So I was texting a friend just an hour or two ago, and I’d asked “how are stuff going for you?”. A few hours later they told me how they’d tired of texting/chatting in general and were gonna take a break for a few days; that it happens every now and then. They brushed it off casually but I’m getting a feeling it’s not so “light” of an issue especially if it seems to be a semi-regular happening?

I didn’t press the issue as I was also feeling very slightly hurt – even though I know it’s probably not personal it kinda feels bad? Someone’s literally texting me that the act of texting me is emotionally exhausting lol doesn’t exactly make me feel good. Whole another post lol but long story short I know it’s completely on me for being reliant on one or two friends – and consequently feeling lonely when literally half my social network is gone even temporarily. I’ve been trying to change that, but progress is slow.

Now I asked this person if they wanted to catch up over a phone call this thurs. / friday? My rationale:

1. We’ve video chatted before so I don’t think this was a big ask.
2. They only mentioned being sick of texting and that seeing notifications was slightly overwhelming; but… verbally talking w/someone isn’t the same.
3. Might be presumptuous of me, but maybe it’d be nice for them to talk to someone and I wanted to show that I was open.

Now my reasons weren’t 100% altruistic; I’d been missing them for some time now and never knew how to basically… ask for? do? anything beyond texting as I don’t wanna be pushy and going “wanna talk over phone” seemed to be reasonable at the time. But now I’m thinking that I overstepped my bound. Going by the (possibly wrong) assumption that calling someone takes more “energy” than texting, I effectively just invalidated sth they were going through, right? And that I shouldn’t be surprised if *I* contributed a bit to them being overwhelmed ==> I don’t hear from them for some time. Any thoughts?

1 comment
  1. You will keep overthinking this as long as you continue to sit around, do nothing, and keep excessively waiting on your friends. Ask yourself something. Why is it these friends of yours are clearly doing other things besides responding to you, but you can’t do the same ? You really need to start getting busy in your life and start talking to other people. Never make one person or few people your only social option. It almost always doesn’t end well. If you make these friends your only social options, you run the risk of acting needy and clingy for their time and attention. They will lose respect for you and avoid you. Friendships are not codependent relationships. You should have other things going on in life or other people to talk to besides this one friend.

    Also read this, it describes how you come off to people when you are constantly anxious and overthinking: https://www.reddit.com/r/socialskills/comments/we54zy/big_tip_to_reduce_your_social_anxiety_and_why/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

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