Why Your Phone Use Is Affecting Your Intimacy

You just got home, had dinner and start swiping through your phone. What a relaxing time to go through social media. There is this trending dance on Tiktok, and a heated debate on the Facebook group. Brushing your teeth lasts longer as you still hold onto your phone, checking through those tweets and retweets. You go to bed, your woman awaits, but you get into the sheets with your phone. A few minutes later, she clicks in disgust, pulls the duvet and sleeps grumpily on her side of the bed. Unmoved, you keep swiping your phone until she shouts at you to reduce the volume. Sounds familiar?

As a newly-wed husband, I did this so many times, oblivious of the fact that I had carried with me some bad bachelor traits in my union. Since I had formed a new group and was active on Twitter, I kept up to date with the latest trends, comments and constantly got awoken by every notification ring, to check my phone. Truly, phones today are an extension of our being. If you are to do a one week detox program and stay without your phone, you will be surprised as to just how much you will miss out. News are transmitted online and live through our phones, while communicating with everyone else is at a tap of a button with a call or text away. This phone addiction started being a volcano in my marriage. At first, I entertained calls and texts past bed time. Ladies from work would call me even during dinner and I would stop eating and chatting with my wife to attend to the calls. Then she started complaining, withdrawing, and our nights became lonelier. I one time caught myself in my tracks when after putting my phone down, long after midnight and started caressing her, she angry growled at me and told me to go touch the people on my phone! I immediately knew I had to make a 360 degree turn.

Using your phone is great, but when it starts coming in the middle of you and your intimacy, know there is a problem. How do you know that you are using your phone at home excessively, and brewing some disaster?

You Use It During Eating Time

This is lack of table manners that has crept into our eating habits. Not only does it make you unable to enjoy your meal, but also limits the time to have a conversation while at it. Your spouse may have taken time to actually prepare your meal, then you turn her off by making her feel like she is eating alone.

You Go With It To Bed And Proceed Using It

Bed time should be bed time. A time to rest and a time to be intimate. When I went to bed with my phone, I was taking away time for us to have some conversation, and even foreplay with my woman. Unless you are watching something together (which it is still advised that you stay 2hrs without screen time before bed) proceeding to use your phone in bed will limit that intimate time together which you need so much.

You Passively Listen To Your Spouse As You Use The Phone

If you have been hearing your wife call you more than twice, and you have been glued too to the screen to listen, man, there is a problem. She could be telling you a story and your non-verbal cues are not corresponding to the story, hence she knows you are not listening.

You Fail To Live In The Moment But Take Pictures Instead

Mostly a millennial problem, you may find that all you do is take pictures and not live in the moment. If for instance it is your anniversary celebration, choose to outsource a photographer and enjoy that intimate moment, instead of being with your phone tapping the whole time. Some moments are meant to be savored.

This Is How You Can Know That Your Phone Is Affecting Your Intimacy:

• She doesn’t talk to you anymore.

• She is grumpy when she notices you are using the phone.

• She seems uninterested in sex when you are in bed with the phone.

• She opts to stay away from you when you are using your phone.

How Do You Remedy And Stop This Explosive Volcano?

Tackling phone addiction needs you to have an accountability partner. Encourage her to help you get back to real life (off the virtual world) by tapping for your attention every time she notices you are using it too much. I encouraged my wife to help me by telling me to keep my phone aside, and I listened. After all, she is the one who feels the lack of intimacy and knows when it lacks the most.

Keeping the phone away, makes the intimacy be here to stay!(Unless you are in a long distance relationship ofcourse.)