Why is my ex reading my messages but not replying?
That's what we're going to be talking about in this video.
But first, my name is Clay with ModernLove.life, where we help you get the great loving relationship
that you're looking for without having to play mind games, without having to play hard
to get and without having to pretend to be someone or something that you are not.
Because you deserve to be loved for the unique, amazing and wonderful person that you are.
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Okay.
So let's go ahead and get into this.
If your ex is reading your messages but not replying, there are a couple things that could
be going on.
Let's go ahead and get to the most innocent first and then we'll go ahead and get to some
of the more intentional ones.
So, first of all, your ex may not be replying to you because of just things that happen
in their life.
They have absolutely nothing to do with you.
They may have forgotten their phone at home today.
They may have lost their phone.
They may be at a hospital taking care of a sick family member.
Something may have come up basically, they could be under a lot of stress and they just
don't have the capacity to really be interacting with you to potentially be taking in any more
emotion.
Right?
So that's definitely one reason why your ex may not be responding to you and that's why
you want to cut your ex a little bit of slack first.
If you notice something like that happening with them and with them not responding to
your messages.
Cut them a little bit of slack.
Give them a day or two.
If you still haven't heard back from them, then you might want to consider taking things
to the next level.
That's where we'll start to get into the possibility that your ex is not responding to your messages
because of some sort of intent.
Okay.
Now, there could be all sorts of different reasons behind this sort of intent for them
intentionally not responding to your messages.
First of all, they might just not know how to respond to you right now.
They might have received the message, they might have read the message, they might just
not know how they want to respond to it right now.
So, maybe they get the message, they think, "Okay, well, right now I'm just not in a good
place to respond because maybe I'm in the line at the store and I'm about to check out.
I'm about to talk to the clerk or something."
Or maybe they're just, maybe it's something that they want to give some thought to before
they respond.
So they put the message off to the side and they say, "Okay, I'm going to think about
this for a few hours and then, I'll give it a thoughtful response then.
Or maybe I need to check my schedule before I see if we can get together," or whatever
the case may be.
And so that is definitely something that could happen.
Now, unfortunately, when people sometimes do this, things can sometimes happen as a
result of that.
Number one, sometimes they forget to respond.
Sometimes something else comes up, right?
Sometimes there's an emergency or something like that that comes up that pulls their attention
away.
Another time people sometimes start typing something into their phone like they're going
to respond, and they think they sent it, but they didn't actually hit the button to send
it.
So, that can happen too.
It's happened before to me.
Other things that can happen are that they just start to feel guilty.
They wanted to respond after they had some time to think about it.
So they took a few hours, then a few hours became several hours.
Then maybe it becomes like a day or two and then they just start to feel guilty for not
responding to the message.
And so, what happens then is they start to say, "Okay, well, now I feel guilty.
So now I don't want to have to deal with this message, so I'm just going to delay it even
more until maybe I can feel less guilty."
But then more time passes and so they actually feel more guilty and so it just becomes this
vicious circle of feeling guilty and not responding.
Okay.
That can happen too.
In cases where this happens, what you want to do is you want to just sort of gently nudge
them, just sort of gently remind them of like, "Hey, no worries about not responding to that
previous message.
I totally get it.
It seems like you're busy right now.
Don't worry about responding to it."
Whatever.
Things like that can just sort of, number one, nudge them again to let them know that,
"Hey, I totally get that you didn't respond to that message.
Don't worry about it.
No sweat."
It can relieve the guilt, you can also nudge them again so that if they forgot to respond
to it or something came up, it reminds them, "Oh yeah, I need to respond to that message."
Whatever the case may be.
That's something that you may want to keep in mind.
You also want to keep in mind the nature of the message that you're sending as well too.
Sometimes people send messages that are just not very good for texting.
There are different mediums of communication, right?
We can text, we can email, we can talk on the phone, we can have conversations in person,
we can do all these other things.
And there are certain conversations that fit well inside of something like texting.
And there are certain conversations that are too big for texting.
That is to say that they're just larger than the container of texting.
It's like with measuring spoons, you have your one cup spoon, you have your half cup
spoon, you have your quarter cup spoon, you have your one tablespoon, all of that stuff
and you can't really fit a full cup conversation into a quarter cup measuring spoon.
