What to Do When Your Partner Is Always on Their Phone

Hey Greg.

Hey.

There was this moment in the kitchen the other night that I was thinking about.

Tell me more.

And I wonder if you even picked up on it.

Probably not.

I was on my phone and again, I am probably like doing something for work again.

Yes, it's always for work.

It's always for work. I think you were telling me something, probably like planning summer or something, and I nodded and was like, uh-huh, And I think I said, sorry, what's that? And you repeated it. And then I just, I just stayed on my phone and I don't even know if you clocked that that's what happened between you and I. I don't think so.

Do you even know what I was talking about?

I could not tell you.

Either could I. Is that a problem?

No, but it's really interesting though, because I feel like that moment has happened more times than I even want to admit. And I bet people listening can even relate to that moment of their partner saying something to them and them not catching it because they were on their phone.

Yeah, this hits for me because it's kind of like that feeling. I don't know, like, I hate to admit this, but like, if you've ever looked at your phone when driving for like a millisecond and then you almost look up and go, how did I get here? You ever had that feeling? I mean, it's not cool to admit, but like, I've done it, right? It's, it's kind of the same thing. Or like, even like, maybe you're driving on a road trip and you kind of like zone out for a second, you kind of come to and you're like, how did I get here?

It's that like autopilot mode. Yes. And It feels so uncomfortable. I just know it's something that's happening even more between us, and that's what I want us to talk about in today's podcast episode.

I feel like I'm in trouble.

You are not. Well, I'm kind of calling myself out here though, because I'm saying, look, I was on my phone, and I even remember— oh my word, it's like since 2018 when I started my Instagram Space— and I remember you afterwards saying to me, I didn't realize you were working. I just looked at you and you were always on your phone.

I still feel that way a little bit, truthfully, because there's no, there's no like sign that says I'm like doing something for work versus personal, right? Right. And same for the kids, right?

Like, I know, really had to work with them on this because it's—

we don't want to be hypocrites, right? Because like screen time is something we manage a little bit.

Then here's mom doing this, here's mom on her phone sitting in the aisle of the island in the kitchen, right? And then they come in and I have to say, oh, I'm doing work. But I think specifically what I want us to talk about today, we can Totally looping the kid conversation here as well, but this is about those missed bids for connection, and that really is what our phone is doing to us in our partnerships.

Like, it's hijacking.

It is hijacking at such a high rate. I've had clients say to me, I just can't wait to go on my phone.

They say this?

Yes. And there, there could be a problem. There's a truth behind it though. I mean, think about it, because there's no one overstimulating you. There's no one asking you for anything. You can choose It's in your hand and it's easy. And I think what's ending up happening more and more for people though is that we're turning to something that's so easy and we're turning away from each other. But because of something in our hand like that, then we're missing those bids for connection. And actually that podcast episode is one of the most downloaded episodes on the podcast, Bids for Connection.

Interesting. Yeah, I don't want to be a hypocrite. There are times where I just like, I really look forward to catching up on my, on my things.

I think that's normal.

I know, but it's like the frequency is more than I would care to admit.

I think the thing I specifically want us to talk about, though, is when you are holding your device and your partner walks into the room or your partner comes over and says to you, I was thinking about, or this just happened today. And it's, it's the you choosing to stay on your phone and to look at your phone. And it's like saying without actually— it's not said. It's actually this thing of of unspoken truth that whatever is in my phone is more interesting than the person beside me.

I mean, I want to say it's not, but it's like I'm hijacked to like, I know it's tricky.

So there's actually a term for this, and it's been something that is researched. It's been researched for a while. I don't even know if I remember sharing the article with you. I contributed to a piece circa 2017 or 2018 on the Huffington Post about phubbing.

So what?

Phubbing. P-H-U-B-B-I-N-G.

Okay, what's the— what's— where's the—

you're snubbing with your phone. Oh, I snub you, but I'm phubbing with a phone. But I'm choosing to give you the cold shoulder and be in my phone, which completely breaks connection.

