Cell phone etiquette for couples
by Mira and Charles on March 11th, 2010Another in the series “I thought we were the only ones who…”
Brawls are breaking out all over love land as couples come to blows over cell phone etiquette. And then they come to us, bruised and angry. Take one couple recently. Both business people. She’s a compulsive Blackberry checker, even when they’re having a heart-to-heart. So there they are talking, and her eyes drift down to her cell, her fingers start flying, and he says, “Hey, we’re talking.” “Oh, I’m listening,” she says, and to prove it repeats the last thing he’s said. “But I don’t feel you’re here with me when you do that,” he says. “I’m sorry…but check this out,” and she reads a text she’s just gotten from her best friend. And he’s fuming because he feels ignored, and she’s fuming because she feels he’s trying to control her.
All relationship fights are battles between Evil and Crazy. She’s evil because she checks her messages when they’re talking. He’s crazy because he makes a big deal about it.
And so it goes.
This battle is a big deal. Just check out Farhad Manjoo’s recent article in Slate about it. Fights about this are breaking out all over the place.
So what’s really going on? And what can we do about it?
As always, the solution grows right out of a correct understanding of the real problem. The thing is that the debate here is between two forces everyone believes in.
One is focus. It’s what intimacy is all about. Two people lavishing their attention on each other. The world falls away, and it’s just you and me, baby. As the Flamingos put it (actually the song was written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin in 1934):
My love must be a kind of blind love
I can’t see anyone but you.
Are the stars out tonight?
I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright
I Only Have Eyes For You, Dear.
The moon may be high
but I can’t see a thing in the sky,
‘Cause I Only Have Eyes For You.
I don’t know if we’re in a garden,
or on a crowded avenue.
You are here
So am I
Maybe millions of people go by,
but they all disappear from view.
And I Only Have Eyes For You
Most of us want to get and give that kind of attention to people we care about.
But we also want something very different. Most of us recognize that our relationships are nourished by a thousand streams. Those intimate conversations that are interrupted by one text can also be enlivened by another text. It’s why we want to be friends with other couples, to bring other people into our lives. It’s why we want to be with people who lead interesting lives and are interested in a wide variety of things.
So we’re all pulled in two directions: toward the purity of one-on-one connection and also toward a widely plugged-in set of connections.
And sure, some of us want one more than the other. But most of us want both.
So the fights we have aren’t between two different kinds of creatures; they’re between very similar creatures who at certain points emphasize different things. And so since we’re not really all that far apart, solutions easily suggest themselves. All they require are a conversation and a commitment.
The conversation is all about what/when. What can we agree to do, and when? As Manjoo said in the Slate article, can we agree, for example, that if we are having a sit-down dinner just the two of us, no checking cell phones, but if we’re eating pizza together while we watch TV, then check away? Checking for messages OK when making dinner together, but not when making love?
I can’t tell anyone where to draw the line. (Although I gotta say, if you have no phone-free one-on-one time together, do you really have intimacy at all?) But you can figure out where to draw the line if you just begin from the premise that you’re similar people who want similar things and not let yourselves get polarized.
One other thing. Commitment. Don’t agree to anything you can’t carry through. NOTHING is worse for relationships than broken agreements. If you say, OK, I won’t check messages when you and I are having a conversation, then don’t. Ever.
This may seem like a silly little problem, but it has the potential to drive people very far apart, and it touches on the nature of intimacy itself. It’s a big deal. It’s important to get it right.
For more help working through this kind of issue, you definitely should use our book Our Love Is Too Good to Feel So Bad. If you’re afraid things have gotten completely unworkable, check out Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay. You might be surprised.
And if you’re really stuck, well, this is the kind of thing we help people with every day here at The Chestnut Hill Institute.
