If you’re the first lady, then having an argument with the US president via text message (or “fexting”, as Jill Biden called it) might keep marital disputes private from the Secret Service, but relationship experts have warned it could make things worse.
Biden revealed earlier this week how she and her husband, Joe, discreetly carry on arguments via text message in the White House, but according to relationship experts, arguing by text has become a problem commonly raised in couple’s counselling in recent years.
Counsellors and psychologists said text arguments could compound communication problems between couples because messages could be misconstrued without the sensory cues provided by facial expression, body language and intonation.
Josh Smith, an Oxford-based couples and families counsellor with Relate, said: “When you get a message, you don’t hear the quivering in their voice, the hurt. You might just see the anger.”
He added that texts also risked “memorialising” rows, with phone and chat app messages often being brought up during therapy as a documentary record of troubled relationships. “The ability for people to go back and look over them can be tricky in terms of people healing and moving on because it’s something you can return to, fester over, or be upset by again.”
Biden raised the issue in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, albeit more humorously. The first lady said her husband had joked that a rude remark she made during a recent text spat would “go down in history” because presidential communications are preserved for the historical record. “I won’t tell you what I called him that time,” she told the magazine.
Smith said the Bidens’ desire for discretion was a common reason for other couples to argue via text, although this was usually to hide conflicts from their children rather than the Secret Service.
The behavioural psychologist Jo Hemmings said some couples, who have teenage children with whom they largely converse by text, sometimes slipped into arguing with each other in the same way. “It seeps into how they start communicating with other people as well,” she added.
Anjula Mutanda, a senior accredited practitioner with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, said that in the past five years she had seen parents successfully handling disputes with their teenage children via text.
“I found that sometimes what parents have been doing is texting their teenager upstairs to say, is everything OK?” she said. “Sometimes for teenagers who are in the middle of emotional and psychological turmoil, it’s easier to text their parents to say ‘I’m OK’ or ‘I’m not OK.’”
Mutanda, who is also the president of Relate, added that text disputes could provide a way to de-escalate conflicts, as people may take more care in expressing their thoughts while composing messages than during a face-to-face row.
“It can be useful because the person writing has to stop and think about what they’re trying to say. And it gives you a moment to get out of emotional intensity into a much calmer headspace.”
Experts agreed that text arguments most often occurred between couples where one partner avoided, or feared, face-to-face confrontation, and when other forms of communication had broken down and they no longer genuinely listened to one another.
Hemmings, who is also a dating coach, said these exchanges were generally initiated by the less secure partner in a relationship, usually a woman in a heterosexual couple, who was afraid of conflict or submissive.
“It’s perhaps not cowardly but it’s avoidance,” she added. “It’s a cloak to hide behind, so you’re not seeing anybody physically get angry or upset or distressed. It doesn’t tend to have a particularly good resolution.”
