Lost In Translation

Your phone vibrates. It’s a text message from your boyfriend responding to the multi-question text message you just sent him. His response reads “Ok”. You’re immediately confused. Is it “Ok” to the first question or the second question? Is the “Ok” an indifferent okay or a definitive okay? You might be thinking, couldn’t he have wrote more than “Ok” to give you some more context?

Conversely, your phone vibrates. It’s a text message from your boyfriend. Instead this time he decides against a one word text and starts using his texting skills to write you a novel on how he’s feeling. While, yes, you’re thrilled that he’s finally opening up to you and sharing his feelings, you may be left feeling just as frustrated with his novel long text as you were with his one word text.

The truth is we’ve all experienced the difficulties of communicating with our lovers in an age of texting and social media. Communicating with the opposite sex is already difficult enough and when you add all these multiple forms of communication in the mix it can sometimes get a bit messy.

Some may call it old fashion, but all I want in my relationship is quality phone conversations and one on one (in person) time together. Sure, texts can be cool for the day to day “How are you’s?” and sharing pictures. But, when it comes to addressing serious matters and getting down to real talk, I strongly believe that texting can be the enemy.  

Yes, I actually put texting and enemy in the same sentence together. I probably broke some millennial code by saying that, but I’ll take the risk. It’s just that there’s so much lost in translation when you’re texting your beau. Don’t get me wrong, it does give you a chance to conveniently vent or share your feelings with your partner but they’ll never get the entire message unless you actually have a conversation via phone or in person. In fact research, suggests that “between 60 and 70 percent of all meaning is derived from nonverbal behavior”. This statistic indicates that your actual words only account for 30 to 40 percent of what’s actually being received. And we all know that numbers don’t lie. This means that your tone inflection, body language and facial expressions weigh in pretty heavily in a conversation, these are also all things that can't be generated via text.  

So, you might be wondering how can I communicate effectively with my beau in the competing world of texting and social media? Glad you asked! I’ve listed out three quick tips to help navigate you back to the traditional days of talking (not texting) it out.

1. Think before you text

Yes, texting is a very simple thing to do. Make sure that you don’t use texting as a venting session. Once you put something in writing the words can be hurtful and hard to take back

 

2. Have limitations on what you text about 

Make sure that you stick to neutral topics via text. Avoid having a serious discussion or disagreement via a texting novel

 

3. Set aside time for "Real Talk" once a week

Let’s face it our lives are busy, our commitments are endless. If you have proactively set aside time to discuss serious matters then it alleviates the temptation to “text it out”