The Bare-Minimum Myth

When does a “quick text back” morph from courtesy into handcuffs? In this unfiltered round-table, Malcolm Traverse and the M3 crew probe the slippery world of bare minimums—those unspoken yardsticks that can make or break our sense of care. From birthday-gift price tags to the dread of a left-on-read bubble, we ask why modern love so often feels like an endless terms-and-conditions screen.

Inside the Episode

• Generation Ping: How constant connectivity rewired our expectations of instant replies—and why older and younger daters clash over it.
• Unspoken ≠ Universal: Why assuming everyone shares your “obvious” basics sets the stage for resentment.
• Neurodivergence & Mind-Reading Myths: What happens when partners literally process social cues differently.
• Sacrifice vs. Boundaries: The fine line between healthy compromise and soul-sucking people-pleasing.
• Friendship Contracts: Texting etiquette, “hey stranger” faux pas, and the three F’s (feeding, financing, or… well, you know).
• The Bare-Minimum Checklist:  blunt questions to ask early—before silence starts shouting neglect.

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Rate, share, and tag us; your voice widens the circle. Until next time—speak your bare minimums before they turn into maximum headaches.

Transcript

  📍  Hello, and welcome to the M three Bear Cast. My name is Malcolm Traverse. Male Media Mind is a grassroots organization dedicated to uplifting and unifying our community through dialogue, insight, creativity, and knowledge. And on the M three Bear cast, I break down topics that I cover on my live streams that are held at youtube.com/male medium ii.

And those conversations are usually around mental health. Spirituality, relationships, communication, and in this episode I'm talking about bare minimums in relationships. In this video, I talk about some of the miscommunication, bare minimums, specifically dealing with text messaging and talking about the different generations of people who grew up with cell phones in their pockets and social media feeds. The expectation that when someone messages you, you'll get an instant reply. But I believe that the idea of bare minimums extends to a great deal of other things. And in some ways, bare minimums are this very insidious expectation that we have of, of other people. That some people feel as if you cannot express them explicitly without breaking some sort of.

Third wall or breaking some sort of rule of basic humanity. For the instance, having to tell someone the type of gift that you want to receive for your birthday, that might fall under a bare minimum or a certain, certain expectation that, you know, the types of things that I want to receive for my birthday, or maybe sometimes an unspoken expectation of.

The price of the gift that you would send or receive. Um, some cultures might have thought it too much to buy super expensive gifts for relatives or coworkers while in others. The higher the price, the more you care about that person. And so if you can't meet a certain bare minimum threshold of the expense of that gift, it may come off as though you don't really care about them.

But if you don't ever express the expectations that you have around certain things, like the gifts you receive, how can you expect to receive the things that you want? And I get into this conversation with

Greg Devon and Swag on our live stream that was held on.

And I played a video from TikTok, a creator who makes a lot of content around philosophy, but also just a brown culture. And he speaks about an article that he read about this sort of unspoken expectation of how much someone should communicate with someone else. And in this specific example, he was citing someone who was in a long distance relationship.

And they went dark for a few hours because they were at a party and they got wrapped up in the excitement of the party and didn't text their partner, and the partner felt left out because he had this expectation that he would be, you know, queued in on all the important aspects of their life. Even the ones where maybe communication would've been going out of their way.

Another way you can think of expectations is just the, um, the care that's given, the unspoken rules that mean that you care about somebody. It can be difficult to actually say those things out loud because once you do, it's no longer unspoken. Unspoken rules. Sometimes grant a greater deal of cache. Idea that I didn't even have to tell you that you already knew.

You know, obviously, once you tell them, it's no longer an unspoken expectation, and maybe there's something to be given up. You lose something by having to ask for what you want, but at the same time, you're also getting what you want. Um, and just because it loses this mystic, mythical, unspoken ness.

Doesn't mean that you aren't as satisfied, or maybe you are a little less satisfied, but at least you're guaranteeing that you're getting the thing that you want. And I think there's also this other idea that has been creeping in the back of my mind, especially when it comes to some of the content creators that I follow on social media who happened to be neurodivergent.

And they do not necessarily have the same thought processes and they have a much more difficult time reading the minds of other people simply because their minds are just not wired the same way. Obviously there's a huge spectrum of, of different types of neurodivergence, but I highly sympathize with these people because sometimes I feel like maybe I might be neurodivergent, but I don't ever think I would test myself.

I don't think that I am. I. I feel sometimes alienated from the thought processes of other people. And so I, I highly sympathize with the idea that for those of me, those of us like me who are neurotypical, but just maybe a little bit aloof, feel left out of these unspoken expectations about the ways that other people should be treated.

