We’ve all been there: you’re out on a date night and a message flashes up on your phone, so you instinctively reach for it. But beware, because what can feel like harmless ‘phubbing’ (snubbing someone to engage with your phone) has been identified as a key behaviour cited in divorce proceedings.
‘Digital detachment’, described as constant phone use, obsession with social media and a lack of meaningful, in-person communication, is one of the issues couples are increasingly citing during marital breakdowns, according to specialists Divorce-Online. Social media envy and online infidelity are also to blame. Some 30% of the 1,549 divorces it handled between January to August contained complaints about social media use.
It’s something Holly* is all too familiar with. The day her ex-partner proposed to her she ended up feeling sidelined, as he spent the day engrossed in his phone. His habit continued throughout their relationship. ‘We’d be out at a restaurant and he’d be very distracted by his phone, checking messages, posting on Instagram. He’d be scrolling on social media while we were on the sofa together, and on his phone late at night in bed,’ she says.
His obsession with his phone led to Holly, 34, feeling ‘out of control’ in the relationship and she began having serious doubts. Seven months later, she called off the engagement after discovering he’d been messaging girls he’d dated in the past.
Janine*, 35, left her long-time boyfriend because she felt the spark had died, partly because of his obsessive phone use. ‘I could feel that whenever I forced him to be present, he’d be itching to get back to his phone and he wasn’t really engaged.’
Eventually, she realised that if they were already spending every night in bed scroll- ing in silence after three years together, ‘What hope was there for a close relationship in the future? We barely spoke, because every quiet opportunity he’d reach straight for it.’ It wasn’t a case of infidelity, as far as Janine knows, but she says, ‘Con- versations could never get deep because the flash of a message always took prece- dence, so he was never fully in the room. I know on some level we’re all addicted to our phones, but the emotional disconnect his addiction caused in our relationship left no room for romance or closeness.’
Bryony, 40, recognised that her own excessive scrolling – be it of work emails or social media – was ruining her marriage, so she decided to take matters into her own hands. She’s managed to salvage her relationship by getting a second phone for work and planning phone-free evenings with her husband. ‘It’s early days and we are still building our new routines, but the positive changes we’re seeing show it’s something that’s really worth working on.’
Counsellor Georgina Sturmer explains second screening adds ‘an extra party or additional barrier to our relationship, even if we don’t always notice it’s there.’ Instead, try having ‘device free time’, she says.
Divorce by digital detachment? Look- ing up long enough to engage in an argument suddenly doesn’t sound so bad.