FIRE!!

A very wise…bastard… taught me a lesson over the years. I could never understand why his correspondence would just drop off from time to time. It took a long time for it to make sense to me. He told me once that he didn’t respond to something I sent because I was upset with him and he said “what do you do when someone sends you something negative? You delete it.”…hmm…This actually explained a lot.

For instance:

You get a text from a friend that says: “You have a really fat butt.” This irritates you and you instantly write back, “Yeah? Well I’ve always thought your face looked like it had been beaten in by a truck. I can’t believe you even got a guy looking the way you do.”…You get a response back saying, “What? My 10 year old just sent that to everyone in my contacts as a joke.”…oh. Let’s see you fix that one!!

This is why we need to not respond with our immediate reaction. It is irrational and will egg on the situation beyond repair. I once got 8 texts from a guy. I had been in a concert with my phone off. They went something like this:

“Hey. What are you up to?”

“Do you want to get together?”

“What are you doing?”

“Why aren’t you responding to me?”

“I can’t believe you are doing this to me?”

“Forget it! I’m sick of this crap!”

“When I first met you, I didn’t even think you were pretty anyway!”

“Have a nice life!”

Okay…When I got out of the concert and turned on the phone, I was perplexed…then I was annoyed…then I sent back a wiseass “Which one of these texts would you like me to respond to? I was in a concert with my phone off. Have a nice life.”

He and I are not together.

The truth is that if you don’t respond to an initial text or email when someone is ranting and upset, the bastard is right- People will put out their own fire! You just can’t provide them any fuel in the meantime. I always tell people that when they break up with someone, don’t bother trying so hard to communicate. If you disappear for awhile, they will return. If you keep nagging at them, they won’t remember why they broke up with you in the first place, but they will have a whole new story to tell their friends. You probably won’t get back together if that is in fact what you want. Of course there’s a good chance that you are better off without the person. But wouldn’t you rather be the one who was right in the end?...I know I would…