Don’t have the big talk over text. Wait until you can do it face to face. Some messages need a voice.

Text strips out everything that makes a hard conversation survivable: tone, pauses, and a face showing that you are not an enemy. What lands on the other end is bare words, read in whatever mood that person happens to be in, with no way to repair a wrong turn as it happens. The medium makes the same message heavier and more permanent than you meant.

If something important needs saying, send only the request to talk and hold the content back. Choose a time when neither of you is on the way somewhere. Say the difficult part out loud, where you can hear how it lands.