5. Remember that your body language speaks, too. – If I’m talking with someone who looks uninterested, distracted, or busy with a different task, I’ll usually take it as a hint that they’d like the chat to end soon. But sometimes, the person on the other end doesn’t even know that their body language is giving this signal. To avoid sending mixed signals and make sure to:
Maintain a healthy amount of eye contact. Face the person you’re speaking to, or angle your chair toward them if seated. Refrain from phone use or excuse yourself to answer an important, time-bound message.
Pro Tip : You don’t have to stare the other person down throughout the entire conversation — just give them the attention you would want in return so they know their words are valued.
Contents
What to say to keep a conversation going over text?
Ask Open-Ended Questions Closed question: ‘How are you today?’ Usually receives a one-word response making for an awkward end to the conversation. Open-ended question: ‘What kind of things did you have going on today?’ You can then ask more open-ended questions based on the response.
Why do I find small talk so boring?
1. Ask deeper, more involved questions. – We’re often disappointed by small talk because we simply aren’t asking more involved questions. Many are very surface-level with little wiggle room to go deeper. So try asking questions that can lead somewhere more interesting and more in-depth.
What is dry texting?
Take It From a Dry Texter: Short Messages Don’t Mean Someone Isn’t Interested I can still remember that June afternoon, long and sticky and sun-heavy as I waited for a text back. When it finally arrived, four hours later, it sparkled across the screen like jewels: “Cool.” The message I’d sent previously read, “Just at the park.” Two hours before then, hers read: “How’s ur day?” If I’d been on TikTok back then, some girl in a towel headband doing a 10-step skincare routine in the mirror would have probably told me in a New York accent that I should know my worth and cut off this dry texter immediately.
- Or maybe she’d have told her that.
- Maybe one of us would have believed her.
- But half a decade later, my partner and I still message each other in this relatively functional way.
- Where u at?” “Going shop.” “Cool.” In person, we’re affectionate, the type of couple you’d feel a boiling rage towards for being slow and stuck together on the pavement.
But over text we mainly keep it to-the-point, as if it’s the ’90s and we’re on our pagers. When one of us is away, we might send more—photos, updates, I love yous, etc.—but more often than not we’re what are widely referred to as dry texters. Two dry texters, being dry together.
As a phrase, “dry texting” is relatively recent in the grand scheme of things. It refers to people who reply with one word, or don’t carry the conversation and just say things like “lmao” and “wyd” until the receiver wants to tear their hair out, The opposite, I suppose, are funny back-and-forths, long paragraphs peppered with in-jokes or feelings or passing thoughts.
When someone’s a dry texter, especially during the dating stage, online lore says that they’re, or they’re too busy messaging other people, or they’re simply boring, or some winning combination of all three. “If they wanted to, they would,” people love to say online, and that seems to apply to messaging you at all hours of the day and dropping whatever they’re doing to reply in an appropriately timely manner.
- The thing is, I’ve always been a relatively dry texter—not just with partners, obviously, but with friends and family as well.
- When I was 12 or 13, I used to exchange scrunched-up notes across the classroom.
- My school best friend once remarked how cold I sounded on paper, and that it made her laugh.
- I remember feeling taken aback—I didn’t feel cold towards her, I felt warm.
She was my favorite person. Was I supposed to write kisses on the notes? “No, but most people say more than just, like, ‘Okay.'” : Take It From a Dry Texter: Short Messages Don’t Mean Someone Isn’t Interested
Why I am a dry texter?
Why would someone engage in dry texting, anyway? – A person’s decision to share only the bare minimum over text makes it easy to wonder what they’re hiding or withholding and why. But according to relationship therapists, the answer to why someone is dry texting might have more to do with them than the conversation.
The way that these straightforward messages sound in their head might be much more friendly than they’re actually coming across.” —Elizabeth Earnshaw, LMFT, relationship therapist For starters, there’s always the potential that someone really is just busy and doesn’t have the time to add more nuance to their texts, or simply feels like texting should only be for basic messages (like the time they’ll be arriving somewhere) and nothing more, says Earnshaw.
