> Smartphones have caused more upheaval than anything I’ve seen in my career.
I don't know if I believe this _totally_. However, I can attest to the fact my relationship has more-or-less been permanently damaged by social media.
I am not a person who really wants to spend a ton of money traveling, extravagant outings, whatever. I will go out for a nice dinner and drinks, etc. I am not a miser. It's just not me to do those things - maybe because I never had them growing up. I much prefer going outdoors. I am not a prolific consumer which is what my wife has suddenly become.
For a decade none of this was ever a problem. Around the time instagram really took the world by storm I was constantly hearing about other relationships. Her friends, etc and how their lives are better than ours. This bled into other aspects of our relationship where it seems like I am constantly being judged against some standard that shifted under my feet. Perhaps it's because we are approaching middle age and it's dawning on her she probably settled - tough break.
A lot of this has stopped after a ton of work but the damage is done. I despise the modern internet because by the transitive property of social media it has damaged my self-esteem.
It is no surprise to me divorces are back on the menu. I don't think anyone can be happy in this environment if they're so deeply connected to the internet. It's a mixture of everything. Tinder, facebook, instagram, etc. "Flight risk" is probably the most succinct way I'd describe the situation. It's an extension of the political situation we face today. Relationships are so atomized along so many different parameters that it's impossible to find your commonalities.
I recognize some of this behavior with my girlfriend, at times.
My girlfriend is Thai and she has a Thai fried who got married with an English guy (about 10 years older than me). Also I know several retirees near my with Thai wives and they all do quite well on their pensions.
So while I as a “younger” guy (41 years old) still work a lot, she sees photos on social media of the retirees travelling. Or the English guy buying expensive gifts for his girlfriend.
We’re not in the same position, but by Thai standards we are still very well off. We don’t have the time to travel (our 6 year old daughter needs to go to school and I am not rich). But where many families here in Thailand are struggling with perhaps 25.000 THB per month (on 2 incomes) and still have to pay rents, loans and/or mortgages, I provide my girlfriend with at least 50.000 THB per month and we don’t have any debt. And I make quite a bit more still, but I need some money for investing, birthday gifts, car insurance, pay school terms for our daughter, rent a room in the city for work, etcetera.
We also got a farm on a nice plot of land (5000 m2) and 2 houses and a swimming pool. In the eyes of most villagers we are rich.
At times I wish my girlfriend would look less at social media. Doesn’t see what she thinks she is missing out on and sees what she actually got and how well she is doing compared to most people around us.
Feels like my decision to not get into social media seems like a better and better choice as time goes on.
I mean OK you can argue that this is social media, but I mean Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. with personal profiles and all the photos and videos and such.
I really only just used sites like Slashdot, Reddit, and HN.
> I can’t do any deep transformative work when the fire is raging. We need preventative care. If people come in when something is starting to be an issue between them instead of when they’re at a breaking point, I’d love that. Because then, in two or three sessions, you can be good to go—see you later!
This is the actual key insight in the article, not smartphone abuse. There's still a stigma around seeing a therapist: you don't need to see a therapist unless you have a problem, so seeing a therapist is evidence that you have a problem, and it's embarrassing to be someone who has a problem, so you avoid it until you have the emotional equivalent of stage 4 cancer, and then it's much more difficult to treat, takes much more time, and might not even be successfully treated (i.e. divorce). But if you go in for a regular checkup, to review your disagreements (which you will certainly have, since you're not a clone of your partner) and how you're communicating and compromising, then you're much more likely to stay in a healthy place with your partner.
It's not the smartphone that's breaking couples up, it's their unwillingness to ask for help until it's too late.
During covid, I did a bunch of soul-searching, and after covid, I reached out for psychologists to work through some issues I have (context: I'm single, so not with spouse, and the issue is mostly generational and geographical divide between me, and rest of my family).
I did 3x2h sessions with 2 different therapist (both of them on recommendation by other psychologists). They have been incredibly not helpful, in that they were unable to empathize with the problem, offer any insights, or give tools to address any of my issues.