Um, it, it behooves me to actually go and ask people. What it is you want, how it is you wanna be treated. How often do you expect to be contacted? How much is too much? How little is too little? Um, it may seem goofy at the time. It really does feel goofy a lot of times, but at the end of the day, I think it helps people feel loved and heard and seen.

And so it's worth the awkwardness. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation I had with Swag, Greg and Devon. I believe John joins in towards the end of the conversation, uh, but isn't really a part of the main thrust of the conversation. You can catch us all on youtube.com/mail MediaMind two every Wednesday at 7:00 PM Eastern.

Alright, here's our conversation.



  

 . This one is a conversation about bare minimums in relationships, and they're talking specifically about texting and communication. I am so guilty. Of this one and I have some questions that I'm gonna post. Why? What's that? But you have a reason why. I do.

I do, but at the end of the day, other people are not really interested in your reasons why. Oh, for the most part. Okay. We're talking about that. Yeah. Because sometimes we're talking about bare minimums. If someone can't meet your bare minimums, it doesn't really matter why they can't. No. But in your case, there, there's a good reason why.

So there is. I'm just saying. But if someone needs a certain amount of attention or reciprocation to feel wanted and cared about. Understanding doesn't change the fact that they feel wrong. You might be that motherfucker. Go ahead. I know, that's what I'm saying. So here we go. I'm reminded of an essay I came across called The Epidemic of Constant Communication.

The gist is this girl is at a party D and she's having a good time. And so eventually she goes home and she calls her long distance boyfriend and tells her how much she missed him, and he suggests that she did not in fact miss him because she did not text him once the whole evening. And she responds that well.

She was carried away by the conversation. She was meeting new people, she was having a great time. She completely forgot that she had a phone, but still in his mind, he felt as though she could have at least texted him once. He viewed her silence as neglect and she could not see the relationship between the two.

This could be one of those stories where we take sides. We could say that the boyfriend is being too needy or he's being too clingy, or we could say that she is being unappreciative of this man. If you truly care for someone, he would think of them over the course of a couple of hours to send them a simple text.

So we could take sides or we could. Not because this to me is not really a story of blame. It's a story of bare minimums. The bare minimum is the least amount of love, care, and attention that you need to function, but it's also the most important. So it's the least, but it's also the most important in many ways.

And I was struck by the way this was framed in the essay. He saw the silence as neglect. She could not see the connection between the two. This is a difference in bare minimums. I think one of the reasons bare minimums are so complicated is because they seem so basic. It's easy for us to think that everybody shares the same bare minimum.

A good morning text or a goodnight text, or making dinner every so often. Some of these things form into the bare minimum category. These things exist in that weird, awkward realm where it feels as though you don't need to communicate them with your partner, because everyone should know that these are just bare minimum things.

But yet as the internet has shown us as a generation on this app, the bare minimum is not universal at all and definitely needs to be communicated. This is an important question that we should probably start asking more bluntly when we meet people that we want to build something with. What is your bare minimum?

And this is an important question and an important consideration in friendships as well, especially when it comes to the ever more controversial concept of texting. I want to tread very lightly here because that is true. Friendships. Most relationships really are contractual in a way. There are things that are expected from your friends.

There are things that might be a bit too much to ask of your friends. It is important to keep in mind the almost legalistic boundaries that exist in any relationship. Because if it feels exhausting to respond to your friends, if it feels as though whenever a friend texts you, you take it as them encroaching on your privacy or you take it as them crossing a boundary, or you take it as them feeling as though they're entitled to your time, that feels wrong somehow.

It is a friendship after all. As much as protecting one's boundaries is important, a question must be asked, what is the role of sacrifice in this framework? What is the role of sacrifice and friendships? What is the role of sacrifice in a world where we use a lot of language that is legalistic? Because let's say that you are the kind of person who gets very anxious in responding to texts, and let's say that your best friend is the kind of person that gets really anxious when they are left on read.

What happens in this situation, somebody has to sacrifice something in order to reduce the amount of anxiety that exists between the two of you. In a better world, if you both understood your boundaries, if you both understood your bare minimums, you'd be able to sacrifice more thoughtfully. So maybe person one in that scenario responds a bit faster every now and then, and person two doesn't text as often as they might like to.

Knowing that it causes person one, anxieties a part of morality involves something like sacrifice, but yet still there is so much anxiety, so much stress floating around out there. But I think our salvation is out there as well, and we can probably reach it together. It truly is ironic and very much a tragedy that the thing that just might save us, which is communication, is the thing that creates so much of the stress and anxiety within us.

