This week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions tackles the subject of Texting Anxiety while dating. I talk through three scenarios: corresponding for several minutes and then it stopping, becoming dependent on the pattern of texts and panicking when it deviates, and feeling robbed of a relationship when things don’t progress after sexting.
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Some nuggets from the episode
- Who’s really wasted whose time here? After all, 15 minutes represents a fraction of a percent of your entire year of 525,600 minutes. Are you mad about just the 15 minutes, though? Or, are you mad about the time spent getting your hopes up and imagining a future with this person? It’s the hopes and expectations, including the attachment to the outcome that’s triggered the Texting Anxiety.
- If your whole imaginary future with this person got tanked by ten minutes of texting, you didn’t have a future with them.
- We feel as if we’ve put in the same amount of hours as a relationship, and so if we’ve seen the person once, but we’ve texted for weeks, we behave as if we’ve met up with them in person all those times. But things move differently in Texty Time than they do in actual dating time.
Texting all day every day with someone you know, never mind a veritable stranger, isn’t sustainable. If you have the time to be chained to your phone all day, something or someone isn’t getting your full attention.
- Being dependent on our relationship following a certain format in order for us to feel safe and secure doesn’t allow much room for growth. Much as we might say that we want more, even positively moving away from text to more human-to-human interactions will trigger anxiety. Why? Because you can’t control people and your environment the way you do with texts. People don’t come with read receipts. Texting Anxiety is driven by our need to control something.
It’s a lot ‘easier’ to monitor someone’s movements online, including when they were last online or whether they’ve read your text or are typing, than it is to be vulnerable, present and intimate.
- Sometimes, we don’t realise where we’re basing a new interaction on the fear of an old relationship happening again.
- Have you been robbed of a relationship? Well, no. Sure, you thought things were going really well and hoped that things were going somewhere, but that’s like buying your lottery ticket and hearing that you have three numbers, hoping that you have all six, spending your winnings in advance, and then being mad as hell that you didn’t win the lottery.
- Sex, whether it’s by text, FaceTime, or in person, isn’t a security deposit on a relationship.
- Texting Anxiety teaches us that we’re too psychologically invested in our future with this person we barely know.
- When we feel wronged by someone we briefly interacted with by text no longer responding, is it that we think that we lost The One? Doubtful given that they’re a stranger. Do we think that we lost what we thought was the next available person for us to ride the merry-go-round of our pattern with while we plug the gap created by our fear that love is a crock and that we’re never going to meet and settle down with anyone?
- Given that we’re in these text situations with people that we do not know very well (otherwise we would not be in this situation), we must only do what we are genuinely comfortable with doing and owning.
Links mentioned
- Finding You: Learn how to harness your relationship with you to build your self-esteem and boost your relationships
- How To Say No: The Scripts
- Interest Is Someone or Something is a Hypothesis (ep. 160)
- We’ve got to stop pumping people up with our great expectations (ep. 166)
- The Recruiter Mindset in dating (ep. 145)
- The 5 stages of relationships (ep. 123)
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This is a bit off point, but Natalie, your comment about the store clerk chasing after you – I actually had this happen!
I went into a store just to browse quickly. Someone approached me and asked if she could put an outfit together for me to try on. To be honest, I didn’t feel like trying anything on and wanted to go, but I thought I’d indulge her.
She ended up bringing me a few outfits, which were cute, and she and another person in the store seemed to be having fun using me as their doll to dress up.
I needed to think about which items I wanted to get, so I let her know and asked when she worked, so I could possibly come back when she was in the store for the purchase (I thought that would be nice).
I came back to buy a few things (not cheap, by the way), and she then took all but one away from me, saying they were the last in that size and she wasn’t going to sell them to be so I could go re-create her looks elsewhere! It was a really hostile tone and she started saying that it was the equivalent of someone taking legal advice from a lawyer and then refusing to pay. Umm, what?
Sadly my partner walked away as soon as she started going off – not that I needed him to say anything, but it would have been nice if he had stayed to provide moral support.
What?! That is just outrageous that she would treat you that way. She imposed herself upon you, and you humoured her. What she described is nothing close to what happened. It also sounds like your partner feels uncomfortable with conflict, or specifically, uncomfortable with conflict between women… Personally, I would report that incident to the owner of the store, assuming that this woman isn’t the owner. Or, leave a review of the store if they won’t address the issue and apologise.
Hi Natalie,
I’ve been there with whole texting etc.. If it wasn’t for you I would’ve never known about Assclowns! LOL
Seriously, I’m going to make this short but so.. sweet! Two half yrs ago I met someone that gave me the biggest life lesson! Before I met this person I felt I was so strong and had my self worth intact.
I allowed this man to totally shake the core of my life foundation! Yes, that deep. At that time I thought I was going crazy! I came across one of your books Mr. Unavailable and the Fall Back Girl! That changed me in the way I looked at him and myself!
It’s going on four months of no contact. I’ve made several attempts prior to this. I made sure this final move happened before the new year. I wanted to go into this year with a clean slate! I have good and bad days where my mind goes to the positive part of that situationship. But because I know this can happen I just keep moving forward and surround myself with positive people and things.
Thank you so much!
Your sister from across the pond!
Tee
I had a different, but somewhat related experience: Recently, I went on a few dates with a guy I knew superficially from social media. Nothing intimate, just book readings and similar events. On social media, he was very active, and he shared fairly personal details about his life, including family of origin issues. He did all this under his real name, which is something I would never do. He also fawned over women he barely knew quite a bit. These women were often accomplished writers, university professors or the like.
However, despite showing some interest in me in the beginning, he clammed up whenever we met. To me, it seemed impossible to talk to him about any of the personal topics he freely discussed on social media.
It made me sad, and I started doubting myself. Was I so much less valuable, interesting or trustworthy than all these women on social media? Wasn’t I accomplished enough (even if I clearly had more professional success than he did)?
It took me a while to accept that interactions on social media are quite different from interacting in person. I stopped contacting him, because trying to engage with him made me too sad (and he didn’t get in touch with me again, either).