In that case, they might not even realize that their texts could be read as emotionless or robotic. “The way that these straightforward messages sound in their head might be much more friendly than they’re actually coming across,” says Earnshaw. On a deeper level, it’s also possible that the dry texter might struggle with communicating via text to the point where they only feel comfortable sharing short responses.
“Dry texters may suffer from social anxiety and have a difficult time communicating their thoughts and feelings via written word,” says psychotherapist Anita Astley, LMFT, author of the forthcoming book Unf*ck Your Life and Relationships, Personal reasons aside, however, it’s also possible that the dry texting is a reflection of how they view your relationship.
After all, the most villainized of dry texts is the now-infamous “k” (literally, an abbreviation of the abbreviation OK) because of the nearly nonexistent effort it requires to send. Other dry texts could be used similarly by someone unwilling to pour any real effort into the conversation—and by extension, the relationship, says Astley: “It could be their way of distancing themselves from you by sabotaging successful communication.” In that way, dry texting can veer toward passive-aggressive behavior.
What is a lazy Texter?
Lazy texter. Here’s someone who barely texts at all, not because he doesn’t like you, but because he is too lazy to do so.
What is the secret 12 word text?
12-word text? What’s that? – The 12-word text is a texting strategy by James Bauer that allows you to directly target a man’s biological instincts. Every man has an innate drive to be a hero, It’s an unconscious desire that motivates all his conscious decisions.
What makes a dry conversation?
What Are Some Examples of Dry Texting? – As the experts say, it’s hard to spot dry texting from a single message. While someone “thumbs up” responding to your last or just sending a “haha” may make you want to throw your phone off a cliff, dry texting means a series of fruitless conversations. Here’s what the experts say to look out for:
Repeatedly sending one-word answers. Keeping conversation short and not asking more questions or engaging you in conversation. Ignoring or glossing over photos, links, or memes that you send. Never texting you first and/or never starting conversations.Leaving you on read for days at a time.
Is it normal for conversation to run dry?
Have You Run Out of Things to Talk About with Your Partner? You and your partner get along terrifically, so when you’ve decided to try out a new restaurant, you’re excited about spending a couple of hours together with no distractions from home. After placing your orders and chatting about the eatery’s décor, you’re surprised to realize that neither of you have anything to say.
- You glance around at the other diners, take a few sips of water, hoping your partner will launch a new conversation topic.
- However, the sounds of silence continue until the server (finally) brings your meals.
- Even the closest romantic partners can occasionally run out things to talk about with each other.
Although you might think this means that your relationship has run its course, it’s natural to feel a little stuck in the chatting department from time to time. A new study on romantic couples by Bat-Hen Shahar and colleagues (2019), of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev tested out the benefits of using emotional insights as the inspiration to get the conversation flowing again.
The theory underlying the study, known as integration of (IER), is that recognizing your emotions and then them within your sense of self can improve your ability to “cope adaptively with a wide range of environmental contingencies.” People who are able to regulate their emotions have “access to both positive and negative feelings and an ability to express them, fostering self-acceptance, personal growth, and interpersonal,” In other words, if you’re in touch with your emotions, and feel that you can control them, you’ll have better close relationships as well.
IER also suggests that, paradoxically, you’ll be less by taking an interest in your negative emotions than if you try to suppress them. It would make sense, from an IER perspective, that you would also be better able to relate to your intimate partner if you can access your own internal state.
- You will be less defensive, less aroused, and more open to honest feedback from your partner.
- Rather than relying on self-report to test IER theory, the Israeli researchers used an experimental manipulation in which one partner in a couple received directions in emotional expression (the “instructed” partner) and the other partner did not (the “naïve” partner).
The idea behind the research was to find out if the emotion manipulation would affect how well the naïve partner would feel during the conflict conversation. Going even further than asking about feelings, Shahar et al. measured the physiological arousal of the naïve partner to determine whether the emotion manipulation would affect how much he or she felt stirred up during the conversation.
