The Reconciliation

A couple of days after Mike left, and after much contemplation, I sent him the first Snap. It was a Snap of my smiling face — a smile meant to convey the sincerity of my caption:

Now, I clearly could’ve texted him this message instead, but there’s something about Snapchat that seemed appropriate for this situation. First, I assumed that him seeing my face would help get the message across. It wasn’t just a quick, half-assed Snap. It took a few tries. I had to get the face and the smile just right.

Second, it’d have a lifespan. A 10-second lifespan, max. I’d be less offended if he didn’t reply. Maybe he’d see it while he was in the middle of doing something else, and simply wouldn’t have time to Snap back. That’d be understandable. A text, though — that would linger. If he didn’t reply to a text, I’d keep checking my phone all day, bringing up the conversation, looking at my words, wondering if I should’ve said more, or less, or used an emoji.

And if he did Snap back, well, that’d be a bonus. Snapchat, I decided, was lower risk — with a potentially higher return on investment — than the simple old-fashioned text.

And in this case, it paid off.

Mike replied, almost immediately, with two Snaps.

One:

Two:

Both were selfies featuring an authentic smile that — I know from experience — is difficult to elicit from him via Snap.

The next day, I sent Mike a Snap in the morning — still in bed, lying on my pillow. I tried to look super sexy, and wrote:

(A response to my complaint that we don’t snuggle anymore. Not since we started putting up walls.)

Mike Snapped back a selfie. He was also still in bed, his head on a pillow, with his eyes closed:

If he didn’t care, he would’ve ignored my Snap. But he Snapped back. He wanted me to laugh. He was playing the game, too.

The next night, I received a Snap from him. It was a video of him sitting in the passenger seat of a car, simply looking at me while a song played in the background — one of our sex songs. The caption:

(A response to my claim that I’m only an afterthought to him.)

Those were some feelings coming through right there. Maybe feelings intertwined with him thinking about sex, but that’s fine. That was his equivalent to my previous apology. That’s something that wouldn’t have had any of the same meaning via text. The song was key.

We continued to Snap back and forth throughout the week he was away. It was odd, really, because we’d practically never Snapped before. We’d usually just text, and occasionally Snap random things to each other — but never anything substantial. Never anything that conveyed feelings. This week was different though.

Another night, I got a Snap from Mike late, maybe 12:30 AM. It was a picture: his face, with a sort of half smile.

I Snapped back:

He replied:

I sent him a Snap of my tits the next morning. Just because.

The day before he was due to come home, I received a text from him — the first one all week:

I’ll be home tomorrow. You should come over and spend the night and then come to Dan’s with me on Sunday.

Spend the night? Hang out with his friends? This was a far, far cry from our state of affairs before he’d left. I can’t even remember the last time he’d asked me to sleep over, let alone spend time together outside of the bedroom. That was the way things used to be back when things were still cool between us.

Something had changed, for the better apparently, and I blame it all on Snapchat.

Mike’s been back home a week now, and we continue to communicate largely via Snap. Right now, these are the little icons next to his name:

So How Did Snapchat Fix Everything?

I’m still a little unclear how Mike and I resolved our differences through a week of Snapchatting.

But we did.

My hypothesis is that there are a few things going on:

1. Snapchat is humanizing. Seeing someone’s face along with the message they send somehow makes it more intimate. It’s not a message in a little text bubble completely disconnected from the sender. There’s a face there, and that’s hard to ignore.
2. Impermanence is beautiful. You can send a Snap because you are feeling a particular way in a particular place in time and space. It captures feelings that may be fleeting, that may be too scary to send by text where the recipient will have it seemingly forever. You feel a feeling, they see it, maybe they feel a feeling too, and then it’s all gone. No harm, no foul.
3. Snapchat is fun. Aside from conveying feelings, let’s face it, Snapchat is mostly used to send random bullshit that’s usually hilarious. You can also mark it up and add emoji and whatnot and easily send someone a 10-second-or-less Snap of fun to brighten their day. It’s fun to be the recipient of such randomness, and it’s even more fun to be the sender of joy.
4. Snapchat is sexy. Duh. See reference to tits Snap above. You can surprise someone in a different state with 5-seconds of your boobs and they will smile and then go on with their day as usual. Again, low-risk, high-reward.

I’d like to round out this list with a number 5, but I’ve got nothing.

Maybe the lightheartedness of Snapchat helped clear out some of the tension that had unleashed itself upon me and Mike. Maybe it was the human factor.

Maybe it’s the fact that Snapchat allowed us both to say “I’m sorry” without ever needing to speak those words or sending a sad little text. It allowed us both to say “I miss you” without saying it or writing it.

It allowed us to say, “I know I hurt you in the past, and you hurt me too, but let’s both be adults about it and just move on and start making each other laugh again. And, oh yeah, it’d be real nice if we kept fucking and maybe even snuggling, too.”

Who knew Snapchat could do all that? 💯

* Names have been changed, of course, to protect the innocent.
** Because I don’t have the forethought, time, or crazy factor required to screenshot every Snap in real time.