Seven Ways Texting Defines Your Relationship

"Words only" communication can either help or hinder intimacy.

Posted Feb 16, 2018

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Texting has become the most prominent form of instant communication. Because
intimate partners are likely to save these messages, they form a valuable,
archived, written history of a relationship’s “story.”

This ongoing “relationship novel” provides a unique opportunity for partners to

evaluate how texting may be helping or hindering the way they communicate. It can
also help them to see if their texting synchronizes with their face-to-face
relationship.

Most of my couples haven’t realized the opportunities that their text archives
offer to teach them about how well they are actually communicating with each other.

Using the following criteria, they could not only evaluate their relationship vis-
a-vis the things they have texted in the past, but also better understand how they
use that data to improve their relationship connections in the future.

If you have a partner, read the seven criteria in each other’s presence. If you are
currently single, you can still get a better idea of how your text messaging style
has helped or hindered your past relationships and how you can use that data in the
future.

1. Do Men and Women Read Texts Differently?

Most of my patients believe that females are “wordier” than males. The actual data
shows that whichever gender is the most talkative actually depends on the subject
being shared.

Most often, women do use more words when talking about relationships, and men when
talking about business, battle, or sports.

They also unanimously tell me that men like to hear the bottom line first and work
up to the backstory details only if they need them, and that women like to “set the
stage” before coming to the conclusion.

If that is indeed true, then women are likely to experience many men as too laconic
and direct, and men are more likely to hear or read only the first part of a long
message.

Though those assumptions have understandable exceptions, most of the literally

hundreds of patients I’ve explored these thoughts with over my 40-plus years'
career do agree on them.

So, do your text messages bear that out as well?

Go back over as many text messages as you need to evaluate this. Count the amount
of lines you or your partner use on average to send a text and how those figures
change depending on the subject discussed. Ignore those that are simply logistics,
like where you’re going to meet, or what you might need picked up for dinner. Just
pay attention to those that are important emotional interchanges.

If you are a more typical male in a traditional male/female relationship, ask

yourself how much of a long, emotional text message you actually read from your
female partner before you respond, and if your responses are typically shorter than
the message you receive. If you are a more typical female in a traditional
male/female duo, do you take time at the beginning of your emotionally expressive
text to create a backstory before you get to the point?

The point here is not to judge, but to compare and contrast, just for information
and understanding.

2. Response Time

When either partner in an intimate relationship sends out an emotional message, he

or she may have a different expectation of how soon the other partner should
respond. I’ve witnessed many painful altercations between partners when their
expectation of response time is different.

Again, this has a lot to do with the subject matter. Typically in a traditional
male/female partnership, men are more often loathe to respond to an angry,
complaining, or demanding text than women are and, as a result, will put off a
response in hopes that their partner will “calm down” before an altercation is
necessary.

Their female partners may misunderstand that lag time as indifference or a lack
of priority. Alternately, many men have told me that they are totally frustrated
when their partners do not respond to logistical requests within a reasonable
period of time.

When couples have clear understandings of when and where they are more likely to be
available, the timing of the response becomes less important. Sometimes, arguments
over response time may actually be the tip of icebergs that reflect a deeper
frustration about availability in other areas of the relationship.

Ask yourself and your partner how you handle disappointments about expected
response time to a text message. Do you frequently argue about how or when those
priorities should happen?

3. Misunderstandings

Accurate, effective, and welcomed communication is one of the core elements in any
successful relationship. Because communicating is only 10 percent words and 90
percent facial expression, body language, voice intonation, rhythm, and touch, it
is totally understandable that misunderstandings have mushroomed when relationship
partners rely on words alone rather than face-to-face connections.

Even emojis don’t always help, because people can misunderstand what that facial
expression is meant to convey.

In January of 2016, I posted an article on Psychology Today entitled “Text Alert –

Is Your Intimate Communication Inadequate?” I invite you to read that article for a
more expanded view on this subject.

4. How Words Alone Can Be Easily Misinterpreted

The words that are emphasized in a phrase can significantly change the meaning of
that phrase — and the absence of voice intonation is the culprit.

