Smart Marriage and Smart Phones: Can You Have Both?

You probably know what a Smart Phone is and use one regularly.

A Smart Marriage is a solid, sustained relationship with meaningful intimacy on all levels, physically, but, also emotional, socially, spiritually and mental. It is a safe place to be, without judgement or criticism.

Most of us need/want both. On the one hand, smart phones made it possible to keep pace with all of the requirements of the modern, technological, social media age. On the other, we want (maybe need) companionship and a life partner who values and respects us.

Unfortunately, as a marriage counselor in Kansas City, I have realized that for many couples, these two sources of benefits and advantages are not equally matched. In fact, one can kill the other much more quickly than the other one can.  (Guess which is which?) One seems to be hard-wired as a necessity into our Western cultural lifestyles. Having a successful partnership or marriage that ranks in the quality range is an option, a volitional choice many people seem to get by without just fine.

To put it another way, I suspect more people find a Smart phone as a necessity than those who see a Smart marriage as requirement for healthy, successful living. And probably, more people have figured how to make a Smart phone work well than the number of people who can make a marriage work well.

There are some compelling reasons for this:

• Smart phones automatically update, marriages don’t
• Smart phones are ubiquitous, always connected on multiple levels automatically, engineered and designed cleverly and subliminally to seek our attention 24/7. Marriage is something we tend to push into lower priority categories, refreshing and updating them only when we can get around to it (and as you know, round “To-Its” are hard to find).
• Smart phones are relatively cheap and made even easier to purchase using the telephone companies’ purchase plans. Marriages are expensive in terms of time, money and emotion.
• Smart phones hijack our minds and train us with subtle stimulus/response like procedures. Unless a couple consciously decides to train themselves to be present and effective partners to each other, they can neglect each other, drift apart and not know what’s happened until it’s too late.

On the flip side, marriage and significant relationships have some positive and endearing characteristics that modern phones do not have. For one thing, having a marriage or otherwise significant partnership is clearly associated with longer life spans when compared to people who live by themselves. I don’t think this is true about smart phones.

Furthermore, a marriage seems to be able to meet deep needs for intimacy, both emotional and physical. You can’t say that for your smartphone.  Although you may use your smart phone to connect with other people in oblique or tangential ways, none of these is as potent for quality human living as are the face-to-face dynamics of a healthy marriage.

Significant relationships and adult partnerships can help to form and maintain personal identities in ways that those handheld computers called smart phones can never do. Yes, I don’t deny that smart phones have something to do with who we are. However, I would suggest that your phone manifests your personality, while your significant relationship or marriage helps to form and maintain your identities and personas.

We need both Smart marriage and Smart phones.

I have seen smart phones slowly, but surely kill the quality connection that a married couple might have had with each other. I suppose it could be said, that eventually a person can become more connected to their cell phone than they are their spouse. This would certainly be true if we simply measured the amount of time many people spend with their smart phones on a daily basis and compare that to the amount of time they do or do not spend with their so-called “beloved.”

If a couple cannot attend to each other until the needs of their smart phone have been met, chances are high that the phones will kill anything of value in that relationship. To this point, in marriage counseling, I hear things like, “My husband is always on his phone!” or spouses asking the other one if they are married to their cell phone.

A marriage is an organic, living entity that needs to be regularly fed at least on two levels, emotional and physical. Achieving that takes time and attention. There is no other way around it.

A smart phone needs regular attention, as well. It needs to be updated when new software is available. Certainly, it must be charged on a regular basis. And, yes, you don’t want to get too far behind the hundreds of texts and e-mails that the besiege your in-boxes on a regular basis. So, you’ve got to keep up with that, answer people who try to contact you, delete the trash and decide what to do with the good stuff, such as pictures and links that are important to you.

Bottom Line Take Away: Both a smart marriage and smart phones need the same two things; time and attention to function well.

Actually, there is some pretty solid research indicating that smart couples can use technology, including smart phones, to enhance togetherness and connection. Bottom line, Smart phones can be a two edged sword.  The challenge is to use these devices so they cut properly one way and don’t draw blood in the other, that is, not damage precious relationships.

