notice that they happen to be online.
Even though you are free and available to chat at that moment, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the other person is.
He may have chosen to open your message hours later because this was when he would be available to actually read and respond to your message properly.
If you notice that he gave you a detailed response to your message after not having opened it for hours, there is a good chance that he chose to open it a few hours later so as to give it his undivided attention.
It is a good idea to learn about what this guy’s schedule is like in the conversations that you have with him consequently.
If you learn about the times that he is most available to respond to a message, it may be best to start sending him messages around those times.
This way, you don’t constantly put yourself in the position where you get frustrated because you sent a message to him while he was online and he took hours to open it.
Now, if you begin to send him messages at times that he would be most available to respond to them in a timely fashion and he is still taking hours to open them, you may be dealing with a guy who is conducting conversations with multiple women on the dating site.
This means that he is most likely prioritizing which women to respond to the quickest.
If he is taking hours to open your message, you are not as high on his priority list and level of interest as some other women that he is conducting conversations with on the dating site.