One thing I take away from this experience, is that navigating this system is a difficult exercise on it's own, even when you're searching for one for yourself. If you add a partner, and a disagreement to this equation, the choice of psychiatrist may become an issue in itself -despite it not being their job, they will be perceived as the arbitrator for the issue, and choice of arbitration almost always decides the outcome -making this an even bigger issue than it was.
I don't have answers for this, just noting that the current rage of "go see a psychiatrist" fails to answer accessibility, and addressability questions, which makes it not really actionable.
> There's still a stigma around seeing a therapist
Not just the stigma but the whole health insurance bureaucracy around it to prevent you from seeing a therapist easily too, like intentionally incomplete and inaccurate search tools.
If one of the partners is narcissistic then one of the partners probably is the problem and divorce is the right solution.
You can't really treat narcissism. You can't make a person who doesn't feel empathy and doesn't want to feel empathy, to feel empathy.
I think a therapist represents change, and change can be bad, especially when someone like a narcissist threatens deep emotional harm or "war" for asserting ones boundaries.
I think it's more of the dynamic between comfort and growth. Seeing a therapist is seeking growth, and it requires discomfort. You can't really have growth without discomfort. So people put it off until their "comfortable" environment becomes unbearable.
Denial is an extremely powerful (and often normal) state to be in.
I think therapy has potential to do more harm than good. Since its not based on science and none of the results are reproducable. This has caused me to be apprehensive about it in the first place. Since its not an actual science I'd rather not be vulnrable to a person and let them poke and prod me when there is no gurantee of a reproducable result.
When you are going to a therapist youre throwing the dice that the experiment works , with odd highly against you. There is a better chance you'll come out damaged then cured .
This dismisses the lack of therapists in the past and the lack of quality therapists.
People used to do without them just fine before, yet now they are almost necessary to salvage a good 50% of the relationships or so?
And what about the stories of therapists basically telling one side (often the woman) they can do no wrong and the other side has to compromise? Therapists don't even have a long history of evidence to draw from, with ever changing circumstances.
Every night my wife and I put the kid to bed and just kind of zone out on the couch for two hours, each on our smartphones. We don’t talk. I kind of love it? Like it’s not lonely but it’s a time for our brains just to do nothing after a long day. I’m sure we’d do something else if we didn’t have smartphones, but for us it seems ok.
Preach. Put some garbage reality TV on and she looks at IG while I look at Zillow or whatever. I work from home and she's home with the kid, so we're talking all day. Nice to just sit next to each other and relax.
Yup, that is stuff we did with books and magazines, but you are there to the other, as some one said, make a comment, share, ...
It's differente when someone is constantly demanding smile, wear that shirt, go to somewhere new to take that pics to upload and share on IG, there is no "the other" in that activity, but "the others that like my posts"
So much this, after a day in calls, commute, evening talking with kid(s), my brain has been overwhelmed for the whole day. These 1-2hours on the couch is just the resting time I need and followed by bed discussions and day closure.
Young people may not remember this, but us elder millennials and earlier generations never had parents get divorced. Just didn't happen before smartphones. Family life was perfect.
I know you are joking, but the divorce rate is down massively since it’s plan in the 80s.
The CDC shows the rate going from 4 per thousand in 2000 to 2.5 per thousand in 2021.
A lot of that is driven by people never getting married in the first place, but I’m still surprised at how few divorced parents I encounter as an parent myself compared to even I was a kid.
In the United States, the 1980s was the decade with the highest divorce rates in the country’s history. In some states, the divorces even outnumbered the marriages!
It's not cell phones that's the stress, it's too much demands for attention, time and money combined with too little income. Cell phones are just where you see it showing up the most...
And usually money as the primary problem. Weathering past money problems also only seems to be getting worse.
(from observing both a lot of people, and a lot of discussion over the subject by professionals).
