When texting people in general I find it frustrating that people don’t seem to view it as a conversation. If someone texts me and I catch it and text back right away, I get frustrated when people don’t return the favor. They might text back 5, 10, minutes or an hour or more later. Why did you text me if you didn’t want to have a conversation? Why am I the one sitting here waiting for a response?
It’s like someone sitting down across from at a table and asking you “Hey, how ya doin?” You respond “Great! what’s up?” and they just sit there for 10 minutes not saying anything.
Might be the whisper of ASD in my ADHD contributing to not understanding how this social interaction actually works vs how I think it should work.
Anyone else have this grinding their gears?
E: apparently it’s just me!
Thanks for the replies, everyone.
If I send someone a text, I don’t expect them to read or respond in any given timeframe. I don’t get to just demand their full attention on the spot, and I fully appreciate that they may not be in a position to hear or respond to their phone bleeping at them at any given moment.
EXCEPT
If someone sends me a text, and I respond to it within seconds, then yes, I expect them to treat it like a conversation.
I will never understand these people that hit send then immediately throw their phone out the goddamn window so any response no matter how fast stays on delivered for the next hour.
Sometimes I’m just really busy and something occurs to me. I send a relevant message and then get back to what I was doing. Or sometimes I send a message then a crisis occurs (I work in healthcare) and I don’t see the response I received until much later.
It’s an asynchronous conversation and you can’t assume that someone received your reply immediately after they sent their text, even if you immediately respond as soon as you see it. There have been way too many times that I’ve witnessed where both people responded immediately, but one or more parts of the exchange were delayed, so no one got an immediate response and the conversation was spread across hours. This is especially true if one or more party in the exchange is traveling.