There is a real problem with friends texting other friends way too often, which might put them in the “needy friends” category. However, it is not easy at all to realize what “too often” means because it is drastically different from friendship to friendship.
In this article, I will try to touch on different situations so you might have a bigger chance of finding a helpful answer for you, but your circumstances might be different.
I will give you in this article a few signs that will help you realize that your texts might annoy your friends.
How often should friends text each other?
How often friends should text each other depends on the type of friendship and the boundaries you set with your friends. There are different types of friends, from intimate friends(commonly known as best friends) to more casual friends or even acquaintances, and how often you should or need to text them varies a lot. Texting a best friend once a week might be rare, while texting an acquaintance once a week will be very annoying.
It also depends on the life stage you are in, someone who is in high school will have more time and willingness to respond to more messages from friends compared to someone that has a job, a relationship, and maybe kids. I have an entire article about setting boundaries with friends while you are in a relationship.
Having a common interest might make texting your friends more often not that annoying, if you share a hobby or you are at the same school or have the same job you might have more reasons to text your friends without bothering them.
What people hate the most are the non-meaningful empty check-up messages like”I hope you are doing well”, or “how are you?” and “what are you doing?”. Many people believe you should not reach out to your friends only when you need something, but reaching out to them to tell them nothing is annoying as well.
It might be that you send them something funny, something that is related to their interest or your common interest, a text doesn’t have to be life-changing, but you should mean something, not just the fact that you are bored and want to talk with someone. This might work once or twice, but it quickly becomes annoying. So you might send them a message per month and end up being too often if you tell them nothing, and on the other hand, you might text them daily and not be too often if they like what you are saying or sending them.
We should keep in mind that friends will have a hard time letting us know that we might annoy them with our messages since it is not easy to open up this discussion without ending up with bad feelings.
You should not take friendship for granted and assume that it will not last forever, only this way you will pay attention to your friends and if you are bothering them, otherwise you might think that they have to answer your texts and not get annoyed by those because they are your friends.
Read Also: Should You Text A Girl You Like Every Day?
5 Signs you might text your friends too often.
1. You are starting all the conversations
If you are the one to start each conversation, you might consider that you are texting too often. I know friends can be very passive, especially in our 20s or 30s when we easily get distracted with other things and don’t prioritize friendships as much as before. Many people will be glad to hear from their friends, but they don’t have the initiative to call or text them, this can happen. However, if you are always the first to text all the time and they just reply, you might be texting them too often.
2. How long it takes them to answer
If they always see your message, but it takes them a long time to answer, you might be bothering them.
Sometimes it happens to me to see a message but can’t answer because I’m busy, but usually, I answer them as soon as possible in those situations.
However, the situations when I don’t answer are when I know it is nothing important because that person texts me too often, or I need the circumstances to answer because it might become a long conversation. If your text doesn’t give your friends a hint that it might be a long conversation, but they don’t bother to answer anyway, you are probably texting them too often.
3. What are you talking about through text?
If the friends you text don’t talk about them or their life, and all they do is reply or keep a surface-level conversation, you might be bothering them with your texts.
Your friends are not your psychologist, it should be a two-way conversation with them, not you throwing your thoughts and problems at them via text.
So pay attention if the other person is invested in the discussion or just passively waiting for the discussion to end.
4. How they answer
You might be focusing on what you say and not focusing on how your friends answer your text, but if you always send a bigger text with more things to discuss and their answers are short, and without the will to continue the conversation, this might be a red flag for you.
It is not necessarily their fault if they don’t want to have a conversation through text. You might text them too often, or they simply don’t like discussing via text messages, it can happen.
5. They let you know that you are texting them too much
This is obvious, but I thought I would put it here, if they get to the point of letting you know that you are texting them too often, please don’t treat that message lightly and think that they might be in a bad mood or something. The fact that they got to that point means they have been bothered by your texts for a while.
You might destroy your friendship by insisting, so better take it as a lesson.
How to make sure you are not texting your friends too often?
They are your friends, you should be able to be open with them and have a conversation about this. Make sure you find a good moment to ask them if you are bothering them with your texts. Asking them in a text if you are bothering them is not a good idea, you should find a moment when you are having a real and honest discussion, not a short discussion via text. Also, they might say, “no, you are not bothering me” while rolling their eyes, but in a live discussion, you can see their body language to understand better if you are or are not bothering them.
Make sure it is a two-way street, if they never text you, it might be a sign that you should text them less often.
Pay attention to how they are with other people when it comes to texts. Do they just check the message and don’t answer, are they not checking it at all, are they bothered every time the phone rings, do they like to have real conversations via text or just send memes and funny stuff, and so on. This might give you a better idea about what they like and don’t like when it comes to a text conversation, and it might not be related to you as a person.
Read Also: Why Do Introverts Hate Phone Calls?
Conclusion
Texting friends too often can be a problem if you are not on the same page. I know people who are much funnier people through text than in reality, so they might spend a lot of time texting, but at the same time, there are people like me who hate texting, and I would rather have a call from time to time instead of constant texts.
So make sure you pay more attention to the friends you are texting and see how often they would like to text and how they answer your texts.
