Technology often gets a bad rap for being impersonal and creating gaps in relationships. I disagree. With my therapist as my witness, I proclaim that Text messaging has strengthened my marriage.
My husband and I have been together since 1988. I fell in love with him at 19 and although our relationship has endured ups and downs, we have always chatted, giggled, and enjoyed one another. Until we became parents, that is.
Becoming Mom and Dad overnight to a 3 and 7-year-old was stressful on our lifestyle (we knew that going in), our bank accounts (expected, but we underestimated), and our marriage (didn’t even see it coming!) For a brief moment early after the adoption my husband and I really bonded and took comfort in knowing we were in it together. But as the children’s behavior seemed to worsen for a while and became so unpredictable ON TOP of the financial strains and IN ADDITION to our sudden lost freedom, we didn’t find comfort in each other anymore. We found fault and we began to place blame.
We couldn’t blame or punish the kids for what was happening to us, so we took it out on one another. We didn’t necessarily fight or yell a lot. We just stopped enjoying one another. We saved our energy and the best of everything we had for the kids. We forgot to save something for us. We didn’t chat or giggle for a couple of years. We didn’t consult or console one another. We were so exhausted by the time we got the kids to bed each night and paid the bills that we had no energy left to discuss the day’s events and focus on anything fun or light that may have happened. We turned into two separate people trying to survive.
Now that is just our story. There are all different reasons that couples fall out of like. The love still exists buried deep beneath all the stress, worry, anger, resentment, etc. But you don’t so much “like” or enjoy one another.
Then one day I bought my Hubby a new cell phone. Both of our contracts were up. I was at the AT&T store shopping for mine and I thought about how unhappy Hubs had been with his Nextel. They had some sales and rebates so I bought him one with a qwerty keyboard. I had seen him trying to text with the guys at work and struggle with that standard keypad.
Hubby loved the phone almost as much as he loved the pricing benefits of our new combined account. He started sending me these DUMB forwards that got passed around work. Every once in a while one would catch me that was so funny that I would reply excitedly. Then he would reply. Soon we were CHATTING! From there we started sharing funny little things that happened in our days that didn’t warrant interrupting our jobs to make a phone call but could quickly and easily be shared with a text message. These little anecdotes were things happening in our lives that for years had gone on NOT KNOWN by the other.
It hit me, not only did we not know anything about one another anymore, but we had forgotten how much we have in common and how interesting we are to each other. So there we were sharing dumb jokes, then sharing experiences throughout the day, and it wasn’t long before we were FLIRTING! Can you imagine? After almost twenty years together we started flirting again! And on a totally un-romantic note, it has also been really convenient to be able to remind each other of tasks and help one another make shopping decisions, take out choices, and stuff 🙂
There was a time when getting a toll-free phone line was the coolest thing I could think of. Then came along call waiting, three-way calling, voice mail, caller i.d., and so on! All great stuff! I would trade them all away for text messaging if I had to. Text messaging may just have saved my marriage.
Do you text? How do you feel it impacts relationships?
