What I wish I’d spoken to more in the piece is something that keeps coming up in conversations, both on and off Substack, about understood asynchronous nature of all texting platforms.
This asynchronous quality is a lawless space, which is how we generally want it (I think).
But that fact of lawlessness also pushes more work onto each unique relationship. In the cases in thinking about, it only reinforces my concerns for both parties in a world where most of us are not trained to confront discomfort.
We take our feelings and go be alone with them.
As such, we’re asking a lot of ourselves on this front. The solutions is more dialogue.
I don’t have a policy except I think that the policy ought to be that we are responsible for our expectations of others.
If you want to have a text reply agreement with me then make one. Or make a clear request in your text for me to answer by a particular time. Is this insane?!? Probably.
But most expectation leads to resentment. And so for me it’s on me if the way I communicate w someone doesn’t work for me. It’s not on them. Even if it is them.
I had this with one friend . They would say they wants to talk. I would try to set up a call and get no response. And so I talked to them. I said I love you. I’m always here if you want to talk. But I won’t chase you down for calls anymore.
We don’t talk anymore. But I also don’t resent them anymore. Because I made a clear agreement or set a boundary with them.
For me when I don’t respond there can be a lot of reasons why. But I do try to get back to people and I feel bad when I don’t.
I’m better at tracking some mediums than other. For example I almost always respond to emails but slowly. I’m most likely to forget or miss messages on linked in or Facebook.
I generally reply to texts quickly but I’m also apt to forget them because I can’t save them to return to later.
So it’s a mix. It’s why for my most important relationships. I schedule regular calls. This is the best way for me to stay connected.
So I see your point but I also wish we just had clearer agreements with what the commitment is. I think it would save us so much yeet reading.
That piece about expectations is one I've given a think too. There's a school of thought that seems to suggest we're unwise to have expectations. I don't believe this is what you're lobbying for. Me neither. I just wanted to tease this part of your reply out a little more.
It seems to me, and please weigh in, that we don't want to live in a world without expectations. But to your point, we own them. We also own our attachments to those expectations.
To this mind, this zone between two truths is where a lot of people get confused about right action.
My policy is that there are too many variables, as you've named, to have a policy (X number of days with Y number of messages without response -> take action).
It's a sense + respond type of scenario. You get a feel for the rhythms of each relationship. Some are quick responders, others circle back after days.
I also have a personal policy (this is real) that text based messaging on asynchronous platforms should be treated as asynchronous and therefore with lower expectation of response. And I always make sure that important connections aren't relegated to just a text based comm - mixed modes of communication, with at least one non-trivial real-time form, is a must for me to consider it a "live" relationship. Otherwise, zero expectations on text-based forms.
My antidote to the tea leaf reading that inevitably happens when the ghosting does happen is to engage a relationship that is live and reciprocal. As I get squarely into middle age, I simply don't tolerate anything less than reciprocity.
Fair, JJ. The thing I've been grappling with lately is this.
If I feel like I'm being ignored, and my tolerance for this is pretty high by my standards, and if I want to keep this relationship with this person, am I not obligated to share my feelings? Like, if I just tuck my tail and let what's happened be an unspoken distancing, isn't that a failure of my commitment to honest love?
To me, when there's not enough there to care about, I couldn't care less about someone ghosting me. I invest myself in relationships I want to see flourish, even if it means I have to uncomfortably admit that I'm feeling ignored.
You raise a good point here. I’ll admit that I’m pretty brutal on this count, because the reciprocity IS the relationship in my book. Therefore, no reciprocity, no relationship. Otherwise what I’m holding on to is the concept of something, not the thing itself.
I think so. Now, I admit that I'm in a huge transition and transformation moment. Many old relationships falling away naturally. But as an example, there's an old group of friends who always want to get together yearly for a cabin weekend. In theory, this is totally fine. For me specifically, it feels suffocating because I can feel their energy as the energy of wanting me to help them feel a certain sense of comfort. They are not interested in my dreams for myself. So the alignment is not there. But I am also not very nostalgia driven, and that may be different for other people.
I have many thoughts about this. I'm not sure I can do them justice here in writing.
Because I'm not as good at expressing myself in comments like these as I am verbally.
Which brings me to the nature of text interactions.
Humans are notoriously terrible at interpersonal communication with very few exceptions.
We hardly know what we are feeling or want and then we have to use words to kind of explain what feels murky.
I'm not going to go too far into that but texting is new in our evolution. We never really did a great job with talking to each other before this technology showed up and here we find ourselves doing a terrible job with it. I'm not surprised.
We've got way more people on texts and other messaging platforms than we ever did calling us and leaving messages on our answering machines/voicemail.
We have what Esther Perel calls 'artificial intimacy'. The relationships that are mostly 'maintained' via asynchronous interactions are sort of proxies for the real thing.
We can flake. We can bail. We can ignore.
I've had it happen to me and I've also done it to others.
The thread that kept our 'friendship' alive didn't feel solid enough for me to have that hard conversation.
It's all kind of a mess.
