HealthyGamerGG - How To Actually Be Good At Texting (With Anyone)

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Struggling to get your point across in texts? 🤔 In this episode, join Dr. K as we tackle the art of texting! 📱 Learn how to effectively communicate and overcome misunderstandings. 💬 Discover the psychology behind texting and impress your friends, family, or crush! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Should I double text? Should I not double text? Like, what's going on? Do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. There's different sets of rules for men or women. There's different sets of rules for work or friends. There's all these different rules. And the problem with texting is that no one's following the same rules. There isn't one uniform set. In fact, it's the opposite, right? We have different rules for different genders. The key to happiness is whatever is in the link in the description. Check it out. So today we're going to talk a little bit about texting. And specifically, I'm going to share with y'all one particular insight into how to be a better texter. And the weird thing about texting is that everyone is texting more and everyone seems to be getting worse at it. Right? Because everyone

is coming up with these rules. Like, hey man, like don't double text, bro. Like if you double text, like, if you send one text and she doesn't respond to you, then like you shouldn't double text. That shows her that like you're like too invested in the relationship. So you got to be like a little bit distant. Right. And on the flip side, people are like, oh yeah, if he like, if he texts you once, like don't respond right away. That's going to show you that like, show him that he, you're easy. So instead you have to wait for him to text a couple of times. And that like, that shows him that like you're not like easy, right? You're not a pushover. And so everyone's coming up with these rules of texting. People are like, as a man, like don't send walls of text

because it's like shows that you're emotionally a mess. And so then people like just send really short things. And then on the flip side, people are like, oh, okay, like this person isn't invested at all in texting because they send these monosyllabic replies. And I'm putting in all this effort. And so everyone out there is coming up with rules. Should I double text? Should I not double text? Like what's going on? Do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. There's different sets of rules for men or women. There's different sets of rules for friends. There's all these different rules. And the problem with texting is that no one's following the same rules. There isn't one uniform set. In fact, it's the opposite, right? We have different

rules for different genders. And so texting has become an absolute mess. And people are trying to figure this out and everyone's telling you how to text or how not to text. So what's going on here? What do we do about this? There's one part of texting that no one ever talks about. And that is how to receive texts, how to read texts. Because I know this is weird. I know this is going to sound kind of complicated. It's a boomer concept. Texting falls under the umbrella of something called communication. Now, communication is this boomer concept about sending and receiving signals. There can be all kinds of different communications. There can be verbal. communications. There can be non-verbal communications. There can be texting or written communications.

Back in the day, we had this thing called the letter. But the key thing about communication is that it goes both ways. There's both the sending of communications and the receiving of communications. So if you want to be a better texter, what we're going to talk about is how to read texts. Okay, so the first rule is what to do if a text upsets you. So a lot of times, the reason that we run into trouble with texting is because we get a text and the text upsets us in some way, right? Like, this person is callous or they're unfeeling or they say something that's insulting or they didn't laugh at my joke or they're cold in some way. Like, I don't know.

They send us, we receive some kind of text and we get upset. And so normally when we get upset, when we receive a text, what do we do? I'm going to text a vac. I can't believe you're like this. We start being like passive aggressive and you're like, oh, if that's what you want to do and we're like, I'm going to capitalize that's, right? And I'm going to teach this person a lesson. We get upset.

And so the first thing that we've got to do is if you get upset when you see a text, the first thing you should do is don't respond. Take a moment. Take a step back. Re-read the text. Critically look at the text. If you get upset, don't assume that you are upset for a good reason because you may, that may not be their intention at all, right?

And this is really challenging because when we get upset is when our mind actually doesn't want to reread anything, right? Like, we don't want to reread stuff when we're upset. Like, we don't want to stop and think critically. This asshole sent me this text. You're telling me that I need to pause for a second and read, reread the mean thing that they said. That's not what I want to do. It runs completely contrary to all of our instincts.

