How Phones Affect Our Relationships
Last week we talked about how our phones can be addicting. This addiction, just like any other addiction, doesn’t just affect us. It affects everyone around us. It affects our relationship with our spouse, with our children, at work, our friends, and so on.
We want to feel connected to those we love. We want real-life relationships with hugs, talking, listening, giggles, tears, cuddling, and all of the in-between, but our phones are driving a wedge in-between those relationships we desire!
When we are on our phones all the time, our children and our hubbies begin to believe that we are choosing our phone over connecting with them. They feel our phone is more important to us than them.
And fairly so, imagine if you were in their shoes and each time you tried to talk to your child they were staring at their tablets (or maybe you don’t have to imagine this situation because you live it) only giving you the hold on signal or the “yea” answer, but not actually comprehending what was said. You would begin to feel rejected and abandoned. Our children (and even our spouse) feel the same way each time we “have” to check our email instead of sitting down to play dolls or listen about their day.
If this happens often enough the dynamic of our relationships will begin to change. Our spouse will stop communicating with us because he does not feel as significant as our phone. It’s possible he would turn to someone that is willing to listen to him. Our children might form resentment towards us and our choice to be on our phone over spending time with them. They might start holding back from us.
The last thing we want is for our husband to feel insignificant or our children to feel rejected especially by a silly phone. We don’t intend for our phones to control our lives, the problem is, phones (really…apps) these days are designed to keep us engaged and on our phone. (CLICK HERE to read more) So, eventually, if we aren’t careful, our phones do begin to control us and affect our relationships.
It is our job to make sure we keep our phone in check. We control our phone use; we can’t let our phone control us! Our children watch us. They watch everything we do and say. They pick up on our habits (good and bad). Is heavy phone/tablet use a habit we want our children to form? Do we want them to be closer to the “friends” on Instagram than the people in their own home? Let’s break this phone habit now, so that the cycle doesn’t repeat with our children.
Find out next week how we can take action to get a handle on our phone use so our real-life relationships can thrive!