Boy, that is it. Light is more that song waiting to be written, not. Isn't it ironic you think So? I got some questions that I posed from here. Basically things that we consider bare minimums, and I think he makes a really good point about the fact that bare minimums or something that we expect other people to know, but at the same time it's I don't know, things are changing, especially with technology.

I think there are certain bare minimums of like values that you should expect someone to care about, other people in certain ways. But like we, we do approach communication differently. We approach, the way that we take care of each other differently. And I think it's reasonable to have a conversation about what boundaries you have.

Like what, where does it feel like you're being neglected? But you also, the right, you can't really change that, please. But you are correct. But please know that you, if you are out, you have the right to personhood. You know what I mean? You have the right to autonomy. If now I speak to everybody on the panel almost once day.

Almost once daily. But if I don't think you're ignoring me. I don't think you are. Except

Tallah says I'll not be ignored. That's the only person that you know and so you have to give your animals no more attention. Seriously speaking. But it's I think that is a problem with speaking of animals. You're just, but I, it's the thing about it I think the technology, as I surround myself with cameras and and laptops and doodads and hickey booms I think it has created that stress.

Yeah. I need to respond right now. I gotta do this right now. And I think that why so many people suffer from anxiety and they suffer from, because I gotta do it right now. Yeah. No. Yeah. And I, and I set the expectation with my employees. Listen, if you text me, I promise you my, I, my automatic text goes out.

I will get back to you within an hour. If it's an emergency, please call. Yeah. Because the whole thing is this and so we were talking about before we went into the video about your situation. I that you're illegal and I will text you a book. I do because I don't, that's not how I think of my friend of 20 years.

And you think that would be the first thing In my mind? No. No. He's probably one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. And if I have something to say, I'm busy, I'm gonna text him and I'm like he can't see none of that. He, so then I to just call. So I think if you, I think what I'm trying to say is just set it and swag Yeah.

Jump in for me. Set the expectation. If I normally get a text, Hey Boo Shane or something, that's what you should expect. You know what I mean? I said there should be a red flag if you're dead. You know what I mean? If I don't hear from you A couple. Yeah.

Think I have a question. So what's up? You out at the the bad bird bar, furry, whatever, wherever y'all go. And whatever y'all do,

Okayy, sucky Bucky, whatever y'all. I don't know what, what are saying. I.

I don't know why y'all are sitting on here. Like he go on Mondays. I think he's in them streets, Malcolm. But anyway, thanks to my myself. Oh my God. So my question, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The views expressed on this program are not necessarily those of the three in this affiliates. Okay.

Greg, go ahead. They're mine and I love them. They're mine. I own them. When you meet somebody, when you go, when you meet somebody, Hey Mr. Taylor, when you meet somebody like, hey and in what's, what is your preferred mode? You know what I mean? Hey, I'm a texter. I'm not a texter, I'm a phone caller.

Bad signals. You can most catch me. I, a dude told me one night when I first moved to letter. Yeah, just send me a message on Instagram. What nigga, what you gimme your phone number for? Yeah. I'm not gonna pay attention. So you set the expectation, I think you set the expectation. And you say, okay and then so what becomes the problem?

If they go outside of the expectation but, or if you don't set the expectation. I try not. I, me personally I. I, I don't care how you communicate whether it's through text or phone call or don't, or video chat. Now my boundaries are don't video chat me out the blue. 'cause I will look at you like you're crazy African brother.

You hear what he said? African brothers? Do you hear? I do not video. Chat me out the blue. Especially if you're a stranger. That's how you get blocked. But do not video chat message because I may be doing something, and I i've told people that I'm in, I'm doing something. Can we video chat?

No. I am dealing with something, but I prefer video chatting. Sir, I can't help you right now. I'm doing something, but we can because they wanna pull their meat out, that's all. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, Greg. But no, I don't care. But my thing is choose one, don't I can't stand when people have your number.

Or they have your social media, but when they jump on a different app, I'm like, why do y'all have, why do y'all hit people up on different apps? I will never underst on this. But why you gonna, yeah. I hate like they'll send you, they'll send you a hey on Facebook, but then text you later. On your phone.

Hey, how was your day? You asked me this earlier on Facebook. It's the same. And I asked, I answered you that. My answer not gonna change because the platform has changed. It's not just a bare minimum thing. It's the actual dialogue and the effort people take to communicate. If you ask me how was work at five 30, don't ask me at six 30, how was your day?

