8 Ways Your Phone Is Ruining Your Relationship

While our phones can bring us together via social media and dating apps, they also have the power to completely ruin our relationships with everyone in our lives, particularly our romantic partners. Whether you’re getting up to no good behind your partner’s back or you’re simply spending too much time staring at your screen, here are some ways your phone may be destroying your relationship.

1. It’s much harder to trust. This is probably the biggest reason cellphones can cause a lot of trouble in relationships. We all have passcodes on our phones to protect our privacy, but in some relationships, partners have rules that they must know each other’s passwords at all times. Often times, partners want to go through each other’s phones and read their text messages and look through their social media profiles. They want to know who their partner is talking to and what they’re doing online at all times. This can cause a lot of tension in relationships. If you claim to trust your partner, you should do so wholeheartedly without feeling the need to snoop on their devices. Otherwise, you’re on a slippery slope to a breakup.
2. Too much screentime is a problem. Whether it’s scrolling through social media, watching videos, or playing games, we can all get sucked into our phones and we’ve all been guilty of spending way too much time with our face glued to our screens. It’s okay to use your phone as a form of entertainment, but try to come away from it when you’re spending time with your partner. If you’re watching a movie together, put your phone away and just focus on what you’re watching. If you’re on a date, leave it in your purse and just enjoy talking with your partner face-to-face. If you’re more focused on what your friends are posting than spending quality time with them, this could be causing issues for your relationship.
3. It’s easy to become obsessed with showing your relationship off. It’s fun to post big milestones in your relationships, cute pictures together, and fun adventures like vacations together, but when it becomes so necessary to you that you document every single thing about your relationship in order to prove to people how happy you are, this could start causing issues. You don’t have to share everything about your relationship with the world. There are things that should just be kept between you and your partner and your obsession with showing off every detail might be stemming from an insecurity that you have within yourself and your relationship.
4. It’s hard not to constantly compare yourself. Another reason that social media and your phone could have a negative impact on your relationship is that you could be constantly comparing your relationship to other couples. You have to remember that social media is simply the highlight reel. People don’t often post their normal struggles or anything negative they might be going through. When you compare your relationship to another person’s, you’re comparing your life to a false reality that may be completely and totally fictitious. Don’t focus on what other couples are doing, where they’re traveling, what kind of gifts they’re giving each other, or any of that. Focus on your relationship. If you’re happy, that’s all that matters.
5. It blurs the work-life balance boundaries. Some people aren’t necessarily addicted to social media but rather to work. Jobs can be so demanding and while they’re important, there needs to be a balance and clear work parameters set during the day, especially now that so many people are working from home. Once you’ve stepped away from your computer or returned home for the evening, don’t keep answering work e-mails and texts from your phone when you should be spending time with your partner. This will cause your partner to feel unimportant or pushed aside and it completely violates your work-life balance.
6. It can ruin an otherwise great day. You might be feeling great and loving life in general only to open up social media, see that someone you follow is in Hawaii or just bought a new car and then suddenly, just like that, your evening is ruined. Why?! This goes back to my point on comparison but social media has proven to make people feel depressed or inadequate and it’s so silly! Just stay off your phone. Live in your happiness and let yourself feel content and satisfied with where you are right now. If your mood suddenly drops, your partner is going to immediately feed off of that energy and theirs will drop too. This could cause tension and fights. Don’t let it impact your relationship. Be happy with where you are.
7. Your partner may begin to feel less important. If you’re more focused on your phone than your partner and your relationship, your partner may start to feel like they aren’t as important to you as whatever it is that you’re looking at on your phone. You can tell your partner that they’re the most important thing to you but you should also show them by putting your phone away when you’re with them and just focusing on them, your conversations, and your time together.
8. You reach for your phone more than your partner. Consider what your relationship could look like if you reached for your partner as many times as you reach for your phone per day. When you wake up in the morning, instead of grabbing your phone, what if you reached over and hugged your partner first? What if instead of checking social media every hour, you told your partner something that you love about them every hour? What if you had a conversation with your partner instead of looking at your phone multiple times a day? How much stronger and full of love would your relationship be? The confidence and affirmation that we seek from posting and gaining likes and followers should be sought after in our romantic relationships. If we work on this, our love will be stronger and able to withstand every obstacle that’s thrown our way.