Smart marriage first, Smart phones second

Couples can and do decide to do both, have a significant relationship with each other and use smart phones on a regular basis. But, a stark reality must be accepted first:

• Smart phones can break a marriage.
• However, a smart marriage cannot stem the presence of smart phones in our lives or make people stop using them, often addictively.
• Conclusion; Marriages are weaker than Smart phones.

Marital relationships must be protected from the encroaching negative effects of smart phones. There needs to be strong and clear-cut cell phone usage rules for married couples.

Here are some tips and suggestions about how smart marriage/relationships and smart phones can co-exist:

• First and foremost, make a decision which is more important to you as a couple: your marriage or the use of your smart phones. If you do not deal with this on a conscious level, smart phones and the advertisers and developers that are related to them will make the decision for you. The phone will keep you in the games, keep you listening to music, keep you texting and e-mailing and reward you for doing so. Smart phones and all that goes with them do not care about you having a smart and sustained marriage. And, why should they? It’s none of their business. Their business is to keep the smart phone industry well and alive.
• Your business, as a married person (should you so choose to live that way in a committed significant relationship), is to realize how fragile and yet valuable a marriage or significant relationship can be. With this in mind, the smart couple will make conscious and deliberate efforts together to make sure smart phones are second, smart marriage is first.

How you do that is up to you but, it boils down to who/what you pay attention to the most and first. At one time smart phones and computers were seen as work tools. When a person went home, they left their working tools at work. And, the converse was true in that people tried not to take home issues with them to work.

• Modern life has encouraged and normalized constant, ubiquitous smart phone possession and usage. Our phones go with us literally everywhere: to work (of course), to the bathroom, to church, to shopping, to grandmother’s house for Christmas, to bed and to the date you go on with your partner. They are always on, attentive, bedeviling and grabbing our attention. If you wait until smart phones give you permission and release you to give attention to your marriage and its needs, you might as well save yourself time, money and misery and separate now.
• Smart couples have strict arrangements about how to manage their smart phones, rather than letting habits develop the other way around. They will turn their phones off at certain times in the home, for example.
• Smart couples will strategically use their smart phones to connect with each other, such as checking in at noon and talking to each other over their phones while they have lunch together, as best they can.
• Some Smart couples have a rigid rule about leaving their smart phones in the car when they go on a date. When in the restaurant or theater or wherever they may have decided to enjoy each others company, their phones are nowhere to be found.

• Smart couples would never make the iconic discounting gesture, where you hold the smart phone in one hand while holding up the forefinger of the other hand to stop their spouse from intruding. This gesture is generally interpreted to mean, “Wait, dear, until I am finished with what’s going on between me and my smart phone before I pay attention to you.” I can see no other way of interpreting this than the smart phone comes first.

There is a mute button on all phones, and it can be used at any time. Most people on a call with you, if you ask them can you call them back in a few minutes, will wait. They will especially be willing to wait if you explain to them that your dearly beloved spouse comes first and right now you need to give attention to your spouse first and foremost.

• Text messages and e-mails that come in on your smart phone never have to be read immediately, especially at the expense of telling your spouse or loved one to stand down. The only caveat to this is if you’re receiving information on your phone from your spouse.

In my marriage counseling practice, I see many kinds of widows and widowers. Some are people who have been abandoned and left alone by the death of their spouse. Many others are in the same category as “golf” widows or spouses whose loved ones forsook them for other preoccupations, including a Smart phone. Those I call, “Smart Phone Widows and Widowers.”

Smart spouses use basic training techniques and procedures with each other. The human brain will establish a pattern based upon what is rewarded. It has nothing to do with whether the pattern is useful and beneficial. It’s simply a matter of what gets rewarded/reinforced or not.

Smart spouses in Smart marriages certainly can use smart phones in ways that reward healthy marital patterns that sustain a quality relationship.

Here is a little bonus encouragement about taking back control of your rest and sleep from your Smart phone:

If you want more tips and ways to help your Smart Marriage and Smart Phones co-exist, give me a call: Paul W Anderson, PhD, 913-991-2302.