Anxiously waiting for a text back? Read this
HOW DO THREE LITTLE DOTS HOLD SO MUCH POWER, I HEAR YOU ASK!
Ugh, now there is nothing more hideous than the anxiety that can come when waiting for someone to message you. You’re staring at your phone. You’re putting it down, picking it up. You’re refreshing. You’re checking last online times. You're turning it off, switching it back on. Pretending to check something else, all whilst hoping that they’ve messaged you or replied.
You might even find yourself preempting ghosting and planning for the worst so it’s a nice ‘surprise’ when they reply.
Or, you might find yourself scouring your conversation to see what was said and where it ‘went wrong’.
In other words, it’s a hideous emotional energy trap.
And it can feel like all your future happiness is riding on one message.
Will they reply? How will they respond? What if they ignore me?
Why haven’t they messaged? What’s going on? Why has their behaviour changed? Maybe they’re texting someone else? Maybe an ex is back on the scene?
Am I not good enough? Will it turn into something? If it doesn’t work out, will I be alone forever? What if I never meet anyone?
You’re effectively waiting for the reassurance that you’re enough. That they’re thinking of you.
This one message, this one response, gets wrapped up in our deepest darkest fears, so we end up attaching our chance at happiness and our hopes of meeting someone to this one person. And to effectively, this one text.
NO WONDER IT FEELS STRESSFUL!
Now, please remember that if this anxiety led, adrenaline fuelled response is your pattern, then it might mean you have an anxious attachment style.
I won’t bore you with the science, but John Bowlby argued that we are genetically programmed to attach ourselves to a few individuals because it had a significant survival advantage. He says we have a biological mechanism called the attachment system which is specifically responsible for creating and regulating our connection with attachment figures. In other words, we have a basic instinct to maintain connection with an attachment figure at all costs (and as we get older, this means romantic interests). If you have an anxious attachment system (which, according to Dr Amir Levine, around 20-30% of the population do), you’re highly triggered by the relationship being in any sort of danger.
This means that when your relationship, or situationship feels ‘threatened’ (e.g. they haven’t replied or messaged you) then you have one thought – to re-establish closeness. This includes things like overthinking about the person and situation, believing this is your only chance for love, refusing to let go or only remembering the good qualities. This is actually just your internal attachment system going into hyper alert and you tend to act out through ‘protest’ behaviour (I did a post on this yesterday, which you can find here).
So it might help you to hear that a lot of the time, it’s not really about the person at the end of the phone. You’re not in love with them, or having some super-sonic response because they're the one, but it’s actually just your internal programming.
By looking at relationships in this way you don’t have to deem them healthy or unhealthy, it is simply genetic programming and life events. In other words, you’re not going crazy.
If this sounds like you, you can find my video of three tips to manage anxiously waiting for a text back.