Is Technology Screwing Up Your Relationship?
Are you so interconnected with your technology – cell phones, computers, etc. – that you are losing your close connection with your partner?
Is Technology Making it Harder for Couples to Stay Together?
Recently, I was interviewed by radio host John Gormley about my article on how technology could be making it harder for us to find love. After the interview, Gormley suggested that technology could also be making it harder for us to hold on to our relationships. I think he might have a point.
All we have to do is look at couples sitting together in restaurants and coffee shops. They aren’t talking or laughing together; they aren’t touching or kissing. Most often, both people are totally focused on their laptops or smartphones.
The question comes to mind: how do we expect our relationships to endure if we’re spending more time engaged with our technology than with each other?
Love relationships aren’t easy. They take the effort to keep them healthy and fulfilling. There are our own needs and the other person’s needs to contend with; our own feelings and theirs. We have to cooperate, compromise, negotiate and problem-solve, all of which require ongoing communication and connection.
Spending so much time with our technology can eat into our one-on-one communication time. It also disrupts the time that we’d be spending just hanging out together, building our emotional bond. Intimacy is built by just enjoying being in each other’s presence, and technology is depriving us of that time to connect.
One of the nicest aspects of a romantic relationship is the attention we pay to our partner, and they pay to us. Now, we have to compete with our technology to get some face-time with our romantic partner.
Intimacy can be defined as “knowing and being known.” To really know each other, we must spend quality time with each other, and that means undistracted time, away from our technology.
We also need to enjoy each-other; otherwise, we wouldn’t want to invest so much time and energy in maintaining the relationship. Without that time just having fun together, intimacy suffers, and our relationships are more likely to fall apart.
Things get even more complicated if one member of the couple is addicted to online porn. They might tell themselves that this isn’t hurting their real-life relationship; that it’s only fantasy and that no-one gets hurt. They’d be wrong.
Study after study has shown that addiction to porn decreases the ability of the addict to be present with their partner – in fact; serious addicts can be so distracted that they resemble people with ADD.
An article on psychcentral.com describes this phenomenon, and an article in The Guardian shows how porn changes the brain and makes it harder for people to have satisfying sex lives with their partners. A 2013 article in GQ Magazine is entitled, “Quit watching porn before it ruins your sex life.”
Obviously, all of this will have a negative impact on the porn addict’s ability to maintain a romantic relationship with someone in the real world. And according to an article in Psychology Today, that will most likely lead to a break-up.
Tech is also responsible for virtual cheating, in which one member of a couple conducts an online relationship behind their partner’s back.
The online cheater may not be having in-the-world sex with this other person, but they are directing their attention and affections away from their partner – something that’s highly likely to undermine their relationship.
This is also the scenario in which cat-fishing is most likely to occur. The online cheater could end up sending large sums of money to their virtual lover in the hopes of establishing in-the-world contact, only to discover that this person isn’t at all who they thought they were.
I could imagine that it would be very difficult for a relationship to survive after a cat-fishing incident initiated by one partner’s online cheating.
In the “olden days,” people in couples complained bitterly when their partner was a workaholic, and they hardly got to see them. They complained if their partner traveled too much for work, if their partner was always hiding out in their “man-cave” watching sports or if they were constantly locked away in the garage, fooling around with their power tools.
None of these scenarios led to happy relationships, because it’s a necessity that we spend a certain amount of quality time with our romantic partner.
These days, more and more of us feel entitled to a fully present, engaged partner, so fewer and fewer of us are likely to tolerate an absent partner, whether it’s due to overwork, hobbies or technology.
If you (and/or your partner) are spending a significant amount of time focused on your technology instead of on each other, be very careful. This kind of behavior could be leading you toward a painful and unnecessary break-up.
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About the Author
Marcia Sirota MD FRCP(C) is a board-certified psychiatrist, that does not ascribe to any one theoretical school. Rather, she has integrated her education and life experiences into a unique approach to the practice of psychotherapy. She considers herself a realist with a healthy measure of optimism. Sign up here for her free monthly wellness newsletter.
