Texting Nightmare: How You Are Killing Your Relationships In 5 Stages
SMS (short messaging service) or texting has become one of the most popular forms of communication since that way of communication was discovered by British engineer, Neil Papworth (1992).
Today, texting includes MMS (multimedia messages) too, which enables us to send audio, images, and video, besides text, numbers, and other symbols.
There are a great number of benefits associated with text messaging, but also numerous downsides, including:
– Misunderstandings
– The expectation to Read and Respond
– Impersonal
– Texting and Driving
– General Distraction
– Group Texts
– Socially Disruptive
– Limitations
– Obsessive/Addictive
– Erodes Language Skills
– Sleep Problems
– Cost
The worst thing about texting is the ruining of the relationships that people used to have before that invention. Here we will try to explain 5 stages of ruining relationships through texting.
Stage 1: The need for attention
Due to social media people today need more attention than before, which is understandable. Almost everyone has a gadget in the hands, which enables connection to other people to know constantly. That keeps the people’s attention at any given time, which really is humanly impossible to sustain all your interpersonal relationships healthily at this speed. According to Katya Hubanova, a journalist, whose passions are culture and politics, that attention linked to texting is the basis upon which the miscommunication is built.
Stage 2: Feeling left out
When you don’t spend as much time as you would subconsciously like with a particular person online, in terms of intimate relationships or friendships, you tend to feel left out or isolated. Because you feel bad without that connection, you can feel a certain type of clinginess. It might sound harsh or laughable to some, but people who are in such a situation are guilty of doing this at varying degrees. It is especially for those people who have become obsessive, and do expect more from texting than they can actually get out from it.
Stage 3: You are glued to your phone
As most of the people from society become glued to their phones that might be a serious problem they all can face. When somebody is not careful while crossing the street or just blatantly ignores all the people at the family reunion, it becomes a sort of disease. Those people feel a constant need to communicate – to their boyfriends/girlfriends or best friend(s). This kind of obsession can put a strain on the various relationships, as texting hold up the quality time that could be spent face-to-face.
For that reason, without even realizing it, people become a bit more socially uncooperative. All of the time those people are expecting virtual validation, but those expectations can lead to misunderstandings and disappointment at the end.
Stage 4: Not intimate enough
Even though the majority of people believe that phones make them closer, it is not true in the slightest. The experts claim quite the opposite. Texting very often takes people away from the natural way they typically tend to converse with each other. The problem can occur suddenly, for example why a certain person is not responding right away or he/she is using some other ways of responding to the texting. That can bring some thoughts and getting the sense that it is something wrong in the relationship, and people start wondering why they have issues. To be precise, the main reason is that people are not intimate enough.
Stage 5: Heated arguments over text
Having in mind the facts mentioned above can be concluded that an argument over text would be a total catastrophe. The level of this condition depends on the people involved, however, the miscommunication does occur in any case. Interestingly, people could start an argument from the most unimportant or trivial things, which might not even be considered a problem or inconvenience. Something that can trigger the arguments is the use of specific wording or phrases that are taken out of context and how people are ‘picturing’ in their head something is said. According to those factors, people tend to get more aggressive and offend in an unnecessary way, which can ruin a relationship.
An argument via text could last for hours or days on end, but in real life most probably would not have existed. It is obvious that nothing can substitute real-life, face-to-face communication, not even phone calls.
However, a phone call is a better way of communication than texting, because it leaves less room for misunderstanding, confusion, and disappointment.
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