Is it normal to text less after a few dates?

A slowdown is only worth reading once it has lasted long enough to mean something. A day of quiet after a Tuesday date is noise. Five or six days of replies getting shorter and less frequent, with her never opening a conversation, is a trend. Look at the whole run of messages since the last date, not just the most recent one. Ask yourself whether she's still responding within a reasonable window, whether she ever asks you anything, and whether her energy changed or just her volume. A person can be quieter in text and still be fully into you in person. Someone who is pulling back usually shows it in several small ways at once, not just in the number of messages.

When the texting drops, the temptation is to start investigating: checking when she was last online, counting days, rereading old messages for clues. Resist that. Your reply should be about the conversation you're having, not about the silence. Pick something from your last date or from something she said that you can actually follow up on, and make it easy to answer with a sentence or two. Keep your own message at roughly the length you'd want back. If you're sending a question, make it one she can answer without much effort. The point is to give her a natural opening, not to run a test of how much she cares.

The time you send matters more than people think. A late-night message after a stretch of quiet can read as either needy or as a pressure move, even if you meant it lightly. Send during the part of the day when she's likely to be awake and not winding down for bed. Mid-morning or early evening usually works. Don't send three messages in one sitting to cover the gap, and don't wait so long that the thread feels like it's been dropped. If a few days have gone by and you want to say something, one message in a normal window is enough. If she doesn't answer that one, let the thread rest and think about what you'd like to do next instead of sending another.