Dear Amy: When the pandemic first hit, two of my college friends and I started a group text. It was a true lifeline.
About a year ago, however, the two friends started texting “Good morning!” every single day. That’s it: just “Good morning!”
My friends both live alone, so these check-ins may feel important to them, but I find them incredibly irritating.
I’m not sociable in the morning, and I’m not a fan of obligatory daily texts, especially as life has mostly returned to normal.
I haven’t responded to the “good morning” messages in at least six months, but they still arrive every day.
I’ve turned off notifications and only reply to actual conversations, but my friends haven’t seemed to notice.
Is there any way to extricate myself from the “Good mornings?”
I love my friends and want to communicate with them – even daily – but not in this forced, intrusive way.
I’m worried that if I share my feelings, they’ll stop texting me altogether.
– Cranky Before Noon
Dear Cranky: First, a word for tolerance.
You find these texts irritating, even though you have turned off your notifications.
So – simply knowing that this exchange is sitting silently in your phone bothers you. I’m not judging you (I get it!), but you must admit that this is the essence of sweating the small stuff.
Irritations can sometimes be mitigated by reframing them into humor, especially if you can use the irritation to laugh at yourself.
Buddhist thinker Pema Chodron provides a useful way to develop more tolerance – by “practicing” on the small things. You train yourself to tolerate smaller irritations (sitting in traffic, sitting on hold, minor mix-ups in your food order, pesky and perky “good mornings”). Through practice, you change your perspective and your behavior as you go.
It works!
If you are unable or unwilling to try this technique, you could text both of your friends: “You may notice that I don’t respond to your ‘Good morning’ messages. I have a confession to make: I’m a total crankypants before noon. Could we get two text threads going? One for you two to greet each other in the morning, and one to loop me in for our longer convos? I’m sorry to be such a grouch. I LOVE our connection – especially any day after noon.”
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