Dear Prudence,
I have an extremely bad habit I’ve been trying to resolve: I’m terrible at texting people back. I leave friends on read, and if more than four or five days have passed, I can’t seem to convince my brain to go back to it. Too much time has passed in my mind and I’m embarrassed. This has been a problem for me for a while, but I can’t stop thinking about a guy I ghosted at the start of 2023. We had been friends for a few years, and in his last conversation, he implied wanting to be a bit more, and then I ghosted him for a year! I feel awful, and this is behavior I keep repeating. It’s cost me friendships in the past, but I just can’t seem to stop this mental block. Are there any tricks to retraining my mind to stop abandoning conversations? And what can I say to properly apologize to the people I’ve done this to?
—A Ghost