The Ex Text

When I hear the squeak of my ex-husband's voice on the phone, I am usually faced with either nausea or the sudden urge to hang up. There is a squeak. Something I hadn't noticed when I thought he was all that and bag of rice cakes.

I say this from distant memory, since we rarely speak. God bless the text message. Occasionally, if we have a whole lot to say, we might pen an email, but I don't hear his voice and don't see his face. The point, we don't fight much, if ever.

The most heated discussions we have had... you guessed it, text! This goes way back, beginning with the mistress texting me some mothering advice. Delete. And I was back to my movie of the week.

So... has texting, emailing, technology in general made it easier to survive a break up? Divorce? Custody arrangements?

There is so much emotion tied into all of these things. Someone yells, you yell back, maybe a plate gets thrown. But I rarely throw my phone. He also doesn't get to see my reaction, I can think, breathe, take a moment. Or I can do nothing. Sometimes nothing is just what a bad situation needs. Delete.

This goes both ways.

So am I emotionally stunted? Am I incapable of one on one exchange? Maybe. No. But this works and the other, has been failing people for years.

Bonus! When we do argue, via text, there is no yelling for our child to hear and maybe, just maybe, we cut out some of the useless insults, since lets face it, it's exhausting on the thumbs and you have a limit on characters! :)

What if we all had a limit on characters? 5000 a day? Think of the hot air we would save, the lectures we wouldn't sit through. Everyone would get to the point! Words would be valuable again!

When you play poker, the best players are void of emotion. Texting removes, for the most part, the emotion from conversation. We can smile and LOL, and exclamation point all day, but that 'in your face,' say-something-we'll-regret, aspect, is gone.

Video phones are out there. Web cams and skype are fairly easy to maneuver. No thanks!~