Are you missing an opportunity to connect with your spouse by over-connecting to your phone? Not too long ago, I was talking with a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while and during our conversation he was actually playing cellphone Scrabble with another friend in a different city. I sarcastically told him, “Look, I am sorry for allowing our friendship to distract you from your game.”
But how many of us have experienced a scenario like this? How many of us have actually been the culprit? There are a lot of reasons we jump on our phones. I know I’ve used my phone for every single of these things we’re going to talk about. Here are 5 reasons we reach for your cell phones and marriage problems
There are so many factors that pull you toward your phone and away from the present. You might simply reply to texts real quick—just to get it off of your mind. You might look up something up you have a question about real quick. Or, maybe you’re just killing some time for a few minutes.Â
The cell phone and marriage problems start when we can’t learn to separate from them properly. Let’s look at five big reasons we check our cell phones. We need to know why we’re so connected if we ever want to disconnect.Â
Cell phones and marriage problems
#1 Breaking News
With today’s 24/7 news cycle, we constantly want to know right away what is going on and when. Whether it’s politics or sports, we can’t miss anything.
I have to catch myself, even if I’m not watching the baseball game, I’ll constantly check the score and work to never miss an inning.
How much news do you want—and how often?
#2 Attention
Sometimes, we want to be liked so much we can actually will keep checking to see if people like something we post online.
It’s so tempting to check our phones to find out if someone has mentioned our names or if someone’s liked one of our posts.
How often do you check social media?
#3 Entertainment
Most of us are addicted to the need to be stimulated and entertained. We may play games on our phone or use it to keep our minds engaged. I’ve heard from spouses who go to sleep at night playing a game or watching something on their cell phones.
The sad part is, we never stop! We’re constantly checking to see what game we can play or movie we can watch. We use our phones too much for so many things, I think it’s worth considering how much time we spend using our phones to entertain us.Â
How often do you all your phone to be your form of entertainment?
#4 The Boredom Buster
This one is sort of like number 3 on our list. If we have a minute of downtime we’re tempted to just jump on her phone. If we’re in the line at the store—what do we typically do—we check our phones.Â
We HAVE to know what’s going on in the lives of others. We’re overly curious about the (insert whatever news here!) so we check and see what’s new, what’s we’ve missed since we checked two minutes ago, or if some other news is “breaking.”Â
How often do you reach for your phone when you’re waiting for something?
#5 The Emotion Avoider
Life can be really hard and we all have seasons that come and go where something is difficult. From children’s struggles to aging parents’, sickness, financial hardship, relational struggles, we reach for our phones for an easy out. Often, we may simply be avoiding difficult emotions by checking our phones.
It’s vital, especially in marriage, for us to experience and deal with emotions rather than avoid them.
Are you avoiding certain emotional things—maybe a touch conversation you need to have with your spouse—by staring at your phone?Â
Each in each of these five areas, we hear couples all of the time—struggling with cell phones and marriage. It’s time we realize just how much we use our phones.
Grace Marriage Mission
As a couple, ask how you can help one another with using technology in a healthy way. What creative solutions can you implement for your family?
Brad Rhoads is co-founder of Grace Marriage.