I don’t know about you, but sometimes texting can really drive me crazy.
A lot of people abuse it and never get on the phone and even talk. And they’ll text you non-stop throughout the day and night.
Now look, I definitely abuse texting at certain points of my life, and there’s certain people that I’ve had text relationships with. So I’m not claiming complete innocence here at all.
But there’s one thing about texting that I think everybody needs to follow. One rule, one rule that shows:
1. Patience
2. Respect
3. That doesn’t cause anxiety in somebody, including yourself.
It’s called text-poising.
You’ll text somebody a text.
They don’t even respond. You’ll send them another text.
They still don’t respond, and you’ll send them another text.
They still don’t respond, and you’ll send them yet a fourth and fifth text.
And then you’ll stop.
You’ll wait a while, and if they still don’t respond, you’ll send them what I call the insecure text.
The text that basically confronts them more, asks them why they’ve ignored you all day long.
I know quite a few people that have done that. And I’ve seen a lot of that behavior. Just because people are consistently carrying their phones, doesn’t mean that they actually have their phone on them.
See, I truly believe that most people have their phones on them, only when they’re out and about, and they have to go and meet people in social situations.
I look at the cell phone as a human pacifier. And in reality, they’re holding onto their phones because they’re so nervous about actually talking to somebody, or communicating with somebody. So they use it to avoid social contact.
But I think in the comforts of someone’s own home, when people are doing work, they just don’t have their phone on them, or it’s on vibrate.
My phone is constantly on vibrate.
I can’t stand the sound of a phone ringing. I used to love when the phone rang. But that was only when the phone rang in my house. Now when I’m out and about, I hear the T-Mobile jingle, I hear some other cell phone ring, and I just want to go and silence it. I truly believe phones should be silent now; it makes the world far more peaceful.
But, the text-poising needs to stop.
Allow somebody to respond to you. Sometimes as much as 24-hours. I know it seems like an eternity, because we’ve been so trained to believe that text needs to be an instantaneous answer to somebody’s question or barrage of texting.
But sometimes somebody’s doing something, they don’t want to be disturbed. Other times they might be thinking about what you texted them. Maybe one night would be best to get together, or what they want for dinner in two nights, or whatever it is.
We have to give people an opportunity to respond back. Now, granted if someone doesn’t respond back for three or four days, I certainly, at that point, can see sending them this text:
“I’m concerned that the octopus aliens from Arrival may have abducted you.
Just checking in to make sure aliens have not taken you from me before we can become a better version of us.”
I like to make jokes, but you get the point.
It’s all really about having patience. If you’re neurotic because someone doesn’t text you back, well, remember the days when you used to call each other on the phone, leave a voicemail message and you had to wait back. You had to wait.
Or you might have been one of those people who hit *67 and basically called somebody quite a few times, so maybe they would answer the phone, and you’d see they were actually home and then you’d hang up on them.
Whatever it might be, just, don’t be neurotic. Be confident. It’s sexy. It’s sexy when someone’s confident and waits for a response, because it just shows something to me. It shows somebody being very insecure when they’re a text-poiser.
And then don’t wait for someone to get back, and that’s okay. We all have our insecure moments, we just need to sometimes, be in it, and not expect anything back at all.
