What Does It Mean When Someone Doesn’t Respond?

When it comes to an exchange or written conversation I really care about, there has always been one response that frustrated me more than any else: the ghosting and non-response. Someone not responding has always driven me crazy, especially when I get a notification that they read the message and still did not respond.

To me, I would rather be told no, be told off, or be cussed at rather than be served with no response. Sometimes, the person just needs some time to draft a long and thoughtful response. Sometimes, the person genuinely did not see the message or has not checked their phone. Sometimes, the person is ignoring you and does not want to text. Sometimes, the person just doesn’t like to text and would rather talk on the phone or send voice messages.

My wife is someone who can go a whole day without checking her phone, and sometimes it does make me worry about safety, but it ends up being alright at the end of the day because she’ll check her phone at the end of the day and let me know how her day went.

I’ve written a whole article about someone (I thought) who was a great friend who no-showed my wedding and hasn’t responded to any texts or messages from myself or our other friends. We don’t know if the friend is okay or alive, but she has simply disappeared from our lives.

Since a couple years ago, however, I have sometimes been that person who doesn’t respond. I have become significantly busier, which might seem like a cop-out to some people. There are times when someone sends me a thoughtful message and I say “wow, that was really meaningful. Let me get to it after I finish X or Y activity.” After being immersed in X or Y activity at work that seems to have escalating levels of urgency, I forget to respond. I feel really bad for not responding to a question, inquiry, or simple message if I realize I’ve let a day, let alone a week lapse without responding.

It feels rude, but that’s not the intention. There is no malice involved. There are no mind games. The vast majority of the time, it’s just being overwhelmed coupled with forgetfulness.

Of course, there are some unsavory messages and texts that I don’t deem worthy of responding to. In those cases, sometimes I recognize and my instincts recognize that the best thing you can say, sometimes, is nothing. There are a couple of times a year when I’m bothered enough by someone’s message that anything I say will only make the situation worse, so I say nothing at all. I realize the non-response is better than the response. But I will say that’s maybe twice or three times a year in response to very personal exchange, and the exception rather than the norm.

At work, there are plenty of e-mails I don’t respond to. It might take a lot of bandwidth I don’t have to respond to a particular e-mail. It’s not like I don’t care to respond, but I have a million other things to do that have a higher level of urgency. Sometimes, I use the Outlook function of an emoji so the person can know I received the e-mail and have a reaction to it.

Sometimes, I’m on an e-mail chain and cc’d on a correspondence that involves a lot of people. A lot of the time, I’m not the primary intended recipient of that e-mail and as such don’t see it as my place to give my input or respond. In my current capacity, I spam people’s inboxes enough as is for legal paperwork for special education, so I try to limit the amount of unnecessary correspondences I send so the important e-mails I do send are ignored less frequently. Sometimes, I just don’t know how to respond if I’m not the expert on a given situation or dilemma.

As the world changes, however, the art of interpreting the non-response has grown a bit more complicated.

There are tons of ways of interpreting the non-response. You can think the person is just really busy and not really keeping up with their messages or texts. You can think the person is really mad at you and giving you the silent treatment. You can think someone not responding actually says a lot more than anything they can respond with. Sometimes, the other person’s lack of response is just a delay: they might just need time to think about what you asked or what you said.

Your mind can absolutely go in circles. And I’m not here to tell you you’re wrong. I’ve sent hundreds of job applications in my life. I’ve gotten far more employers who didn’t respond at all rather than those who did respond and told me no. The ones who did say no rarely had a personalized response that gave very genuine feedback: they gave the same copy-and-pasted response about having a very high volume of highly qualified candidates and how they couldn’t take anyone.

It’s a very nice, very polite response, but it’s impersonal, canned, and generic to the point that you can tell the person probably took 10 seconds to look at your application and instantly thought you were not worthy. It’s not personal — that’s just how the world works, particularly for employers who do get a very high volume of applications.

I’ve also sent inquiries and e-mails to bosses only for them to not respond at all or respond days later. It’s very rare that they didn’t see the e-mail since a lot of their job entails responding to e-mails, but often, my bosses needed time to think about how to respond or just wanted to have the conversation in person rather than via email.

Of course, I instantly think the worst-case scenario and catastrophize. Does my boss think less of me for that request? Am I about to be fired? Does the employer who rejected me think so lowly of me that I’m blacklisted across the industry? Does the friend who didn’t respond suddenly not like me anymore and not want me as a friend?

Very rarely will my mind’s worst-case scenario be true. I know this on an intellectual level, but emotionally, the non-response within the timeframe I expect a response leads me to believe everything is going to fall apart. It’s not rational, but I’ve spoken to enough people who feel the same way to realize this is a very human phenomenon to catastrophize, particularly in this day and age of increasingly digital communications.

If you called someone and they didn’t answer, the explanation is simple. Maybe they were busy. Maybe they didn’t have their phone on them. Maybe their phone died. Maybe they’re driving. Maybe they were asleep and their phone was on airplane mode.

It might be a more personal explanation of the person not wanting to talk, but at the end of the day, these explanations of someone being busy or their phone being dead are significantly simpler than the sometimes complex and ambiguous reasons why someone might not reply to your text message or e-mail. Sometimes it is a genuinely simple reason for the person not seeing the message, but other times, it’s a lot easier for your mind to run in circles.

At the end of the day, we’re all human beings. We miss messages. It’s impossible to respond to everything. Sometimes, we don’t have the time or the bandwidth. Responding takes energy and time, and we will all miss correspondences from time to time too.

I have personally been a work in progress, but I have tried to stop catastrophizing any time someone does not respond to a text or e-mail I find incredibly urgent, and assume positive intent and the best. I’ve been working on just assuming the person is busy and has a lot going on, and especially in my line of work as a special education teacher, that is true more often than not.

In a more personal context, I have had friends who take days if not weeks to respond, if they respond to me at all. In the past, I’ve had petty thoughts and tendencies, like “if John is going to take a week to respond to my text, I’ll take a week to respond to his text.” But since middle school or high school, I’ve largely moved away from those tendencies and just respond when I can instead of playing the transactional tit-for-tat.

I used to think someone taking weeks or months to respond to a message meant they don’t value you, but I have largely realized that if someone makes an effort and takes the time, it’s more likely than not that they take weeks to respond to almost everyone.

One of my best friends is notoriously bad at this. He had a friend demand that he be more reliable with texting, responding, and being more reliable with being on time for gatherings and events. He had to set boundaries and tell the friend that this is just who he is and how he interacts with every person in his life, and timeliness and being on top of responding to things were simply not his strengths. It was never personal to him — he just never saw a lot of text messages, he wasn’t on top of charging his phone consistently, and he just didn’t have good track of time in general. He will be on the phone with you for an hour or send long, thoughtful voice messages, but he does have a reputation for being notoriously bad at responding to texts.

All of this is to say there are a million reasons someone doesn’t respond to you. And there are a million reasons we might not respond to others. Sometimes it is more personal, but more often than not, it is simply forgetfulness, being busy and overwhelmed, and more practical factors at hand.

It’s easier said than done, but instead of trying to read people’s minds, it’s better to just assume the best and try to move on.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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