But why should we do it then? Right? Do you see the text that they sent me? You want me to pause for a second and reread it and think critically? When this asshole sent this, what's wrong with you, Dr. Kay? So let me explain something. I know it's kind of weird. Here's the problem with texting.

is that we miss a lot of information, right? So texting is in, I know it's weird, but is in the written format. And then it leaves out things like tone, body language. It leaves out a lot of emotions. Sometimes it can be hard to detect whether people are sarcastic or serious. Or we will interpret them as serious when they are being sarcastic. Or we will interpret them as sarcastic when they are being serious. Wait, what? You were serious about that? And why is that? It's because you can't convey emotion. And so then what happened? To fix this problem, right? So texting, inventors, the texting technologists, decided we're going to create an emoji because a picture is worth a thousand words, right? So now we can convey things with emoji. And so like we went from hieroglyphics

to the written alphabet because those are superior to hieroglyphics. And now we've come all the way back to hieroglyphics in the shape of emojis. If I ask someone, hey, want eggplant question mark for dinner tonight? Is that what we're referring to? Are we referring to a delicious roasted eggplant dip with way too much of garlic and green onion, or we're referring to something else when I ask you if you want eggplant for dinner tonight. So the first thing to understand is that when you receive a text, if you get upset, don't respond to it right away. Pause and think critically. Start to think about the different kinds of interpretations that you could offer them. What would be a charitable interpretation to this text? Or I know this sounds absolutely insane. The other thing you could try

doing is clarifying. It's weird, I know. But when we get upset, we don't want to clarify. Because we've read that text. We know exactly what they meant, right? We could see their facial expression. They were when they were typing it. We can hear their tone of voice. We saw them laughing with their friends as they were sending it, right? We know exactly what they meant. And that's why we got upset because we interpreted it correctly. So the rule number one for being a better texter, if you get upset, pause for a second, look critically and reread the text. Okay, so the next thing. But what if they don't text me to begin with, right? So it's fine, Dr. Kay, you're saying, Okay, if they text me, and I get upset, I should like reread, maybe think critically about it,

maybe ask them for clarification, but what if they don't text back? What then, Dr. K? So here's something else to understand. Texting is about convenience. I know that a lot of people would like live text back and forth, right? But generally speaking, the whole point of a text is that you can send it at any time and it can be read at any time and responded to it anytime. And that may sound weird to all the Gen Z kids or the Gen Alpha kids out there or whatever, but that's really like if you pause and think about it,

we have text messages, right? And they stay on your phone for a while, unless you're Snapchatting or whatever. I don't even understand how that crap works. But for the most part, a text message stays on your phone. So then what happened is we also had these weird things now where you can send a voice message, right? I can record a voice message and I can send it to someone,

because sometimes that's faster than writing out the text. And then what they can also do is record a voice message and send it to me. And then we can do that back and forth. And eventually we will arrive at this boomer invention. called a conversation. So if you're having a conversation with someone, the expectation is that when you say something, they will respond, right?

When we're sitting there and, like, talking to each other face to face, or there's this weird function that your phone has. It's like a constant live voice message exchange called a phone call. And if you use this thing called a phone call, that's when you should expect an instant response. The first thing to,

the second thing to understand about texting is that if you're texting people, and they don't respond, that's okay, right? It's like if you wanted to talk to them or you need an instant response, don't use a text, right? But what if I get ghosted? What if they don't respond for an extended period of time? And like people ghost nowadays, like what's up with that? And this also is where, pause for a second, there is a way to interpret being ghosted.

