Texting...

I spent a lot of time thinking about this yesterday:

“Texting is ruining our relationships...”

I do not think there has been a time in history where we have felt more disconnected from each other.  I mean even before the telephone we waited with bated breath for a letter to come from our beloveds.  And those letters were full of emotion and intimacy and effort.  Today, we have text messages which I have come to believe is not so slowly killing us and our ability to relate to each other.

Add to that the miscommunication and misunderstanding of texts sent and received...we are all doomed.

I tend to read all text messages as if the person sending it is mad at me.  I don’t know why, I just do.  So I have to get over what I lay over all texts messages to have a prayer at getting the intended message.  Emojis help, but fuck, really, do I need a cartoon character now to accompany words sent in rapid succession to give me a fucking clue as to what this person is saying to me.

Last night I received this text from someone I sent a photo from my trip, “well that is the rarest ever!! 🤍”. The heart at the end did help me a bit, but I did spend the rest of the evening thinking the beautiful photo of the Northern California Coast that I sent was not really appreciated.  I took the text to mean, “yeah, great, another California coast photo, isn’t that original!”

Later, after I went to bed, rarest was edited to say “rad-est”. Which did drastically change the tone and message. But I went to bed thinking my photo actually bothered the person I sent it to.  Like seriously, you can’t come up with something more original? This is what I heard...this is what reverberated in my mind for the rest of the evening.

I do get that I was bent towards the sarcasm.  I was the one that overlaid the irritation.  But come on, let’s be clear, the communication could hardly be called communication since what it initially communicated was not what appears to be intended.  I still really have no idea...I get it right, I get it wrong.  Fuck, I don’t even know anymore.

Isn’t the whole point of communication to communicate?  Does texting really accomplish this?  I think perhaps, some time, place and manner restrictions should be considered moving forward.  Texts are great to communicate arrivals, departures, quick concise, non-emotionally laden information.  They are handy for early morning or late night texts that would be inappropriate or inconvenient due to timing.  Texts are great to communicate short information but when they are used as something to sustain or support an ongoing emotional attachment, they suck.

I am considering banning all texting from any dating endeavor.  If you want to date me, then you have to actually talk to me.  Texting is banned until we get to know each other better and can know the intent and purpose behind those random messages.  I can’t tell you how many times I have either had my words misinterpreted, or completely misunderstood what was being said.  To be fair, I also misinterpret what is actually being said to me in real face to face conversations...but I do better on the whole than with text messages. People's actual facial expressions and body language does a much better job than emojis.

In a world that seems to be craving intimacy and connection, texting is killing us one text thread at a time.  I do not feel more connected, I feel less.  It has taken over and has become the preferred method of communication.  Myself included.  (I know I am walking contrarian - I hate texting but prefer to communicate that way!  WHY?  Because it is less intimate and requires less from me - and yes, I know this is fucked up).

I don’t know what to do about a problem I clearly see but really enjoy the sometime benefit of it.  I mean, I think it screws me up more than anything else, but I still willingly engage it.  I don’t want to text with someone I am dating.  I want to have phone calls or FaceTimes so that I can really connect with them.  And if I am happy to just text, well, that speaks volumes about how invested I am in the whole endeavor.  Is this just me?  Am I the only one who feels this way? Or am I just a complete asshole?

Conversations are intimate, they require effort and privacy and time.  Texts are throw aways that are really not doing much to support an ongoing relationship and often, in fact, fuck things up six ways from Sunday.  

It seems the world wants to get closer yet we keep finding ways to not accomplish that.  Instead finding ways that are stand ins for emotional transparency and intimacy.  Why the fuck are we doing this????  This is like fucking for virginity.   It just makes no sense at all.

The written word is powerful, but only when given context and meaning.  Texts are so easily misinterpreted.  So easily misinterpreted...I went to bed last night thinking my photo was not appreciated at all, and a bit shamed for being so banal.  But upon awakening, I find out that it was actually considered the “rad-est!”  But I went to bed feeling badly because I felt like my effort was not appreciated or valued which in turn made me feel that way also.

I have this strong desire to carve out a caveat for me being an over thinker here and chalking it up to that, but that is not really true at all.  I know I am not the only one grasping at straws over here trying to discern what is being communicated, whether it is helpful to sustaining any kind of connection and who is actually communicating it.  Last night the who was lost on me.  We are so far removed from each other in time, space and distance, that it is easy to forget that the person that sent the initial text would not ever send a shaming, sarcastic text.  But last night, because of the absolutely lacking in intimacy text, I didn’t remember that.

I slept just fine.  But it did erode something I have been trying to build.  So I wake this morning wondering what the fuck I am even doing.  All these words, just floating around and landing with a purpose and intent that is completely ascribed to me by the receiver.  And the sender is all but forgotten and lost.

Well, luckily for all of us, I have another 10 hours in the car today so I will have ample time to consider the relative merits of banning texting from early dating life.  I can already see that it would absolutely narrow down your options...which is a good and bad thing at the same time....

Fuck, clearly I do not know what the fuck I am doing.  And now I have text messages to prove it.

Again, still...

this was the subject matter photo that caused the text rant...I will let you judge for yourself.