I know exactly what I’m doing when I read a message and don’t reply. I know what you go through too—don’t worry, I’ve been there.

That little notification pops up, “Read at 4:03 p.m.” and by 4:20 you’re scraping every reason together to figure out why I haven’t replied. “Shoot, did he really not like the fact that mango is my favorite flavor of frozen yogurt? Did I come off too strong?”

No, you didn’t, and mango is a great flavor, but the fact that you’ve had enough frozen yogurt to have a preference isn’t going to warrant an immediate reply. I’ve got business to take care of. And so do you, and I’d rather you continue conquering the world than strive to write a thoughtful response to my “just got out of work! Gonna hit the gym!” text. I get it, even I am not that interesting sometimes. Sometimes.

But God forbid the other person finds out we’re not too busy, that we’re not wading through a pile of textbooks, work uniforms and un-bathed dogs trying to get to our phones to reply to them. No, we’d rather turn off our read receipts just so that the other person has a sliver of hope that we haven’t opened our phones yet, that the ringer was off or the vibration was too soft or the professor’s lecture on the French and Indian War was too enthralling to look away.

I have my read receipts on and I take full advantage.

I cannot explain to you the pleasure of getting a huge chunk of text from my ex, explaining in detail how awful of a person I still am and hitting her with one of these: “Read at 12:14 a.m.” By two in the morning I can hear her cursing at me through the phone. Call me a jerk, but I didn’t create this mentality, it’s all of us hiding behind “Delivered,” while scrolling through Instagram or rechecking Snapchat, leaving that person on the other end shamelessly hopeful you really are taking a nap.

Let’s flip sides for a second. You’re waiting for that reply from that cutie you met last week and it comes an hour later with no explanation other than information solely about the last text.

“No way! I love country too lol!” Well, sir, you better have been meeting Brad Paisley himself, otherwise you were working at two keystrokes a second.

But imagine if he did have “Read Receipts” on and you saw that he really read that message a minute after you sent it, you could quietly move on with your life and find someone who really does love country just as much as you do, someone who will take the time to pull his phone out once out of the 110 times per day (real statistic) to text you back.

Mike Vazquez may be reached at [email protected].