And that's why I'm studying and learning about what it takes to have good interpersonal communication. There is so much to get better at there. Texting will have to wait.
Thank you for this insightful reflection and addition to the conversation. This is exactly what I wanted, FWIW.
Grappling with this topic was never going to be clean, thus my hesitation in even publishing. But it felt like something worth getting the ball rolling.
I'm 100% sure I have many assumptions wrong here, but I knew I couldn't start developing an epistemology until I just got all messy about it. I believed "messy" was exactly where'd you'd find an entry point to this topic, Lynn.
Although this article is more on flakiness, I do see flakiness as one possible consequence of the concerns I'm raising. This quote speaks to what I fear:
"Agreeableness is a personality trait associated with being cooperative and unselfish. Another relevant personality trait, Koestner* says, is something psychologists call conscientiousness. The American Psychological Association defines it as "the tendency to be organized, responsible, and hardworking." People who rank low in conscientiousness are more likely to be disorganized, overbook themselves and not follow through — in other words, flake."
*Richard Koestner, a professor of psychology who studies personality and motivation at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec
Yeah, the flaking part wasn't as interesting to me as the last bit where the author writes:
"In 2017, researchers found evidence that communicating through speech as opposed to text has a profound impact on what we think of people, and reminds us of their human qualities. Reinforcing that human connection through a quick call may go a long way in preserving a friendship."
It's funny. That part landed as so concretely true and obvious, it didn't even occur to me to double click on it. Yes. Right. Slow down, Damon. Let it land.
There's a sort of meta-irony my rushing past this point. Good lord.
Thank you for this share. It's usually, with my friends, what you said about not having good news to share and feeling they should, for whatever reason. That's when I'm least receptive but I will say, I don't ghost, I just steer the conversation away from me.
I have friends who I only speak to every couple of months, but they're still my best friends even if there's 🦗! We know the love is there when we need it 🙏🏻
And thank you for your reflection, Nadine. Your experience resonates for this writer.
Although I claim this is a non-gendered experience, I’m suspicious of that claim. I don’t think the scale is balanced. Or more to the point, men are more heavily indexed for “being bad at text,” as they might put it (or as it might’ve been put to them).
I say this making a couple of wild assumptions, like your friends are more likely women.
To be clear, none of this is me trying to claim that this all divides neatly along gender lines. I really just don’t know.
What I wish I’d spoken to more in the piece is something that keeps coming up in conversations, both on and off Substack, about understood asynchronous nature of all texting platforms.
This asynchronous quality is a lawless space, which is how we generally want it (I think).
But that fact of lawlessness also pushes more work onto each unique relationship. In the cases in thinking about, it only reinforces my concerns for both parties in a world where most of us are not trained to confront discomfort.
We take our feelings and go be alone with them.
As such, we’re asking a lot of ourselves on this front. The solutions is more dialogue.
I don’t have a policy except I think that the policy ought to be that we are responsible for our expectations of others.
If you want to have a text reply agreement with me then make one. Or make a clear request in your text for me to answer by a particular time. Is this insane?!? Probably.
But most expectation leads to resentment. And so for me it’s on me if the way I communicate w someone doesn’t work for me. It’s not on them. Even if it is them.
I had this with one friend . They would say they wants to talk. I would try to set up a call and get no response. And so I talked to them. I said I love you. I’m always here if you want to talk. But I won’t chase you down for calls anymore.
We don’t talk anymore. But I also don’t resent them anymore. Because I made a clear agreement or set a boundary with them.
For me when I don’t respond there can be a lot of reasons why. But I do try to get back to people and I feel bad when I don’t.
I’m better at tracking some mediums than other. For example I almost always respond to emails but slowly. I’m most likely to forget or miss messages on linked in or Facebook.
I generally reply to texts quickly but I’m also apt to forget them because I can’t save them to return to later.
So it’s a mix. It’s why for my most important relationships. I schedule regular calls. This is the best way for me to stay connected.
So I see your point but I also wish we just had clearer agreements with what the commitment is. I think it would save us so much yeet reading.
Well said, Toku. Cheers.
That piece about expectations is one I've given a think too. There's a school of thought that seems to suggest we're unwise to have expectations. I don't believe this is what you're lobbying for. Me neither. I just wanted to tease this part of your reply out a little more.
It seems to me, and please weigh in, that we don't want to live in a world without expectations. But to your point, we own them. We also own our attachments to those expectations.
To this mind, this zone between two truths is where a lot of people get confused about right action.
Also me: "yeet reading." 😆
Well written, my friend.
My policy is that there are too many variables, as you've named, to have a policy (X number of days with Y number of messages without response -> take action).
It's a sense + respond type of scenario. You get a feel for the rhythms of each relationship. Some are quick responders, others circle back after days.
I also have a personal policy (this is real) that text based messaging on asynchronous platforms should be treated as asynchronous and therefore with lower expectation of response. And I always make sure that important connections aren't relegated to just a text based comm - mixed modes of communication, with at least one non-trivial real-time form, is a must for me to consider it a "live" relationship. Otherwise, zero expectations on text-based forms.