Interesting. I wouldn't think of it that way. Maybe it's like— okay, I feel you're gonna explain. Was that defensive?

No, I think it's a really interesting experience though, because what's happening is this is something that creates such very little friction. It's in your hand, you can grab it, it's not a big gesture. You don't have to go and flop in front of the TV and get the remote and turn it on. I mean, I don't even know where our TV remote is.

Little friction, no friction, zero.

It's just right there.

The barrier to entry is zero, actually negative. It's so— anything in the world is at your fingertips in so many words.

Sure. I mean, even if you think about when you're at a group gathering and someone says, oh, remember that movie with so-and-so? Oh, I can't remember the name. And then you go and you pick up your phone And the worst is when I pick up my phone wanting to do X and then I'm doing A, B, C, D. And the worst is I'm 10 minutes later, it's like, what did I get my phone for? I can't even remember. And I don't complete what I— so there's, there's just this experience that's happening in our interpersonal relationships. It's not just in romantic relationships, it's also in our friendships.

Totally.

It's with families. When you're having family time together, it's just showing up where we're constantly with this device on us.

I mean, go to a restaurant for 5 minutes. I mean, it's—

and we can see it, right?

But I think you want to stick to the romantic because this— I mean, we've talked about the phones and social before. You can go any which way.

But well, I think the thing with this too, though, is that it's not like there's this big issue in front of us. It's almost something silent because we both do it. But the silence within that is actually what creates the problem.

For sure.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

It's that we're not fighting about sex or finances. There's not this like thing in front of us. It's just silent. We're sitting on the couch side by side, or we're sitting in bed side by side on the phone.

It's almost worse than just getting in a fight, right? At least if you're in a fight, you're communicating. This is like so like subversive and just like—

right, when you say the hard thing and then you have a reaction and then I have a reaction, and like you, you're lighting each other up in some way, right? But the phones just completely numb our nervous systems. So here's something though that if I could be the counterargument to the dude who says it's nothing, please, is it's almost like these moments of micro-ostracism where I am moment to moment leaving you out of my world. I'm actually consuming more in this other world that doesn't have you inside of it.

Totally.

And that then again creates this distance between the two of us. And it's also really interesting because there's some studies that show that even having the phone out face up on the table between you and your partner, you actually feel less close to your partner because the phone is face up.

It's like this vortex that you're both like being drawn into, right?

What's the work email? What's the message coming in? Who else is out there? As it pops up, ping ping on your phone, right?

Yeah. And now, and now it's not just the phone getting it on your watch, you're getting it in your earbuds, you're getting it in the car.

Like, that's been a new addition for me actually since you grabbed me my watch and I've connected. I, I've loved the data. It has really helped me monitor my heart rate to work out.

It's been interesting to watch you.

Oh, tell me more. Yeah, tell me.

I don't like it.

I'm sorry.

All of a sudden you're walking, you stop and you touch your watch. It's interesting. My watch has it. I will not turn it on.

My—

I'm not trying to be holier than thou.

It's interesting because my phone has the lowest amount of notifications it really could. So my social media does not give me any notices, none, even though it's work. No social media notices. I get emails only from one account, not from the work account. And then many of my group chats— I'm so sorry, friends, but many of my group chats are silenced. I'm sorry. So really, the texts that come in are like you, maybe one or two other friends, my mom.

It sounds like a whole lot of justification, Dr. Tracy Dalgleish.

But you're right, because as we're talking about this, I'm thinking of just how much more more I'm getting pinged over to my watch. You know, it is this really small way of you being out of it.

Yeah.

And not inside of what's happening for me.

Going back to what you're saying though, not just the watch though, because you're— you're— we're in our own little silos, in our own little worlds, and we're just doing our own thing beside our partner. But I think, I think the challenges— and I fully cop to this— is like, I just don't share what I'm doing. I'm not doing anything malicious. I'm looking at golf swings and dirt bike and, right, you know, looking for something on Marketplace or whatever, but I don't talk to you about it necessarily. And you're doing the same thing on, you know, someone got married on the weekend. I don't know who it was, you know, all this stuff.

