The Podcast I Didn’t Need
A couple weeks ago, Christa texted me the name of a podcast someone had probably mentioned at book club. Just the title. No “you should listen to this,” no explanation, no urgency. It was less a message to me than a note to herself that happened to pass through my phone on the way to nowhere.
I swiped the notification away.
In a newer relationship, this might have counted as a minor offense. Not cheating, obviously, but maybe somewhere in the broad family of digital disloyalty. Because modern communication has made weird little gods out of things that should not matter. The unread text. The seen receipt. The reply that comes too fast and therefore feels perfunctory, or too slow and therefore feels loaded. A message can start to feel less like information and more like a loyalty test with no published grading scale.
Did you see this?
If you saw it, why didn’t you answer?
If you didn’t answer, are you annoyed? Distracted? Secretly becoming one of those people who says they’re “bad at texting” like it’s a blood type?
Early on, I think Christa and I did what most people do. We padded things. We clarified. We added little verbal bumpers so the other person wouldn’t misread the silence. “Texting to remember.” “No need to respond.” Tiny disclaimers. Little orange traffic cones around the message.
Now, after almost fifteen years, neither of us really needs that.
If Christa texts me the name of a podcast with no context, I know what happened. Someone mentioned it. She wanted to remember it. I was nearby, digitally speaking. That’s all. I do not need to reply in order to prove I am still a loving husband and not a cold and mysterious figure drifting out to sea.
And the funniest part is that it has now been a couple weeks, and I honestly don’t even remember whether I ever asked her about the podcast.
Maybe I did. Maybe it came up naturally while we were making dinner or talking after the girls went to bed. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe that podcast title is still down there somewhere in our text thread, buried under grocery notes, school things, reminders, photos, questions, answers, and all the other small pieces of a shared life.
I could ask her now, but that would just create one more tiny task. She’d have to scroll back and find it, and for what? I don’t even especially want the podcast. The podcast was never the point.
The point is that the message could go unread, then forgotten, and nothing would crack.
That’s one of the quieter forms of intimacy, I think. Not constant response, not perfect attentiveness, not treating every notification like it might contain a verdict on the relationship. Just knowing each other well enough that an unread text can remain what it actually is: not a referendum, not a grievance, not a test. Just a podcast name floating briefly through the air.
The podcast is gone. The trust stayed. Which, for a marriage, feels like the better system.
No one has time for that
She just sent it to me
I swiped it away