So let's start with this. How do you know when you've been ghosted? Is it one day of no responses, two days of no responses, three days of no responses, three days of no responses, four days of no responses, five days of no responses. When are you ghosted? Six months, year out, I imagine so at that point, right? So how do we decide when we've been ghosted? What determines whether we've been ghosted? Our decision about whether we've been ghosted or not is entirely based on our expectation or our desire for when we want a response. I've seen people claim that they have been ghosted after 24 hours of no messages. I've seen people feel like they've been

ghosted after one week of no response, right? So when is the threshold of ghosting? I'm not even sure. But what I do know is that a lot of people feel ghosted based on their own internal expectations. The second thing to consider is that even if you don't get a response for like a week or a month, you know, sometimes like stuff happens in people's lives. Generally speaking, remember the point of a text message is that it's kind of there and I can get around to it later. But sometimes people will, I don't know, like get into a depressive episode for a little while or like start to become a little bit manic for a couple of weeks. Or maybe they got COVID, or maybe they're really busy at work, or maybe their family member, like a family member, passed away. And this is where

you say, understandably so, right? So I know what you're going to say there. Well, they could let me know, right? If they're going to be out of commission for a little while, the least they could do is have the courtesy to tell me. Well, yeah, I completely agree with you. So here's my question for you. How do you know that they didn't let you know? What do you mean? Of course they didn't let me know. If they let me knew, I would know, right? Like, if they told me, I would know. Well, hold on a second. How carefully are you reading their texts? Right? So this is insane. Sometimes people will, and you may know this if you've been on the, like, on the sending end, well, you'll kind of let someone know. You're like, hey, I'm going to be busy with work for the next couple of weeks. You're going to

let them know. And then, like, four days later, they're like, hey, like, why haven't you texted me back? Right? So, like, it's because people don't read texts. Because you text all kinds of stuff. Maybe they'll let you know. Could they have known, let you know a little bit more clearly? Sure. right, but maybe they even did let you know. So I know it sounds kind of weird, but even ghosting is something that you've got to be really careful about, that I think a lot of ghosting has to do with your interpretations. Are you actually reading their texts properly?

What are the reasons that they haven't responded to you? There could be all kinds of stuff, and the point of the matter is that we don't know. The last thing to consider about being a good texter is to ultimately understand that you can't control someone else's behavior. And the challenge with a lot of these rules is they're actually geared not to help you feel better about yourself,

but geared to elicit a particular kind of behavior. Right? So if we kind of think about it, a lot of the texting stuff is about getting other people to respond. So if my response is too short, if I just say, hey, and they say, hey, and then I say, hey, and then I say, hey, and then I say, what's up?

And they say, not much, you? And then I say, what's up? Not much. What you up to? Not much. Hey, hey, hey. Hey. So if we have that kind of text exchange,

I decide to alter my behavior, right? So I'm going to send a longer message. And what am I doing when I send a longer message? I'm trying to elicit a particular kind of response. So if I send, if I double text or triple text or quadruple text, people will think I am pathetic, and then they will not respond to me. And so now what I need to do is no longer double text or triple text or quadruple text. I need to send one text and then I need to wait.

And so I come up with all these rules. But what's the purpose of the rules? The purpose of the rules is to elicit a problem. particular kind of response. And this is what's really tricky is like in the back of our mind, we just need to understand that we can't control anyone else. And how does that help us in texting? Because here's how it helps us. When I take my natural impulses, I get excited about Christmas time. And so when I text someone, I want to talk to them about Christmas time because that's what's exciting to me right now. When I start restraining all of my impulses for the sake of eliciting

a particular response, I'm essentially making a sacrifice for the sake of the text. Right? Then if I don't get that response, what happens? Now I've made a sacrifice and I didn't even get what I paid for. And if I didn't get what I paid for, then I feel resentful. And what do we do when we feel resentful? Do we process our emotions in a healthy manner? No, of course not. We take that resentment. We package it up and we shove it deep, deep, deep down inside ourselves into this black pit of our stomach where all of our resentment from our failed texts show up. And then what happens is all of those thoughts and feelings come out in passive aggressive ways with the next person that we text. So now not only are they dealing with us and our own insecurities, they are also have to

deal with all of the resentment that is piled up. And if you have tried online dating, you understand this because you are not talking to a human being. You are talking to a human being plus the pile of resentment that they carry from trying to date online for two years and texting with people. So what do we do about that? Take a step back. Remember, you can't control any other human being. Should you perhaps modify your behavior a little bit with texting? Absolutely.

