Till Text do us Part

My niece called me the other day distraught that her boyfriend of seven months just broke up with her. The worst part for her was that he did it via text. Well it is one way of communicating, I suppose. How would you feel it that happened to you?

Texting is seen as a quick and convenient way to communicate. Everybody’s doing it, well except for me that is! I mean I have a laptop and a desktop computer, an iPhone, (lets call that a hand held computer) three email addresses, three business phone lines, and a home line. There are lots of ways to get a hold of me. Do I really need another way to communicate?

It fascinates me to see how deftly people use this miniscule keypad. I watch how swiftly those thumbs move the written word into bite size chunks of information on these mobile devices. PING the words are sent, PING a response is received. However if the return text takes longer than a few minutes I have seen anxiety and panic set in! Have we become so accustomed to sending and receiving rapid snippets of information that we mistakenly believe that through texts we are actually communicating effectively with each other?
Recently I worked with a couple who claimed they were having difficulties in communicating. He was so frustrated, he was ready to ‘call it quits’ on the relationship. The man being self-employed, only eats what he kills so his focus on the job is crucial, especially since he is building his business to enable his woman to stay home with the children they want to have together.

They said they fight all the time. About what I inquired?  As it turns out he is bothered by the many and frequent texts that she sends throughout the day, sometimes as many as forty in an eight hour period. If he doesn’t respond right away she takes it personally, gets pissed off and texts him again just to let him know. For his fiancée, it’s her way of staying connected throughout the day. For him it is a huge distraction from focusing on building his business and clearly creates a disconnection.

When they get home at the end of the day they have nothing left to talk about. They fight because as it turns out it has all been said, sort of. What hadn’t been spoken about was his need to place a boundary (and stick to it) on the process of texting and to find a more effective manner of getting and staying connected throughout the day.

My prescription was to ask them to experiment for a week, and forgo texting each other completely. They were to call each other once a day and take time and actually have the intention to connect. As it turned out, because she worked in an open office environment, calls weren’t private. Since no one could hear her texting she saw this as an appropriate way to communicate. By conducting this experiment they were able to get the underlying issues and actually address them.

Is the problem ‘texting’, No not really. The problem is the lack of boundaries that each of them are responsible to communicate and uphold, along with clarifying what quality of connection they truly want and need.

What boundary do you need to set that will restore life to your relationship?