And like, oh, you know who it was. We all know who it was.

I think it's fake.

It's all fake. How can you say that?

They were already married. This is just performative.

Yes, I know. But says the guy who's like, I'd like to know how they decide How to not invite the 1001st person?

That's a very good question.

And how did they get all that catering in? And how do they get— you had great questions. The logistics are very important. Anyways, so then our silos though, right? We get stuck in our own worlds. And I know actually I've asked you this, I've said, what are you looking at? And you'll say, oh, nothing.

Yeah, because I'm like just wanting to go back in my own world. It's like, don't bother me.

Am I bothering you? No. You want solo time. So I think this is also really interesting though, because if you want solo time, why not then just say to your partner, hey, I'd love to hang out by myself. And if you go and hang out by yourself, if you go sit at a park bench and I can't see you, you can do whatever you want. You can read a book, you could skip up and down, that's fine. I hope you come back and share with me how your solo time was. But it is interesting that we do it side by side.

Yeah, it's worse for sure.

And then also too, the whole idea of having your own time, your autonomy, is so that you can fill yourself up and then come back and fill me up, but then we're doing so much of it side by side. A lot of the couples that I work with, or even just the individual clients who talk about their relationships, I have these images in my head of people watching TV. And this is how many of my clients describe it. They watch TV and then they're both on their phone scrolling. And the thing everybody says is, we chose a show together, but we're not even watching it together. So it's not even a shared moment anymore.

It's not a shared experience.

I have a question for you.

Go ahead.

If you could go back now knowing all that you know, so phubbing, that we actually feel less close when the phone is face up.

Yeah.

And we haven't even talked about the pocket habit, how you walk around the house with it and the number of times you enter a room and pick it up. So the pocket habit, it's terrible. So I want you to just picture for a moment, go back 15, 16, 17 years now, and you first got the device that you brought into our bedroom. Greg won an iPad at work.

Yeah.

And that was a pretty sweet win. I was a poor grad student at that point, so that was a pretty sweet win.

Yeah.

Knowing what you know now, what do you wish you could do differently?

It doesn't come in the bedroom because it's just a slippery slope. I just think—

I think if I sound like an addict, but the addiction to our phones is real though, Greg. So let's just label that in the sense of— I think we need to recognize that is that your brain is not special. It works the way other brains do. Okay, I mean, like, I'm going to like take out the caveat of our neurodivergent versus neurotypical brains, right? But brains operate on dopamine reward systems. We are reward-driven. You pick up the phone, you have a laughter, it's rewarding. You have a hard feeling, you pick up your phone, you don't have to feel the feeling anymore. Like, it's just— it's inevitable. And so then what happens is we get these short-acting dopamine hits for sure. And no brain is immune to that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to answer your question, I think, you know, not consuming it in the bedroom would be a really big one. Like, it's technology, it's everywhere. You're going to, you're going to consume it. But like, I think that would have been— if you're asking me to go back, I think that would have been a good thing to start with.

Would you change the bedroom phone now? I know this is something we've tried to work on many times.

Yeah. Yeah. I think we, air quotes, try here and there. I think there's always opportunity for that.

It's hard. And it's so tricky too, because I like to read books on Kindle, which is on my phone. And then we know that if you have access to your phone, it's easy to switch back and forth between apps. That's why our attention span has decreased. It's super tricky. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know what to think about it because like in a way I'm like anti-phone, but like I'm also kind of a realist. Like, like what can be done that's in within kind of the realm of consistent and repeatable.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and sometimes those things don't quite match up.

How so? Can you explain that a bit more? Like you want consistent and repeatable, like Atomic Habits comes to mind.

Yeah. But so like going straight to like no phones in the bedroom after 7 o'clock might be too big a lift given kind of our pattern. And I think probably for a lot of people listening, that is one of those things that sounds really easy to do, but harder to do it over a trajectory of time. Can you get a week in? Sure. Can you do it, go for months? Much harder, I suspect.

