I'm 28, and have experienced this phenomenon a few times in my dating life. I'm currently going through it now, and am surprised by the lack of discussion about this anywhere on the internet... My friends and I refer to this as "text relegation". I'm phrasing this from the perspective of a man, because, well... I'm a man. But women are welcome to chime in as well if they've experienced this themselves...

Basically this occurs when you're on the rocks (or in danger of a relationship ending/ or perhaps it has recently ended) with a girl you've been seeing or dating. You haven't quite cut ties or severed communication entirely with each other, but there has been enough that has gone wrong (or there was a big enough fight) where it's nearly impossible to have any form of contact with them outside of text messaging or via social network. If you called, it's almost certain they wouldn't answer... And if god forbid you came over to their place to discuss things, that would just be desperate and creepy. You've hung out plenty of times in the past, and have had several long phone conversations when things were going great. But now, she's too pissed/annoyed/insecure/stubborn to talk to you, and the only way to make things better is to text/type magical words through an electronic device.

You feel the relationship is salvageable, but only if your thumbs or typing fingers can form the perfect sentences that a) are exactly (or close enough to) what they want to hear and b) are written in a coherent/well-worded enough fashion where your words can't be misinterpreted to mean something else.

Often times, girls implement this voice-free strategy (sometimes consciously, sometimes not) when a guy's done something wrong or they need to apologize for something. In other cases, the relationship has just gotten sour enough where any type of phone or face-to-face conversation would be too awkward or difficult to have, in their minds.

From a guy's perspective, or at least in my own and some of my friends', all we want to do is talk to her face to face (or at least on the phone) so that nothing gets taken out of context. For example, I've noticed that if a girl's angry with you, they will often read any words you write in an angry or antagonistic tone, even if you aren't even remotely angry when you're writing it. Plus, if text conversations are happening while a girl is angry with you, there is a highly increased likeliness that your words won't just be read by her. Many women (without trying to generalize... perhaps guys too), in my experience, like to share texts with friends during arguments, because they can get an enhanced perspective of how to react and how to respond.

My question for all of you is: have you ever experienced this with a woman? How did you handle it? Did you just cave and have frustrating, multiple-hour long text conversations with them until there was a complete falling out, or the conflict was resolved and you could talk normally again?

And before I get too many people claiming that "if a girl doesn't even want to give you a real conversation, she's not worth your time", I want to make a point that sometimes we do crazy things to win women over. We all can act like alpha-males on the internet, but most of us have been in a position at least once or twice where we've tried to win someone back who appears to be halfway out the door. I look forward to some of your perspectives. :)

EDIT: Many of these answers are more directed toward my own situation, which I appreciate... This was likely my own fault, with my inclusion of myself going through this at the moment. But I'm honestly more looking for a sociological point of view regarding preferential texting these days as the main form of communication for women, particularly when things aren't great between you and her.