Don't Let Your Phone Ruin Your Relationship: How to Set Technology Boundaries in Your Relationship

Have you ever felt annoyed talking to someone who half-nods to you and keeps scrolling through their smartphone?

If that person is your partner, the pain is all the more. And when that happens often, you start to feel ignored and unappreciated.

As much as smartphones help us stay connected with our loved ones, they're also playing a key role in making us ignore those right next to us. 

Smartphones are a huge invasion of our time — and when it steals the ‘us’ time from your relationship, then it takes an ugly turn. And this is what researchers have dubbed as ‘phubbing.’

What Is Phubbing?

Phubbing is expanded as ‘phone snubbing.’ It’s a lot more than just checking your emails or social media when you’re bored. It’s more about snubbing your partner — literally ignoring them — as you keep checking your phone to the point that it starts to ruin your relationships.

Phubbing develops into a compulsive habit that soon develops into real problems in a relationship. Many couples have started visiting counselors and therapists to deal with their phubbing issues.

In research by Baylor University conducted among US adults, 22.6% said this phubbing caused conflict in their relationships and 36.6% said that they started feeling depressed at least some of the time. The research also states that when the couples’ time is interrupted by phubbing, it’s less likely ‘that the other individual is satisfied in the overall relationship.’

Phubbing leads to dissatisfied relationships and can even make the partner feel jealous of their phone’s time. So how can you manage phubbing and not let it consume your relationship? 

Here are 4 ways to do that.

Photo by ROMAN ODINTSOV from Pexels

4 Ways to Not Let Your Phone Ruin Your Relationship

1. Create a Phone-Free Space

For those people who are compelled to look at their phones even when there’s no necessity, then the best way to handle that is to keep the phone aside in another room — far-off from the reach of our eyes.

Keep your phones in silent mode or switch off both phones and keep it away. Create a distraction-free space where you can sit down and talk to your partner. 

2. Create Phone-Free Times

To initially curb the phone addiction and still make time for the partners, you can set specific times when you both won't use the smartphones.

You can have a phone-free meal time, jogging time, exercising time, or traveling time. Every couple needs to spend at least a few valuable moments in the company of each other without any distractions every day — even when they are too busy.

And when you want to steal such quick moments together, you need those times to be utterly free of smartphone disturbances. You can set a specific time every day when you’ll put your phones away and sit down to have a meal or do any other activity.

3. Look at Your Partner Rather Than Phone

The first thing we do in the morning can set the tone of the day. When we have the habit of looking at our smartphones instead of waking our partners, it adds fuel to the fire.

So when you wake up in the morning, fight the instinct to immediately check your phones and instead turn to your partner. Wake them up, talk to them about their morning, have a cup of drink in the bed together before both pick up their phones and start their day.

Such a healthy morning routine away from the phones would reinforce your relationship and bring you naturally closer to each other.

4. Involve Your Partner in Your Phone Time

In the age of technology, there’s no way around using your phones. And when we’re around our partners all the time, there’ll definitely be situations when you need to use the phone a lot.

During such times, involve your partner too. If you’re browsing social media or reading such an interesting piece, then have them sit with you and share it with your partner. Too much phubbing can actually make the partner feel doubtful about the relationship.

When you aren’t secretive about what you do on the phones, it’ll take some tension off your relationship.

So involve your partners or talk to them casually about what you’re doing. As you open up about smartphone usage and make them a part of it, you’ll remove the doubt and solve at least some of the issues. You can even work on our Digital Couple Goal Workbook together and make it a part of your screen time.

Create Healthy Technological Boundaries

Phubbing can indeed be a tough cycle to break. But for any of these preventive measures to work, both partners need to be equally invested in the process. Both need to make conscious efforts to put their phones away and not let them dwell on their minds when they’re having a conversation or being intimate with their partner.

In the beginning, it can be hard to fight the impulse to check the phone and some may even end up thinking about it even when they aren’t using it.

But if we genuinely want to save our relationship and not let a gadget come between you both, we need to be strong in our hearts to sacrifice some time away from smartphones. And as we slowly develop this habit, we’ll soon forget all about the phones and be involved in our conversations with our partners.