Hey. I hope you’re alright. I wrote a response to another thread, but I couldn’t post on it. I hope it’s alright if I post my response here. I hope it helps!

Good relationships have availability, responsiveness, and engagement. Why? The bottom of it all is whether someone will be there for us, whether someone will hold us.

You’d think that this means that someone needs to respond immediately to our text messages, but that is not necessarily true. Different people have different sensitivities. For example, some people have more sore spots than others.

What are sore spots? They are painful memories or thoughts of being rejected. They are wounds that we carry with us. Sometimes, when we are close to someone, our wounds are touched, and that can hurt. When our sore spots are activated, some people start demanding in all sorts of ways, yelling or being passive-aggressive. Others withdraw, staying quiet or sulking. Ideally, we can slowly heal our wounds by letting our partners see them and take care of them. This is very vulnerable, and it requires care.

When our wounds heal, we can re-calibrate our emotions. We no longer feel fear of rejection. We no longer demand or withdraw. We can hold each other tightly. We can feel very securely attached to our partner. We can spend a whole day without messaging and we still feel connected. Heck, our partner could go on a business trip, not message us, and we’d still feel safe.

Of course, wounds can sometimes open up again. We are vulnerable creatures. And that’s alright. As long as we know how to heal wounds, we are ultimately safe.

So, to answer your question your question, I’d say most healthy relationships don’t really leave partners on “read”. However, different people have different sensitivities, and what ultimately matters is whether we feel securely attached with our partners.

If you’re curious about this way of thinking and the research behind it, check out Sue Johnson’s Hold me tight.