When Silence Is the Better Response: Not Every Message Requires an Answer

Somewhere along the way, we started believing that if somebody sends us a message, we owe them a response. Especially when the message pisses us off. Actually, sometimes especially when it pisses us off.

Your phone buzzes, you read what they wrote and immediately your brain starts firing. You cannot let that sit there. You need to correct it. They need to know what actually happened.

Except there is one question we rarely ask first. Does this actually require a response?

During divorce, learning the difference between a message you received and a message you need to engage with can change everything about how much emotional energy communication takes from you.

A Lot of Words Can Contain Very Little Information

High-conflict messages are often incredibly noisy. There may be accusations mixed with logistics, sarcasm wrapped around an actual question, or four paragraphs of relationship history before you finally get to the one thing you actually needed to know.

Take something like:

“Since you apparently can’t manage to remember anything involving the kids, I’m reminding you AGAIN that Ella has soccer Saturday. I don’t understand why I always have to be the responsible parent. The game starts at 10.”

Your brain is probably not going to focus on soccer. It’s going straight to apparently you can’t manage to remember anything. And now you want to explain all the things you remember. You want to point out what they forgot last month. Maybe you’d like to discuss this fascinating assertion that they have somehow become the only responsible parent.

Meanwhile, Ella has soccer at 10.

That’s the information.

Maybe you respond, “Got it, thank you.” Maybe, depending on the situation, you don’t need to respond at all.

The point is that you get to make that decision based on the content of the communication rather than the amount of emotion it created inside you.

Silence Isn’t the Same Thing as Avoiding Communication

There are obviously things you need to communicate about during divorce. If someone asks a legitimate question involving your children, finances, schedules, property, or another issue that requires coordination, ignoring them isn’t suddenly a brilliant communication strategy.

I’m talking about all the extra stuff wrapped around those conversations.

The insult, the accusation, the sarcastic comment, the invitation to revisit the marriage for the 400th time. You can answer what needs answering without engaging with everything surrounding it.

That takes practice because emotionally charged language is very good at getting our attention. Our brains are wired to notice threat, and when somebody knows exactly where your buttons are, they usually know exactly how to push them.

One Text Can Hijack Your Entire Afternoon

You’ve probably experienced this - a message arrives and suddenly you’re rereading it. Then you’re writing a response. Then you delete the response because it sounds too angry. Then you call somebody and tell them what happened. Then you go back and read it again because maybe you missed something.

Forty-five minutes later, this person has essentially been sitting in your head the entire time. That’s a tremendous amount of power to hand over to a text message. One of the ways you start taking that back is by stripping the communication down before deciding what you’re going to do with it.

What are they actually asking me?

Is there anything here that requires action?

Is there information I need?

And sometimes, after all the noise is removed, there isn’t much left.

That was one of the biggest reasons I built AnchorIt™. You can paste a long, emotionally loaded message into it and have the actual actionable content separated from the emotional charge. Instead of spending twenty minutes dissecting a ten-paragraph email, you can see what actually needs your attention and decide from there.

You still make the decision. Technology shouldn’t decide whether you respond to your ex. But it can help you see the message without getting swallowed by the delivery. Because receiving someone’s anger doesn’t obligate you to pick it up and carry it around for the rest of the day.

Jeanine Tripodi is an Emotional Reactivity Consultant, founder of The Composure Codes™, and creator of AnchorIt™. She is also a Collaborative Divorce Communication Coach and Family Law Mediator. She has built her entire body of work around how you communicate during divorce and conflict, because how you show up in those exchanges affects every outcome that follows. She works with individuals who are done reacting and are ready to protect what matters. Start your 3-day AnchorIt™ trial at ww.UseAnchorit.com.