bad at replying to me .
Hello people i was just wondering something
Why is my friend so bad at replying to my texts
like sometimes they reply straight away sometimes a few hours and sometimes a whole day
but then in real person my friend and i get along really well.
do you think i should ask them about why they take so long .
do you think they are just busy , or are they actually not friends with me .
Comments
Nice to hear from you, I don’t think we have spoken on here before.
I used to have very similar thoughts, I would think why can’t you just respond to me? Is it really that hard? Most people look at their phone way quicker than they respond to my messages. It annoyed me for a long time and I think it ended up being detrimental to my mental health because I got this idea in my head that I was annoying them or they thought I was a loser so ignored my messages etc.
As time went on though, I got really really busy. I started to understand it. I started to actually get that sometimes you read the message and you get so busy that it just sits there - i don’t do it intentially, I intend on replying later but I don’t. Sometimes that’s because I am really busy with work, family, but other times it’s because I just can’t, I just mentally can’t read the message and think of a response in a “reasonable” time frame, particularly if it’s a long message.
If your friends are anything like me and many others I know, then you shouldn’t have too much to worry about it. Sometimes people just struggle to juggle things and responding to texts is the last thing they have to do on their list. And sometimes it isn’t and they respond sooner. Both is ok. It might be worth checking in with them or a particular person you notice doesn’t respond much? They may have a lot going on and just asking if they are ok might be helpful for them and help you to understand that it may not a personal thing on you, it’s just life.
Really great response @Saltwaterdreamtime! I think what you wrote is really insightful and also a pretty accurate reflection of my experience too. I just came on to echo that there is nothing wrong in having this conversation with your friend. The most accurate way to understand why someone is not replying is to have a conversation about it. As saltwaterdreamtime said, they may have a lot going on. In my experience, this has been the case most of the time. People are often behaving due to their own personal situation and most of the time it has nothing to do with you 
