Your Text Message Has a Longer Life Than You Think: Communicating as Though Someone Else May Read It

You’re standing in your kitchen, your ex sends a text, you read it and immediately think, Oh, absolutely fucking not.

You type the response.

Maybe you even get that tiny rush of satisfaction when you hit send because damn, that felt good. And then thirty minutes later you’re calm again. The text isn’t. It’s still sitting there exactly as you wrote it, and this is something people going through divorce forget all the time. The emotion that created a message is temporary. The message itself can have a very long life.

You May Be Writing to More Than One Person

Most of the time when you’re texting your ex, you’re thinking about the person on the other end of the phone. That’s your audience - except sometimes they’re not the only audience.

A text can be screenshotted. An email can be forwarded. Communication can eventually be read by attorneys, mediators, parenting professionals, or other people involved in your divorce. I don’t say that to make people paranoid about every word they type. I say it because perspective is incredibly useful when you’re angry.

One of the simplest things you can do before sending a difficult message is imagine somebody neutral reading it. They know nothing about either of you. They weren’t there for the marriage. They don’t know who started this. They don’t know that the other person has done this exact same thing a hundred times and this was finally the moment you lost it. They just have the words.

How does your message read now?

Screenshots Don’t Come With Emotional Footnotes

This is where written communication can get tricky. You may know exactly why you said something. You know the three messages that came before it. You know what happened yesterday. You know the history behind the sarcastic sentence you wrote. Someone looking at that sentence later may know none of it.

Context disappears surprisingly fast when communication gets pulled out of the moment in which it happened. And sometimes what felt completely justified when you wrote it doesn’t represent you particularly well once the emotion is gone. That doesn’t mean you should sanitize your personality or become afraid to communicate. It means being deliberate about what you’re trying to accomplish.

What Is This Message Actually For?

Before you hit send, ask yourself what you’re trying to get done. Maybe you need to confirm pickup time. Maybe you’re asking about an expense. Maybe you disagree with something and need to make that clear. Great. Communicate that.

Where people get into trouble is when a conversation about Tuesday pickup suddenly becomes an opportunity to discuss who ruined Christmas in 2019. We’ve all done some version of this. Relationship history has a sneaky way of attaching itself to whatever is happening right now, particularly when you’re already hurt or angry. But if Tuesday is the issue, Tuesday is enough. You don’t erase your history by refusing to put all of it into a text message.

Give Your Future Self a Vote

Before sending something emotionally charged, imagine yourself reading it six months from now.

Would you still stand behind it?

Not, Would I still be angry?

Would you stand behind the way you communicated?

That question creates just enough distance to make a different decision.

This is also where AnchorIt™ can be useful. You can put your draft into it before you send and get a clearer look at where emotion may be driving the language. Or, when you receive one of those monster emails that makes your stomach drop before you’ve even finished the first paragraph, AnchorIt can help pull out what actually requires your attention.

It doesn’t replace your judgment, and it certainly isn’t there to make everybody sound like the same polite robot. It’s a buffer. A second look before something temporary becomes permanent.

You don’t control what gets sent to you during divorce. Some of it may be unfair, provocative, ridiculous, or intentionally designed to get a reaction. But you do get to decide what you put back into the conversation. And six months from now, you may be very glad you did.

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.