It's Not You; It's Them: Why People Take So Long to Return a Text

The defining feature of conversation is the expectation of a response. It would just be a monologue without one. In person, or on the phone, those responses come astoundingly quickly: After one person has spoken, the other replies in an average of just 200 milliseconds.

In recent decades, written communication has caught up—or at least come as close as it’s likely to get to mimicking the speed of regular conversation (until they implant thought-to-text microchips in our brains). It takes more than 200 milliseconds to compose a text, but it’s not called “instant” messaging for nothing: There is an understanding that any message you send can be replied to more or less immediately.

Sometimes, I think we were all better off before we were quite so connected.

Sure, the Internet is revolutionary and it’s lovely having all of the information the world can give right at my fingertips – but I also know when somebody has seen my message, and how many hours they’ve spent online since I sent it. Which isn’t ideal.

This kind of expectancy that many of us are guilty of putting on our loved ones is only natural, though, when the information is right there for the taking. Last online, time they received the message, time they read the message, the Instagram stories they’ve posted since...

The list goes on.

However, according to one psychologist, the last thing you should do when somebody isn’t replying to your texts quickly is take it personally.

Why do some people take so long to reply to texts

Of course, we know realistically that people are just sometimes very busy and don’t have time to be yapping with us but, practicalities aside, there is some psychology that could be behind us being left on read.

Psychologist Dr. Christian Jarrett said, “You might fear that you’re being ignored, but another possibility is that the other person is struggling to find the right way to answer.

“People with perfectionist tendencies, in particular, can find it difficult to respond – they want their reply to be just right, to be sufficiently witty, polite, supportive or entertaining (depending on the context). Far from not liking you, it could be that it’s the pressure they’re putting on themselves to respond in the right way that leads them to delay.”

Jarrett also pointed out that sometimes, people compose a text in their minds and think that they’ve sent it when they haven’t, which I definitely know I’m guilty of.