You can't do it.
You need to know when you have reached the limit of the conversation that you're having
and you need to be able to transition to another medium of communication.
This is all stuff that we talk about in our series on texting your ex.
Make sure you check that out up there if you have missed that or if you want to learn more
about that.
So that is also something to keep in mind, is the nature of the message.
Definitely don't send something that's too intense, too emotional, something that is
well beyond the emotional capacity of that means of communication.
You also want to make sure that your message is something that is easy to respond to, right?
Something that's easy to respond to.
So you want to make it something that's sort of fun, lighthearted most likely.
You want to keep texting to only about either logistics or lighthearted subjects.
If the nature of the conversation grows beyond the container of texting, such as if you're
talking about deep emotions.
If you're talking about what the meaning of life is and all of that, you definitely want
to be moving into larger containers like phone calls or video conversations.
Okay?
So you want to definitely be mindful of this when it comes to your texting with your ex.
Now of course the final possibility for why your ex may be texting you, may be reading
your texts but not responding to your texts is because they are still hurt and not really
willing to move past that hurt, that upset, that frustration, that sadness, that whatever
that they might be feeling, because of some sort of misunderstanding, something that happened
before, during or after the relationship.
And that's a big problem that I see a lot of people make is that they'll try to just
normalize the interactions with their ex so that they can just sort of move forward as
if nothing happened.
And that is a big mistake because if your ex is still holding on to hurt, if your ex
is still holding on to pain, if your ex is still holding on to emotions from something
that happened between the two of you, then they are not going to be able to let go of
that and be able to have a conversation about anything else until you directly address that
situation.
So, it's very important that you directly address that situation with your ex by bringing
it up, by working it out, by talking it out, and by coming to some sort of understanding
and agreement so that they can actually let go of that emotion and start to actually have
the capacity to talk about much more meaningful and diverse topics than just being focused
on this pain that they're feeling focused on, this hurt that they're feeling.
So you need to definitely be able to address that.
And that's something that we definitely help people with in other videos.
So I'm not going to go into that here.
But you really want to be mindful of these sorts of things.
So the reason why your ex is reading your text messages but not responding to them.
It could be due to all sorts of things.
It could be due to things in their life that have absolutely nothing to do with you and
you don't need to take it personally.
If that's the case, you do not want to overreact and you do not want to accuse them of something
right out of the gate, like ignoring your text messages or something like that.
Cut them a little bit of slack first.
Beyond that, you also want to look at the nature of your text messages.
Are you trying to move beyond that container of what a text message can naturally hold?
Is it time to shift towards a phone call?
Is it time to shift towards a video call?
Is it time to shift towards meeting up in person?
If it is, then definitely do that.
Don't try to talk about your dreams in life, your fears, your insecurities and things like
that through text message.
Don't do it.
It's too much to cram into a tiny little quarter cup measuring cup here.
Okay.
So, definitely keep that in mind as well too.
And then also make sure that your communications in your text message are things that are easy
to respond to.
If it's hard to respond, then your ex is going to get into that delay loop that they can
sometimes end up starting to feel guilty about.
So, make sure that it's something that's easy to respond to.
If it's something like, "Hey, please explain your feelings about all of this."
Number one, that's probably at least a one cup conversation that we're trying to put
into a quarter cup medium here.
But it's also something that's difficult to respond to.
You expect somebody to pour their heart out to you in a text message?
That is just not realistic.
And then, of course, you also want to think about the emotional impact of the conversations
that you're having as well too.
Think about the emotions that your ex might be feeling.
Think about the emotions that need to be resolved between the two of you.
And by all means, feel free to work through those so that you can start to have better
communication, better conversations, and better interactions with your ex.
So that's what I'd recommend if your ex is reading your messages but not responding.
Once again, my name is Clay.
Thank you so much for watching.
If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up and feel free to subscribe to this
channel if you're new here.
If you'd like to learn more about texting your ex, please make sure to check out this
series we put together, or you might want to check out this video over here, but thanks
so much again, please make sure to like and subscribe and I'll talk to you next time.
Take care.