There’s this guy I know in the spanking community who is super-nice and friendly, but he does this thing that could sometimes come across as not so nice.

Recently he messaged me:

Buddy, [person] wants to talk to you.

Now, because I know this guy, I know he meant it in a friendly way, as if to say “hey, friend in the community, [person] mentioned to me that she wanted to ask you about something.” However, someone who doesn’t know this guy as well as I do might think he’s using a different connotation. Of course, when he says stuff like that in person you know how he means it because you can hear his tone of voice, but in text messages tone is often lost.

That’s why, sometimes, when I send Teams messages at work that might come across as sounding stiff or severe, I add a second message that says something to the effect of “hey, I know that sounded harsh, but I didn’t mean it that way, that’s just how I talk.” My team knows that by now, thankfully, so they tend to give me the benefit of the doubt. When people text me, though, I’d love to give them the same benefit. I just can’t always because of my anxiety. Every text message that comes to me, whether it’s via actual text, Telegram, Discord, Fetlife, or Teams immediately goes to the worst possible place in my head. It’s like, “what did I do wrong to upset this person and how can I fix it as efficiently and effectively as possible?”

Anxiety sucks, buddy.