It's the same fucking same. It's the same answer. Same question. No, listen, y'all, listen. Curmudgeons, something could have changed in your day, yeah. I understand. Yeah. I, you right. But like really think about it. But also my thing is too, if you got something to say I think people will ask what you doing five times in the row just to get conversation going or they'll do the same thing over and over again. I'm like, if you got something to say that's on your mind, say it, Malcolm. That does bring up a very good. I need motherfuckers to take a casual conversation course. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make one up and then I'm gonna teach it. Yeah. You have got to become better with conversational starter people.

And it, it's a generational thing. You can tell how old somebody is with a sup or if you think you d

Yeah. Hey, percent degrees. You're not gonna to do that to me. This is true. Yeah. I I try my best to, ask leading questions to people, but then it does feel like I'm being intrusive to them, like being really personal. You do have that DA spirit, you do have that district attorney spirit.

Yeah. One of the things I do actually like that I need to know spirit. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. I ask about people's interests, like what, 'cause the truth is they, a lot of times people just will not want to answer. A deep question right out of the way, but I'm just like, you can't say I didn't ask.

So it's what are, what is important to you? I don't, nothing's important to me. I don't find anything. Nothing. And that there's a red flag in this stuff. Nothing in the whole wide world, homie. Nothing just out here gang banging and popping at you, just doing. Yeah. That is appropriate.

But I was gonna ask, I guess anyone on the panel, have you ever had that misalignment of bare minimums, whether it be communication or otherwise, like where somebody had a unspoken expectation of your behavior that you were not meeting, oh yeah. Oh yeah. And most of the time it was me. They was like or you had the expectation?

No, they had it of me and Oh, okay. Okay, but I called you yesterday. We just met but, and I called you yesterday, right? You didn't, and lemme get, it's the same thing with I, I text you yesterday. We just talked yesterday, right? I just met you the day before that. That was yesterday. Today's today. Or you'll get or you'll get, Hey, stranger acting like negro. We talked two days ago. What you mean stranger? Two days? When you said that one, when you said that one. Now the one that I hate is you're having a conversation with somebody and then all of a sudden they just go silent on you.

And then six months later, Hey stranger, what's up? Hadn't heard from you in a while. Yeah, because the last time I texted you, you ain't saying shit back.

You text back. I text you, you text back. If I text you. And you don't respond. And I text you again and you don't respond. I figure you done and I'm not gonna say anything more. Exactly. Don't that come up to me six months later talking about I never did hear from you, bitch, I texted you last. Look at me.

Look, I had to screenshot somebody our conversation to to prove my point. Yes, I have the receipts negro here, right here on the screen. I send, and then, and then you know what they say? Oh, I forgot to hit sin bitch. Bye. That does happen sometimes. Bitch 20

since 2023.

I have been on unread since thousand 15. And then you wanna come back up talking about, Hey stranger, oh God, four kids the age of five, you not carry yours

married and got folk new one. And then I ask what's new with you? What's been going on? I

Lemme give you some 52-year-old wisdom. Lemme tell you what happened. You didn't win the lottery prize, okay? So they, they made a choice of somebody else, okay? Oh yeah. I know. You talking didn't work out, right? It didn't work out. So now you boo. Gang bang for the last 12 months, right? Dang, bang. Railed. Absolutely railed.

It just ran gang bang and prostituted sold into black slavery. I don't know what the fuck, oh my god. Into black slavery. Then one alone. And then they hold his, he from all the railing. Mr. Taylor. Then they'd be like I would like to date now, after later went out there right after they did, went out there and sold they royal oats or done got they wall disintegrated. Now they wanna come back a date. Then they done went to home and bought new. At Home Depot or Yeah, they had to get them rebuilt. You know what I mean? Yeah. Respect. She was nice.

He paid for the, he paid for the food. He was respectful, so I'm gonna go on, I'm gonna put on my church hat. They come to you, like the church lady. God bless you. Yeah. How you doing? How you doing? How you being, if you don't get the fuck I'm getting? Who this? Get out in my face or, yeah.

You be like, who? This, you know who, this one time I answered the phone, I was like, hello? Hey, Greg, remember me? Hold on for a minute. Hey babe, can you bring me some mustard?

Nobody know me, right? Nobody. Oh, you busy? Yeah, baby. I tell you, I'm busy. Who? This? And who? Oh. I paid for your food and you didn't return my car. Oh, I, all

you. Go ahead now. Oh. Even though you set the expectation, life happens. You know what I mean? Yeah. But to answer your question, to clarify, you one should set the expectation. Yeah. One should set the expectation and to be clear. So in your case, Malcolm. Please let, listen, I am psych challenged, so I may not honestly see your goddamn text message.

