“Anyway, I Love You, Text Me Please”

Abstract: This study develops an affordance framework of mediated support-seeking that integrates research on affordances, attachment, and mediated support-seeking to explore how adults use texting to seek support from romantic partners in hypothetical stressful scenarios. Through a survey, participants in romantic relationships reported their perceived values of affordance for support-seeking and then composed hypothetical text messages to seek support from their partners, in which support-seeking strategies were further coded. The findings indicate that attachment anxiety is positively associated with the perceived value of accessibility and the availability of social cues, while avoidant attachment is negatively correlated with these affordances in the context of support-seeking. Additionally, the perceived value of accessibility is positively associated with direct texting messages, whereas the perceived value of social cues correlates positively with both positive and negative politeness in messaging. These illuminate how support-seeking individuals work with the affordances of texting as they attempt to meet their needs.