- Shahar et al.’s emotion manipulation experiment tested IER theory by exposing participants to one of three sets of instructions prior to engaging in the conflict discussion task with their naïve partner.
- In the IER condition, the instructed participants were told to “take an interest” in their emotions, to be “attentive as much as possibleand try to see how your emotions are related to your and wishes during the discussion.” In the second condition, the instructed partners were told to distance themselves as much as possible from their emotions and “to try to not feel anything” but instead to look at the discussion “as objectively and rationally as possible.” In the third, emotion-suppression condition, the researchers told the instructed participants to “try to act so that your partner will not know whether you are feeling anything at all.” A control condition served to allow the researchers to compare the three manipulations against each other as well as to the couple’s ordinary mode of dealing with conflict.
Following the instructional phase, instructed participants then joined their naïve partners in a separate room where both were connected to skin conductance monitors, though only the physiological responses of the partner were actually measured. The couples watched a brief nature film (to allow baseline measures to be collected), and then began their 10-minute discussion of the topic that received the highest ratings of conflict on a previously-administered questionnaire.
- After completing the discussion, participants rated their levels of engagement during the conflict, their levels of stress and, the extent to which they viewed the discussion as productive, and the quality of communication they believed characterized the discussion.
- As an example of a communication item, participants stated whether they felt their partner was attentive to their feelings.
Each partner also rated whether they believed the discussion had helped move them closer to resolving the conflict under discussion. The 140 romantic couples recruited for the Israeli study averaged just under 22 years of age, with relationships ranging from 6 months to 3 years.
As part of the background to the study, all participants also completed demographic questionnaires as well as measures of relationship satisfaction. The research team also asked participants to complete measures after the discussion to ensure the instructions actually worked. The team’s findings supported the study’s prediction that couples in the IER manipulation condition would feel more engaged in the discussion with their partner.
Furthermore, supporting the study’s main predictions, the naïve partners showed the greatest rise in skin conductance (the measure of physiological stress) in the control group. For those whose partners were instructed to use IER, levels of skin conductance began at lower levels and then steadily decreased across the 10 minutes of discussion.
- Furthermore, those in the control group felt their discussion was less productive than did those in the IER group, but this was only for the instructed partners.
- As the authors note, this is an area worthy of further investigation.
- If tuning into your emotional state can help you and your partner move a long-term area of conflict closer to resolution, this could provide an important step in improving your relationship overall.
That IER in the instructed partner was related to lower stress in the naïve partner reflects, what the authors propose, as a “second-hand smoke effect of emotion regulation and indicate that regulation instructions may influence not only the manipulated person but also his or her uninstructed partner.” However, this isn’t always easy, as indicated by the higher stress levels of the instructed partner in the IER as well as suppression conditions.
It may be less to shove your negative feelings aside, then, but in the long run clamping down on your internal state can detract from the quality of your communication with your partner. Returning to the question of what to do the next time you’re unable to keep the conversation going with your partner, the Shahar et al.
findings suggest that you try listening to your own emotional reactions first. Are you afraid to talk because the conversation might lead to reconsideration of a painful topic? Do you worry that your inability to find a common topic to chat about reflects the feeling that your relationship is doomed to die on the vine? As you muse over these feelings, consider taking a page from the IER playbook and ask yourself what’s really going on inside of you.
What are your goals and wishes for the conversation? Articulating these can help you open up new areas of discussion or, perhaps, revisit old ones from a new perspective. To sum up, there are simple ways to overcome gaps in any conversation, but with your closest partner, the new study suggests that you delve deeper into your own emotional experience to fill in those gaps.
As you do, you and your partner will be better able to move your relationship that much closer to long and fulfilling conversations well into the future. Facebook image: nd3000/Shutterstock References Shahar, B.-H., Kalman-Halevi, M., & Roth, G. (2019).