Yeah. Because I'll forget bitch. I'd be like, type in a book, be like, Hey, we need to do this. And you'd be like, something else that comes up. Now I'd listen to a lot of audio content. Okay. And I don't like to get messages while I'm listening, so I put my but you do have do not disturb one because I get, I put on do not disturb and then I about that.

I get that do not disturb, bitch. I'm not. Just, or just understand that people have things that they go, that they are doing. Like you can't always just stop everything you doing to respond to text. So I will respond. It won't be, five weeks from now, but I will respond when I get a chance and just be patient.

I think that's fair. Exactly. This is a, for me, that's the bare minimum. That's the bare minimum. It's like I will respond, but don't expect a response like within five seconds. I think a lot of people make a lot of assumptions based on. Very little information. They do like when you, they're not busy.

You're not busy. No bitch.

So what? I'm not busy, like maybe I don't wanna talk to you right now. Don't. Like you, I know you're, when you're dealing with, you're dealing with you reading the book, but I don't, honestly, I don't take it. I don't take it seriously because God, I dunno what you do. Especially, we just met, I particularly don't know what your job entails.

You be a ass wrangler, you might be the nigga that you might be a fluffer for porn films. Your mouth might be fluff. You might be in the back room getting the strippers ready. Getting them, you might be in the back getting,

oh. But, but my thing too is like when a person says they'll come hang out with you or they'll come see you, and then they don't show up. No call, no show. This is like a job. No call, no show. You get, I may get you an olive branch and be like, okay, I understand life happens, but you need to communicate.

But no, you don't call back that day or that within some hours and say yeah. Hey, my car broke down. Even shit, like my bestie called and needed to see me, all humans, or I was tired. I'm going, I went to sleep, and I woke up I noodles and went back to sleep.

That is feasible. That is humanly possible and feasible because nigga, I have done it. If you've worked a job where you work 10 hours a day, six days a week, and you trying to date on the slide and you sit down and when you sit down, you go out. Truth people, yeah. You don't have much control over that, you're conscious at one moment and then you wake up five hours later, you're like, oh, shit. Yeah. But your duty is to call homie. That's true. And so I did that. I was living in New York and my New York experience was for years. I lived in New York. I worked in New York and DC I worked in both places and I got home Wednesday nights from dc and I'm trying to go to the club and get me a date, right?

One Wednesday. I told, I said, I would, we'll have dinner my little Jewish friend. We'll have dinner after I get off the train. But it's better if you just go ahead and meet me in Times Square while I'm down there. Oh no. Go home and kick your shoes off. Now. This is gonna be a problem.

Uck shoes off my motherfucking feet. I'm, it's over. I'm in the house. Yeah, so dude, I call I woke up the next morning, I dunno, four or five, and I texted him like at seven. I was like, yo, I'm so sorry. I fell asleep. Oh man, are, oh my God, man. Just, you got the awful, almost I'm sorry.

Just like he was just lying. Like my father said, you need to see a therapist, you red flag. I'm telling you.

I'm about to say, look, we need a sound for red flags or something buzz working for now, but we need to, where's that? Where's that buzzer?

That's definitely pull the list back up. Let's pull some other things up. Yeah. There were questions that I, because I've seen a couple number seven is troubling. Number seven, have you ever felt guilty for needing more communication than someone else wanted to give? How did you navigate that feeling?

Never.

Never felt guilty.

You know what I mean? I've learned I won't say it's necessarily on them, but it's just your communication styles are just incompatible. Correct. It's not their fault and it's not your fault. It's like some people do need that constant stroking of the ego and the constant, like replying every five seconds and some people like, yeah.

If I run, five hours, that'll be all right. Yeah. I, yeah. I feel you on that though. You're right that you shouldn't have to feel guilty about that. What? What is this, John? Come on Ben. Let me span your hand. Oh my God. I'm sorry. I was a no call, no show. I fell asleep after work. I love you man.

Mr. Taylor. I think I should let, you should let your partner know what your bare minimum, what your bare minimums are without demanding it from them personally. I don't require people to take me back right away. People do have lies and they do take nerves. I get it. A friend of mine, a friend of mine got angry and I pick up the phone.

He left me a nasty message and I called him and told him he ain't, we ain't fucking, what the fuck? Oh, the hand that feeds me. The hand that rocks the cradle. Just thank you Mr. We not in a relationship with what is your problem, right? What is your problem? Yeah, dude. And even if we were, what is the problem?

If they not providing one of the three Fs, they get bare minimal attention. And we do know what the three Fs are, right? Feeding fucking finance. Correct. Finance. If you're not feeding me, fucking me or financing me, why you? So why you so worried? Why you gotta about business?





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