I'm thinking of how last week I talked about— oh no, sorry, next week I'm talking about the mental load on the podcast. And so then when I think about the thousands of tasks going through my mind and I'm trying to get some of those done, sometimes I'm doing them in bed.

Yeah. I mean, so I think my answer would be is like, is there a ritual that we can do or a listener can do that kind of blends the two? So maybe it's the first 20 minutes in bed. Maybe it's not all, you know what I mean? Maybe it's, it's just a, a clear connection ritual before bed that provides that time and space without the devices, but gives a little bit more of a latitude to, you know, if one of your partner goes to bed earlier than the other. Like, it's not, it's not all or nothing. Like, we talk to the kids about that. It's kind of, kind of the same thing. So I'm kind of trying to thread the needle, I think, into what's kind of positive, proactive, but also realistic.

So I have 3 recommendations for people.

Oh.

And I'm gonna loop them back into what is really underneath the fubbing. And what's really underneath the fubbing is the loss of the bid for connection.

For sure.

The loss of actually turning towards your partner and paying attention to them and turning towards them with kindness, right? Instead of maybe a sharpness or lack of understanding, or even just turning away from them in general. So I think the first one, and you're already alluding to this, is it's not really about creating a phone ban, but instead it's about prioritizing some kind of ritual first. I think a lot of us kind of get our backs up when we start saying to our partners like, you can't go on your phone at this time. And I think the reframe to that is more about how do we create this ritual of us together. That's exactly what you're getting at, which is why I wanted to take over there. Sorry.

No, it's good.

Okay.

So it's realistic. Like, I do— like, if you're the phone police out of the gate, that shit's going to fail.

So this idea then, and it's also to incentivize it as connection-focused, fun, play, focusing on you and I. So is it the no phones at dinnertime? That can be one of them.

That's a good one.

We do that regularly and consistently.

It's much easier.

And I think we're really good at that one. It could also be a no phones between 5 to 7. So that you are focusing in connection, right? That's the ritual. Our connection time is 5 to 7 every single night. And also too, over time, people will learn, I can't reach you between 5 to 7. Or the other one, and it'll get easier, which is something that I really like between you and I, is the morning. This morning with the, the nice sun, we sat outside and we chatted for over 20 minutes. That's not every morning, but at least having 10 minutes as a ritual to connect with each other before you even open your phone. I love that because then you're filling up your brain with each other and the connection, and even making eye contact for sure before you put in the outside world of your brain. That email that came in in the night, the news thing you hadn't yet read, the social media influencer post of the thing that you think you need to buy. Like, you know, like that, that infiltrates. Okay, so that's the first thing. The other thing then, when I think about what we're really trying to do here is we're trying to get to the bits. Is intentionally every single day catch one bid.

Just one.

That's it. And to really slow down and see your partner. Is it when they get home and you look at their face and actually really look to see how's, how's their face today? What's on their face? Or is it in the morning if they pass you the coffee? Something. Or the text that maybe you would probably just say, okay, thanks to maybe KK. KK, slow it down. I think that one is really important. And, and gosh, just to really have eye contact when we do that. Look at your partner, observe their face, take it in. Okay, and then the last one that I think can be so important is to ask for the need in this come close to me way by saying something like, can I have 10 minutes? And it's just a really big redirection. And actually, you and I have both been practicing it because we have been on our computers or our phones doing work lately. We've had extra tasks that we've been trying to navigate and problems to solve lately. And it's been really good because then my brain hears you asking for my attention, and I can put the phone away, close the computer, and give you that full attention.

And how do we do that? That's I need instead of you are.

You're on your phone again. When am I ever supposed to talk to you?

I need 10 minutes to figure this out. Can we figure this out together?

I always— I think I'm sure my clients laugh at me, but I always do the role play. Hey, love. Could I have 10 minutes? Is it now or is it in an hour? Yeah, yeah, actually I think, I think I had someone laughing once in session where I was like, um, well, what if you said to them, hey lovey, and then the other person was like, yes, please do that, make me laugh. Anyway, that's so that, that those are my 3 things that I thought could be addressing the underlying fubbing piece.

