Anxiety and Text Responses

I know what you’re thinking: Omg why would you do that Sarah? Why would you pride yourself on being this highly accessible, communicative, upstanding friend but then blatantly ignore messages from these men? You hypocrite.

Well the truth of the matter is that in these circumstances, I’m usually anxiously wringing my hands/sitting on my hands/white-knuckling a La Croix in a desperate attempt to… well, not seem desperate. I’ll hem and haw over the perfect answer to this guy and even set timers around my house to create ample buffers between the time I receive the text and the time I respond. Addicts and alcoholics have a similar tactic when trying to get sober, counting the hours since the last time they used…

The Most Intimate Conversations

The thing is, I am a highly accessible person. I am usually glued to my phone having lengthy conversations with numerous friends on multiple platforms because 1) that’s how I do a lot of business as an actor, and 2) frankly I enjoy it. I love talking to my friends, either in person, on the phone or via text. Sometimes the deepest and most fulfilling conversations I have are through text. It’s just how I am— I am a millennial, for better or for worse.

Fifty years ago, or even only thirty years ago, the romantic chase was a physical one. People met at social functions, bars, and parties face-to-face. When Aziz Anzari and Eric Klinenberg were conducting interviews as research for the book Modern Romance, most of their retirement-aged subjects said that they just happened to live in the same neighborhood as their future life partner. If they were attracted to each other there was a ceremonial exchange of land-line phone numbers, and maybe plans were made for a specific date and time (because HOW ELSE were you going to find a person otherwise). Or maybe a number was taken and one person was forced to sit for days by his/her land-line telephone, waiting for that fateful call, at which point both people would be confronted with the sound of each other’s voice. Once they made contact, they couldn’t hide from one another. The lack of technology forced more visceral connection.