None of this is a scientific analysis of the situation so I’m not sure how we’re supposed to take away a lot from this. Obviously it’s not really a therapist’s job to conduct a wide reaching study. Even keeping that in mind, it comes across as a baseless hot take.
It’s already got one major bias built into it: happy couples don’t go to therapy.
> couples have to reconsider the balance of power: Who’s working? Who’s the primary parent? And that’s coming with a lot of renegotiations
Do you people really put this much conscious thought into their relationships? Idk sounds tedious. My SO and I just kind of exist and split bills and just do what feels right? Id probabaly be miserable too if I sat down and talked about roles like business.
You have to think about these things when you have kids, how can you not? Especially during the pandemic, people were stuck in their houses with kids. It's almost impossible to get any work done with young kids in the house. Even as the pandemic was winding down we had so many restrictions at preschool that any little cold (of which every winter there is one every other week) meant staying home for about 7-10 days, which basically means one parent is busy taking care of the kid at all times. Add several kids with a rolling schedule of colds and stomach flu's and you have an untenable situation. You just can't have two parents working full time at that point, so someone has to sacrifice their career to some extent so that you can both stay sane. The pandemic was living hell for many families. And somehow the standards for how severe of a cold your kids can have before it's ok to send them to school have lowered permanently now, adding to the permanent pressures of parenting.
My better half doesn't like when I refer to us as "roomies with kids", but that's just because we're at that point in our lives when we're so busy with work and kid activities that we can go a few days without having any time for each other.
We discuss this though. We know and acknowledge that this is just the situation, and it won't last forever (we'll both die eventually). :)
> Do you people really put this much conscious thought into their relationships?
I can’t speak for the rest of us people, but for my wife and I, yes. Kids introduce such a complexity into a relationship that I can’t imagine how we would support each other’s goals and our shared goals without making them explicitly-stated and all of the ways of doing that openly talked about. Some of it is business-like. Run the calendar, divide up tasks, etc. But some is like: “This (insert goal) is really important to me; is there a way we can make it work?” Not misery-inducing for us.
Quite often, not talking about it means one of the two is miserable and increasingly ressentful. Pretty often, because there is actual unfair imbalance and no way to fix it. Or at least perception of imbalance.
I just had a trip back to the small town island we moved from 8 years ago -- most of our cohort is in the "first kid is at the end of highschool/first year of college" sort of age, most have two + kids.
Not many relationships survived, the ones that did are the outliers. And they definitely don't fall into her two categories. Can't say smartphones really caused it, timing isn't really right for covid. There was a lot of historical trauma either childhood or through the relationships, and issues with teenagers not adjusting well to their additional independence.
So, n=small, but I think there are a lot of reasons that relationships fail, and you can't really blame the smartphone for it.
If the relationship doesn't survive the smartphone, the relationship probably wouldn't have survived anyway.
Relationships that survive smartphones are able to communicate properly and interact with each other and able to prioritise their life duties etc.
If it wasn't the smartphone or would be some other distraction as the cause of tension. PlayStation, Xbox, sports cars, fishing, going out with the lads, shopping, watching reality television, tinkering in the shed, anything but doing the little bits of relationship maintenance that prevent it from falling apart.
I love technology but smartphones have fucked so many things.
People walking in the street blasting music with the crappy speaker. People watching videos at full volume in the restaurant. People playing games in the theater with the phone at full brightness because a movie is not enough stimulation apparently. Etc.
Wonder in what percent of cases the smartphone is not causing the break up ... but rather providing one or both partners with an escape hatch that allows them to avoid having to go through with a break up.
[+] [-] zer8k|2 years ago|reply
I don't know if I believe this _totally_. However, I can attest to the fact my relationship has more-or-less been permanently damaged by social media.
I am not a person who really wants to spend a ton of money traveling, extravagant outings, whatever. I will go out for a nice dinner and drinks, etc. I am not a miser. It's just not me to do those things - maybe because I never had them growing up. I much prefer going outdoors. I am not a prolific consumer which is what my wife has suddenly become.
