Scarleteen

Hi everyone!

I’ve been trying to set up a hangout with a friend, and we’ve been communicating by text.
I’ve realized that there are things about texting that stress me out, so I figured I’d say them here, partly as a rant and partly so other people can share their experiences if they want.

What stresses me:
It feels like texting is rapid enough to get stressed if someone doesn’t respond quickly (are they upset, did their power go out, are they ok, etc), but not rapid enough to not have the stress of wondering “is it just taking them a bit or is something up?”. It’s in a gray zone between the instant response (at least in some sort) of calling or talking in person and the slowness of email.
Also, I know absolutely nothing about what’s going on for the person I’m texting. It’s not like a call where it can disconnect and I know something happened, it’s just “oh well, they haven’t responded in 5 minutes, I guess they aren’t gonna respond “, but they also might still respond, so I feel like I’m on my toes.

I’m wondering what other people’s experiences of texting are, and whether people have ideas for making it less stressful.

- AQ

Hi there AQ,

I hear you on all of this — texting can be really anxiety-inducing for those exact reasons, and I wanted to pop in and say I understand the feeling of anxiety not knowing whether someone isn’t responding because they don’t want to vs. they can’t, or not knowing when they will respond.

For what it’s worth, something that helped me a lot was to give the other person the benefit of the doubt *until* they give me a reason not to (e.g. directly communicating that something is wrong) — meaning, unless you two are actively having an unpleasant conversation or if they’ve told you something is going on with them, it’s safe to bet that they want to respond, they just will when they get the chance.

There’s so much uncertainty with all of that, I know, and it is difficult to understand what’s going on when someone doesn’t respond immediately. I also think sometimes folks don’t think of texting the same way we might, you know? I certainly have friends who view texting more as a short email where responses are a bit slower, and I definitely have to adjust my mindset with those friends to know that they aren’t upset or not ok, they’re just not the type to sit down and text back-and-forth with me. Know what I mean?

Oof, I'm afraid that I'm the bad texting friend! While I've definitely been in the position of stressing out about when my crush will text me back, in general I am a super forgetful texter. I find it difficult to handle keeping up a text conversation while also doing something else, but only occasionally am I texting with someone quickly enough (like instant messaging style) that it captures my full attention. I have mostly tried to move my communication away from texting, except in a pretty asynchronous way (where me and the other person don't expect a text back in any particular time frame), but there are still some people in my life who I know would prefer if I texted them more regularly. And I am still trying to figure out how to do that successfully!