Here is an example. Let’s change the emphasis on just one word in the following
phrase as it might be interpreted differently by the recipient.
The texted phrase: “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” Emphasis is on the act.

“What are you doing?” Emphasis is heard as challenge.

“What are you doing?” Emphasis is on the person.

“What are you doing?” Emphasis could be asking for justification.

Okay. Now let’s add another complication, and change the possible definition of
just one word and see how easily it can be misunderstood:

The texted phrase “I’m so upset” could mean:

“I’m incredibly agitated.”

“I’m totally psyched out.”

“I’m coming unglued.”

“I’m so worried.”

And those are just four of 46 meanings for just the word “upset.”

One more to add to the mix. What emotions is the texter feeling when sending the
text? If the text conveys an angry or hurt message, it can mean many things. Is
that sender emotionally upset, continuing a past conflict, ready to follow with
more threats or actions, just venting in the moment, needing nurturing, or truly
falling apart? If the recipient doesn’t know, he or she may feel very differently
than the sender as its read.

When people are face-to-face sharing important emotional exchanges, they are much
more able to intuit a current experience and put it into its correct context. When
messages are not shared in real time, are offered without knowing the availability
of the recipient, and often hastily sent, the chances of unwanted outcomes
mushroom.

I have known many patients over a long period of time and have watched their
vocabularies shrink as they relied more and more on texting and emojis to
communicate. They have sacrificed the poetry of clear adjectives and carefully
chosen emotional visuals in service of immediacy and convenience. What has been
lost are the heart-and-soul hand-crafted messages designed to expand each other’s
awareness of themselves and the other.

Have either of you unintentionally or unconsciously “dumbed down” or abbreviated

your communication style by texting in ways that do not communicate the best you
can?

5. When Text Messages Are Different From Face-to-Face Interactions

Some people, independent of gender, are better at writing than they are at
speaking. Whether they use email, instant messenger, or texting, they can think
better when they are not facing their partners, preferring to read what they’ve
written before they push that send button.

Others are much better communicating when facing their partners, so that they can
add their nonverbal communication to their words. They believe that their thoughts
and feelings come across much more effectively when they can see their partner’s
responses in real time. They feel that texting is too inadequate to get across what
they need to say.

Try reading your text messages of the day out loud to each other when you are
together. Compare how your partner heard and reacted to what you said in your texts
to what he or she would have if you were in each other’s presence.

6. Staggered Connections

Because text messages are often sent and received at different times, they can be
misinterpreted by that process alone. Unless there is an agreement beforehand, a
person texting has no idea what the person on the other end is doing, feeling, or
thinking before that text comes in.

If that person is rushed, preoccupied, or upset about something that may be

unrelated in any way to the texter, he or she may respond to the text differently
than at another time. The time lapse between getting the message and responding can
result in a total change in mood or availability, which in turn changes the
causality or intensity of what the recipient expects or needs in the return text.

Do you and your partner ask one another what your emotional receptivity is before
you begin the body of your text?

7. Unconscious Overloading

When intimate partners are in each other’s presence, they are more likely to be
aware of nuances that change the way they continue expressing themselves. If
texting, those same partners are unable to see the effects of the text message on
the other. He or she might keep going, not realizing that the recipient may be
overloaded and unable to respond effectively.

A partner experiencing that overload via text may just skim through the message,
respond erratically, or focus on a word or sentence that stands out and fire back a
response that is isolated from the rest of the text. The texter may have no idea
why the return message is urgent or dramatic.

Look at your texts and evaluate whether or not they might be overloading your
partner. Do you allow enough time between texts to make certain you partner is
getting what you mean to say by the way he or she responds?

* * * * *

Hopefully, sharing and discussing these seven criteria with your partner will help
your text messages convey what you want to get across, and will be more congruent
with how you communicate when you’re in each other’s presence. The closer you are
aligned, the less you will end up misunderstanding each other.

Intimate partners choose to communicate through texting because it is such a

convenient way to stay connected at any time and in any place. Understanding the
above criteria can make sure that texting actually aids and abets quality
communication and erases the need for damage control.