Cell phone etiquette for couples revisited
by Mira and Charles on March 19th, 2010Another “I thought we were the only ones who…”
A couple of blogs ago we talked here about the need for couples to stop blaming and labeling and just work out an agreement they can keep for when whipping out the old cell phone is OK (say, when you’re sitting around reading the Sunday Times) and when it isn’t OK (say, right after making love).
Well, folks, we need to work on this a little more. It’s a big deal. It’s at the heart of what makes relationships stay alive and what keeps them worthwhile.
That original article in Slate that started the discussion was really a request for reader input on this issue. Well, guess what? A lot of people had opinions but there was no real guidance for couples. In the follow-up article, the author landed on a guideline he called the bathroom principle: if you’re in a situation where you would excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, excuse yourself to use the cell phone. If you wouldn’t feel you needed to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom (you’re sitting around with a bunch of buddies watching the game), you just get up and go.
Kind of makes sense. In real life, would probably kind of work, mostly.
But in marriage? Marriage is both more casual (you’re lying in bed talking and it’s perfectly fine for one of you to carry on the conversation while walking into the bathroom and taking a leak) and much more rigorous (some conversations you just don’t break off for anything without many apologies).
Where I think I may have been a bit misleading was in making it seem as though wherever a couple draws the line when it comes to cell phone behavior is OK as long as you keep to the agreement.
Well, it’s not all OK. Yes, there’s a lot of latitude for variation, but marriage is about intimacy and caring. It is a place, the place, where it is safe to get close. That means, you do get close, and when you do so, you are caring. Do that, and you have a marriage. Don’t do that, and your marriage is a fake and it is doomed.
And you can’t get close when you’re only partially paying attention to each other because you’re busy checking your messages and responding to texts.
Which brings up a tough issue. Intimacy (not sex, closeness) is one of the most important areas where incompatibility is a real problem. Two people cannot have a good or happy marriage unless they can get close, and that can’t happen unless they can agree on what it means to get close.
Now here’s what we say about this in the classic Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: “If you and your partner cannot agree about what intimacy is for the two of you and how to get it, and if holding on to your positions is more important to you than bridging your differences, then most people in your situation end up not being happy they stayed in the relationship and end up happy they left. Quick take: If getting close drives you apart, you can never get close.”
So if you can’t work out the cell phone issue, you just may have far bigger, far deeper issues.
The whole cell phone battle stands in for many other ways couples may be incompatible. If you’re not sure whether you and your partner should even try to work things out, please check out Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay. You’ll probably find the answers you’re looking for.
And if you need one-on-one help with this, it’s just the kind of thing we do here at The Chestnut Hill Institute.
