Texting and relationships: The new normal

— -- Is anybody using their cellphone minutes anymore?

The texting craze gets bigger and bigger, and nowhere more so than in the world of romance, where texts now play a major role. At least, that's according to the men and women we spoke to recently at the Strand House, a restaurant and bar in Manhattan Beach, Calif.

"A lot of guys don't call anymore, they just text," Strand House bartender Alisha Forbes told us. "Especially when you start to date. It's taken away from the old-fashioned realm of dating. Now it's all technology."

TextPlus, the iPhone and Android app that offers free, ad-supported text services, recently polled its user base about relationships and texting. The company found 65% saying it is fine to ask someone out on a first date via text (vs. 35% who disagreed) while another 24% said it is acceptable to break up with someone over text. In the survey, some 30% said they'd been dumped by text.

Would you call it quits via text? How often are you spending the day texting your significant other? What would happen to your relationship if you didn't?

We posed those questions to the crowd at the Strand House, as well as USA TODAY readers. Here's what they had to say.

Daily routine

— April Jones of Greenville, S.C., says "Texting is a major part of my relationship. It's something I do all day and (I) expect a response from my boyfriend. We've had disagreements, but nothing major." She says she sends upwards of 20 texts daily to her boyfriend.

— "Texting is a very big deal, especially in (a) long distance relationship," says Benjamin Piercy of Fort Collins, Colo. "I am busy with school and so is she. Communicating even through messages like 'hey, how is your day?' or 'what are you eating for lunch?'can make the day go by that much quicker."

— "It occurred to me the other day that no matter how the day goes, my girlfriend and I text 'I Love You' in texts back and forth," says Butch Rigby of Kansas City. "We've dated for a year. I am 52 years old and I can honestly say I have never been so 'good' about saying that to someone. I think it is another example of the interesting phenomenon of how texting really is a completely new form of interpersonal communication."

— "Texting has been a major part of my year-and-a-half relationship with my boyfriend. He doesn't like to talk on the phone, and we've probably only spoken on the phone less than a dozen times! His job keeps him away four days a week, so we have a mostly long-distance relationship. If it wasn't for texting, I don't know how we'd communicate!" says Kristie Weimar McIntyre of Baltimore.

Old school

— "I don't text and neither does my husband; my husband and I prefer to call each other or talk to each other in person," says Giselle Sawyer of Austin, Texas. "We are old school…he thinks if you want to speak to someone, and it is important enough, pick up the phone…I think the same way. Plus, we still like to canoodle with our voices…it's fun, loving, exciting and refreshing."

The dating game

On one hand, it's easier to break the ice.

—"When you're talking to someone you don't know, it's not as awkward with 10 word (text) blurbs," says Heather Ferguson of Manhattan Beach, Calif.

But it's easier to give the wrong impression.

— "I'm quite sarcastic. Sometimes things can come out wrong via text," says Nick Schultz of Los Angeles.

No matter what, it seems that texting is the new normal.