We're not saying, you know, just burst out and ignore and just talk to people about whatever you want. We're not saying you should send walls of text just because you feel like it. But in the back of your mind, start to think a little bit about, okay, what am I doing when I text? am I really trying to elicit a particular kind of response? Am I texting because I enjoy it? Or am I texting because I want something from this person?

Is this a game that I need to play? Because if it's a game I need to play, I better figure out the rules and I better play by the rules. And then why do I get screwed and resentful there? Because I learn the rules with one person and then I start texting someone else and they're playing with a completely different set of rules. But I had to learn this game over here. And now you're making me play this different game over here. It's so frustrating.

I'm so resentful. And then when person three comes up, long, the resentment comes pouring out. So what do we do about that? Take a step back. Recognize, you can't control anyone's behavior, right? And the more that you do that, the less resentful you will become. So now it sounds kind of bizarre, but this is something that it boggles my mind as a professional communicator, that everything that I see about how to text has nothing to do with how to read a text. Everything is rules, rules, rules about what to say and what not to say. Can you imagine what life would be like if we did that in communication where I'm just blabbing at you constantly and I have my own

set of internal rules and I'm not paying any attention to what you actually said. No wonder texting is a mess. So if you want to become a better text or don't worry about the rules. You can learn however many rules you want to. The problem is you don't even know who you're texting with if they're playing by the same rule book. So what's the point of learning the rules? Instead, learn how to read a text properly. Right? And that comes down to a couple of really simple things. The first thing is if you get pissed off. Remember that all kinds of nonverbal communication, tone, eye contact, facial expressions. You can't convey any of that. Sarcasm. You can't convey any of that. Emogies. So we try to add in emotion where we can with emojis. But if something upsets you in a text, the last thing that you

want to do is take a step back, but that's exactly what you should do. Think critically about the text. Try to give them a charitable interpretation. Second thing you've got to do. Okay, but that's in the case of a response that upsets you. What if they don't respond? Remember that texting is ultimately about convenience, right? So sometimes it takes people a day or a couple days or five days or seven days. The other thing is sometimes stuff happens in their life. So even their normal texting patterns are not really going to be there. There could be something as simple as, oh yeah, I looked at this text and I wanted to send a very thoughtful response because you said something really cool, but I don't have the time to send thoughtful response now. And so instead, what I'm going to do

is just, I'll remember to do it later, but now it's no longer an unread text and I never see it. I forget about it the next day. And then this person is left on red for like six months. There's all kinds of stuff that can happen. Sometimes we even get ghosted. And what's the deal with ghosting? Well, the first thing to understand is, how do you know if you've been ghosted? How do individual human beings determine if they have been ghosted? The most common measurement for whether you've been ghosted based on what I've observed

has to do with the expectations and desires of the person being ghosted. I wanted a response within 48 hours and they didn't give it to me, therefore I am ghosted. Because if I am ghosted, then I blame them and they're a bad human being and they hurt me. So be careful about ghosting. You may not necessarily have been ghosted. Who knows? The last thing to understand is that as we start to text, we want to win this game. In order to win the game, we'll make all kinds of sacrifices.

And so as we make these sacrifices, I want to talk about this, but people don't like it when I talk about this. So I'm not going to talk about this. I'm going to talk about what they talk about, right? So as we make sacrifices, we want particular things. I'm doing this so that this person will go on a date with me. And then they don't go on a date with you. And then I'm left with a pile of resentment.

So remember, first and foremost, or I guess last and not least, that texting, you can't control someone else's behavior through your communication. And the goal of communication is to, to a certain degree, accommodate the other person, but also to represent yourself and what you want. It's not about a particular outcome. It's about communication with another human being. There's a relationship. It is not a puzzle to be solved that you have to conform to their wishes so that they will respond to you.

And the more that we try to control other people with texting, the more resentful we become. The more resentful we become, the harder it is to be solved. read texts properly. And then it becomes a vicious cycle, which is exactly why texting is the mess that we see today. So if you want to become a better texter, don't worry about the rules of how to write a text. Learn how to read a text.