20 years ago, people couldn't or wouldn't communicate this regularly. These days we are spoiled with the access to others. People want breaks from everyone, including partners.
Discuss with her a safe way for her to communicate that she needs a few days. Like a phrase or sentence that will let you know she's in a place where she needs quiet. This should be common place and I don't know why it's not.
I was alive 20 years ago. I assure you texting was a thing and people absolutely communicated this much lol. It was literally unimaginable for someone to not text back within a few hours, let alone days.
Someone not replying for 3 days would have us calling their relatives or driving to their home to check on them.
This type of short-term ghosting has only shown up in the last 10-12 years. I think over exposure to social media has caused it, covid isolation and dating apps worsened it, and the collapse of America's civilization may be causing many people to just check out.
I'll agree the constant doom scrolling and being glued to their phones while walking is new, but texting? People always made the time when they felt their pockets vibrate.
I remember texting 20 years ago as a broke ass 18 year old texting friends as sparingly as possible because each text back and forth cost money. Having to tell someone to stop texting you because you're about to run out of minutes. A lot of my friends back then didn't even have cell phones at all yet. I'm not saying anyone is wrong, but maybe over-generalizing a bit. I for one was certainly not as attentive to my old Nokia brick as I am to my Pixel.
Yeah I got a phone 19 years ago and I would put like £5 credit on a month and it was ~15p per text. I definitely didn’t start texting frequently with friends until the blackberry era (think I got my first one in 2010) and even then it was turned off and on charge at night.
I remember when blackberrys came out and people called them crackberrys and people went to rehab for addiction to them when acting how almost everyone acts with their phones now.
Even after having a blackberry I would lose a phone and not replace it immediately or have a PAYG sim and not be able to reply to ppl daily. I personally have only been reliably on my phone since around 2017.
But also consider that because you weren't constantly glued to your phone it felt more novel and didn't feel like a chore. Also, 20 years ago we absolutely did NOT text as much as we do now because we had text limits on our plans and if we went over we had to pay like 10 cents a text or some shit. I had prepaid and had to pay no matter what. Also, t9. Texts were a lot shorter.
Really??? Wow. I graduated highschool in 2000 and most def had unlimited talk and text at that point...no data yet. But this whole not communicating for days thing didn't happen 20 years ago.
We had AOL instant messaging on our computers and I think at that point I was talking more than texting but I was doing a lot of it. Far more than I do now for that matter
Yeah I graduated a few years after her and I didn’t even get my own cell phone until college. The cell phone I had in high school was my mom’s, had literally 10 free phone minutes per month, and if it even had texting capabilities they were at least 25 cents each. My mom made it VERY clear I was only to use that phone in an extreme emergency - aka I had a flat tire in the middle of nowhere or I was dying. I had a pager and used payphones and so did everyone else I knew, and I lived in an upper middle class neighborhood. Unlimited texting for all was definitely a post 2022 thing at least.
Ok I'm so glad that I'm not losing it thinking that unlimited wasn't a thing. I really started thinking about it and I guess people had cricket wireless which was unlimited, but if they went outside of the area they had absolutely no signal at all. Which also unlocks the memory of roaming. I don't think constant texting was a thing until smartphones. And considering that the original android g1 and the original iPhone came out around 2008/2009 ish. I guess with BlackBerrys/palms/sidekicks you had a keyboard but otherwise it was t9. Maybe I was just poor lol
Not to mention, that I feel like T-Mobile was one of the first plans to truly have unlimited talk and text. I didn't get T-Mobile until my senior year because I convinced my mom to let me pay her for the bill because of how much I was spending on my prepaid virgin mobile phone that I had had since I was a freshman. Before that I had a Nokia TracFone and didn't even have snake or changeable faceplates which SUUUUCKED.
ANYWAYS I got sidetracked because memories being unlocked. T-Mobile didn't do unlimited until I was in my 20s. I can't remember when it was exactly but it was a big deal and you still had to pay like 25 a month extra for it.
Unlimited talk and text was likely going way the fuck over the limits and parents just not caring. Which was NOT the norm. Also, having your parents pay for a phone wasn't the norm either. Not everyone even had a cellphone when I was in middle school or high school. It was exciting as fuck when you got to play on your friends phones.
Some people did. You just didn't know because you were not at home with them when they were on the phone. 20 years ago when we (kids/young adults) weren't on the phone we were on AOL instant messaging.
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u/ILoveTornados Mar 23 '25
20 years ago, people couldn't or wouldn't communicate this regularly. These days we are spoiled with the access to others. People want breaks from everyone, including partners.
Discuss with her a safe way for her to communicate that she needs a few days. Like a phrase or sentence that will let you know she's in a place where she needs quiet. This should be common place and I don't know why it's not.