My antidote to the tea leaf reading that inevitably happens when the ghosting does happen is to engage a relationship that is live and reciprocal. As I get squarely into middle age, I simply don't tolerate anything less than reciprocity.
Fair, JJ. The thing I've been grappling with lately is this.
If I feel like I'm being ignored, and my tolerance for this is pretty high by my standards, and if I want to keep this relationship with this person, am I not obligated to share my feelings? Like, if I just tuck my tail and let what's happened be an unspoken distancing, isn't that a failure of my commitment to honest love?
To me, when there's not enough there to care about, I couldn't care less about someone ghosting me. I invest myself in relationships I want to see flourish, even if it means I have to uncomfortably admit that I'm feeling ignored.
You raise a good point here. I’ll admit that I’m pretty brutal on this count, because the reciprocity IS the relationship in my book. Therefore, no reciprocity, no relationship. Otherwise what I’m holding on to is the concept of something, not the thing itself.
That makes sense, or holding onto the experiences shared out of nostalgia?
I think so. Now, I admit that I'm in a huge transition and transformation moment. Many old relationships falling away naturally. But as an example, there's an old group of friends who always want to get together yearly for a cabin weekend. In theory, this is totally fine. For me specifically, it feels suffocating because I can feel their energy as the energy of wanting me to help them feel a certain sense of comfort. They are not interested in my dreams for myself. So the alignment is not there. But I am also not very nostalgia driven, and that may be different for other people.
I have many thoughts about this. I'm not sure I can do them justice here in writing.
Because I'm not as good at expressing myself in comments like these as I am verbally.
Which brings me to the nature of text interactions.
Humans are notoriously terrible at interpersonal communication with very few exceptions.
We hardly know what we are feeling or want and then we have to use words to kind of explain what feels murky.
I'm not going to go too far into that but texting is new in our evolution. We never really did a great job with talking to each other before this technology showed up and here we find ourselves doing a terrible job with it. I'm not surprised.
We've got way more people on texts and other messaging platforms than we ever did calling us and leaving messages on our answering machines/voicemail.
We have what Esther Perel calls 'artificial intimacy'. The relationships that are mostly 'maintained' via asynchronous interactions are sort of proxies for the real thing.
We can flake. We can bail. We can ignore.
I've had it happen to me and I've also done it to others.
The thread that kept our 'friendship' alive didn't feel solid enough for me to have that hard conversation.
It's all kind of a mess.
And that's why I'm studying and learning about what it takes to have good interpersonal communication. There is so much to get better at there. Texting will have to wait.
Thank you for this insightful reflection and addition to the conversation. This is exactly what I wanted, FWIW.
Grappling with this topic was never going to be clean, thus my hesitation in even publishing. But it felt like something worth getting the ball rolling.
I'm 100% sure I have many assumptions wrong here, but I knew I couldn't start developing an epistemology until I just got all messy about it. I believed "messy" was exactly where'd you'd find an entry point to this topic, Lynn.
Again, thank you.
Also - see the last few paragraphs of this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/emotions/why-do-people-keep-flaking-out.htm
Although this article is more on flakiness, I do see flakiness as one possible consequence of the concerns I'm raising. This quote speaks to what I fear:
"Agreeableness is a personality trait associated with being cooperative and unselfish. Another relevant personality trait, Koestner* says, is something psychologists call conscientiousness. The American Psychological Association defines it as "the tendency to be organized, responsible, and hardworking." People who rank low in conscientiousness are more likely to be disorganized, overbook themselves and not follow through — in other words, flake."
*Richard Koestner, a professor of psychology who studies personality and motivation at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec
Yeah, the flaking part wasn't as interesting to me as the last bit where the author writes:
"In 2017, researchers found evidence that communicating through speech as opposed to text has a profound impact on what we think of people, and reminds us of their human qualities. Reinforcing that human connection through a quick call may go a long way in preserving a friendship."
The medium is the message and all that. :)
It's funny. That part landed as so concretely true and obvious, it didn't even occur to me to double click on it. Yes. Right. Slow down, Damon. Let it land.
There's a sort of meta-irony my rushing past this point. Good lord.
Thank you for this share. It's usually, with my friends, what you said about not having good news to share and feeling they should, for whatever reason. That's when I'm least receptive but I will say, I don't ghost, I just steer the conversation away from me.
I have friends who I only speak to every couple of months, but they're still my best friends even if there's 🦗! We know the love is there when we need it 🙏🏻
And thank you for your reflection, Nadine. Your experience resonates for this writer.
Although I claim this is a non-gendered experience, I’m suspicious of that claim. I don’t think the scale is balanced. Or more to the point, men are more heavily indexed for “being bad at text,” as they might put it (or as it might’ve been put to them).
I say this making a couple of wild assumptions, like your friends are more likely women.
To be clear, none of this is me trying to claim that this all divides neatly along gender lines. I really just don’t know.
I don’t really believe in ungendered, unracially influenced, unbiased… We are inevitable biased and it’s better to recognise it.