Texts have no tone, so your mood supplies one. Read it again when you’re calm.

A message arrives as flat words and your brain cannot leave them flat, so it supplies a voice out of whatever you were already feeling. Read it anxious and it sounds cold. Read it rested and fed and it sounds entirely normal. The sentence did not change in between; you were the one doing the acting.

Make a rule for yourself this week: nothing that stings gets a reply for twenty minutes. Reread it after food, a walk or a night’s sleep. Half the time the sting is gone, and the other half you can ask what they meant rather than firing back.