Love me? Leave a message

It's one of my biggest relationship pet peeves: "One missed call."

Few qualities anger me more than a tendency to call, miss me and not leave a message. I see the missed call -- sans voicemail -- and ask a variety of questions: "If you didn't need to leave a message, why did you call in the first place? Am I still supposed to call back?"

With no offense to my boyfriend, I often encounter situations like this when I miss his call after work. He doesn't leave a message.

Then, I go home to learn he's playing poker -- possibly a three-hour commitment. Later in the night, I'll inevitably complain about how I wish he'd asked me before hitting the poker table.

His response: "Well, I called you."

Yeah, but you didn't leave a message, which makes the entire phone call invalid.

Memories of that kind of frustration entered my mind when I read this etiquette piece: "Is it ever OK to leave voicemail anymore?"

I understand the drawbacks of voicemail messages: They're often unnecessarily long, easily to accidentally delete and just plain awkward.

So I guess my problem with the whole "one missed call" thing isn't so much that it doesn't include a voicemail message, but more so that it doesn't include ANY KIND of message.

Weigh in with your thoughts on voicemail, missed calls and general phone etiquette issues.