Amazing. So what can you recommend for people to do kind of when they're getting fubbed though, like their partner. Maybe it keeps happening a lot and repeatedly. So what do you do?

You can send them this podcast episode as a place to start, but you can also—

shameless plug.

I'm supposed to get better at advertising, Greg. I'm not very good at marketing myself. Yeah, you know, you go to your partner and you talk about the needs within yourself, the need of I really miss our connection. And I've, you know, just—

I've noticed that kind of thing.

I've started to understand that having your attention is really important. Not in a way where you don't get to go and do what you need to do, but I would love for us to carve out something that's just for us.

Yeah.

And, and redirect that. But also too, I know people will say like, well, I tried and they didn't follow through. So you be the one to do it. You show up at the table and you say, I will meet you at the breakfast table with coffee. And I hope you'll join me.

Yeah.

And, you know, I hope then that someone can hear you and see you there. Ultimately, you can't control someone else, but someone who wants to be in this relationship with you, they'll meet you there. How would you want someone to say it to you?

Yeah, I think the I need, not like the avoid the you language is really key. I think the other thing that's tricky with this one specifically, like this is a behavior to varying degrees that both of you probably do, right? So you don't want to be like a hypocrite about it. But you also want to like— so I think it's— there's a tricky dynamic because it'd be really easy for your partner to probably throw it back in your face because you've both got a library of scenarios where you've done it.

Yeah. And in my least finest moments with you, I have said the reason I'm on my phone so much is because you were the one who was on your phone. Right.

It doesn't work though, I'm telling you.

Yes, thank you for letting me know that my passive aggressiveness doesn't work. And I know that it comes— I'm not justifying it, it from this place of loneliness, of wanting to feel close and connected. And then anger is in there, but it is the 'come and be close to me.' Okay, so let me think of what I want to leave people with today. So first, I think if you're listening and you're nodding along and feeling like, okay, this fubbing thing is between us and we are not responding to our bids for connection, our 30 Days of Us is actually one of the best things that that you could snag today. Start at your own time today, and you will get an email with one exercise every single day. You saw me build this. It came from my pillars of what makes a healthy, solid relationship, and I love the exercises in it. So super powerful, to the point, that simple, and you can feel closer at the end of that. So we've got the link there in the show notes for that one.

You've described it as like a pattern interrupter, which is perfect for this because This problem, we are just all in this pattern, right? This tool can really help for that.

And that's the thing too, is that we as couples, we get on to the mundane and the day in and day out. And so we want to interrupt that, and inevitably it is our phones that's in there. So I think that's one piece. I want you to then also start recognizing when the phone is in the room and see if you can just put it somewhere else, give it a bit of space and distance. You can turn it over, turn it That's one thing. I even don't even like it on the table anymore. I don't like it in that vicinity.

Put yourself for someone, it's a problem, they're just starting, right? Like, let's get some quick wins in there, right?

Okay, let's end with a reflection question for you. So if your partner turned to you at some point today, if there was a joke, a touch, indication of sharing something, did you notice it? Did you turn toward them, or did you turn away? And what would have actually happened if you had turned toward them?

Or conversely, did you even notice it?

Did you even know as you think back? Right. All right, thanks for having this fubbing conversation with me.

You're fucking welcome. Fubbing— who came up with this shit? It's good, I guess.

Uh, you know, I think the most important thing in our relationships is we're not trying to go for perfect, right? We are so imperfect, and it's just about how do we come back to each other, finding it once a day. Yeah, and that's going to look different for everybody. So, phubbing.

I don't think it needs the name, the pop culture name for clickbait, but the problem is real.

Yes, the problem is real, and it's researched, and it's there. All right, thanks for clicking play. We will see you next time. I have to remind you at the end of every podcast episode that this is for educational purposes only, does not substitute for the care from a licensed I'm a mental healthcare provider. Okay, see you next time.