For a decade none of this was ever a problem. Around the time instagram really took the world by storm I was constantly hearing about other relationships. Her friends, etc and how their lives are better than ours. This bled into other aspects of our relationship where it seems like I am constantly being judged against some standard that shifted under my feet. Perhaps it's because we are approaching middle age and it's dawning on her she probably settled - tough break.
A lot of this has stopped after a ton of work but the damage is done. I despise the modern internet because by the transitive property of social media it has damaged my self-esteem.
It is no surprise to me divorces are back on the menu. I don't think anyone can be happy in this environment if they're so deeply connected to the internet. It's a mixture of everything. Tinder, facebook, instagram, etc. "Flight risk" is probably the most succinct way I'd describe the situation. It's an extension of the political situation we face today. Relationships are so atomized along so many different parameters that it's impossible to find your commonalities.
[+] [-] wsc981|2 years ago|reply
My girlfriend is Thai and she has a Thai fried who got married with an English guy (about 10 years older than me). Also I know several retirees near my with Thai wives and they all do quite well on their pensions.
So while I as a “younger” guy (41 years old) still work a lot, she sees photos on social media of the retirees travelling. Or the English guy buying expensive gifts for his girlfriend.
We’re not in the same position, but by Thai standards we are still very well off. We don’t have the time to travel (our 6 year old daughter needs to go to school and I am not rich). But where many families here in Thailand are struggling with perhaps 25.000 THB per month (on 2 incomes) and still have to pay rents, loans and/or mortgages, I provide my girlfriend with at least 50.000 THB per month and we don’t have any debt. And I make quite a bit more still, but I need some money for investing, birthday gifts, car insurance, pay school terms for our daughter, rent a room in the city for work, etcetera.
We also got a farm on a nice plot of land (5000 m2) and 2 houses and a swimming pool. In the eyes of most villagers we are rich.
At times I wish my girlfriend would look less at social media. Doesn’t see what she thinks she is missing out on and sees what she actually got and how well she is doing compared to most people around us.
[+] [-] shrubble|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SirMaster|2 years ago|reply
I mean OK you can argue that this is social media, but I mean Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. with personal profiles and all the photos and videos and such.
I really only just used sites like Slashdot, Reddit, and HN.
[+] [-] aydyn|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solatic|2 years ago|reply
This is the actual key insight in the article, not smartphone abuse. There's still a stigma around seeing a therapist: you don't need to see a therapist unless you have a problem, so seeing a therapist is evidence that you have a problem, and it's embarrassing to be someone who has a problem, so you avoid it until you have the emotional equivalent of stage 4 cancer, and then it's much more difficult to treat, takes much more time, and might not even be successfully treated (i.e. divorce). But if you go in for a regular checkup, to review your disagreements (which you will certainly have, since you're not a clone of your partner) and how you're communicating and compromising, then you're much more likely to stay in a healthy place with your partner.
It's not the smartphone that's breaking couples up, it's their unwillingness to ask for help until it's too late.
[+] [-] sdrinf|2 years ago|reply
I did 3x2h sessions with 2 different therapist (both of them on recommendation by other psychologists). They have been incredibly not helpful, in that they were unable to empathize with the problem, offer any insights, or give tools to address any of my issues.
One thing I take away from this experience, is that navigating this system is a difficult exercise on it's own, even when you're searching for one for yourself. If you add a partner, and a disagreement to this equation, the choice of psychiatrist may become an issue in itself -despite it not being their job, they will be perceived as the arbitrator for the issue, and choice of arbitration almost always decides the outcome -making this an even bigger issue than it was.
I don't have answers for this, just noting that the current rage of "go see a psychiatrist" fails to answer accessibility, and addressability questions, which makes it not really actionable.
[+] [-] sedatk|2 years ago|reply
Not just the stigma but the whole health insurance bureaucracy around it to prevent you from seeing a therapist easily too, like intentionally incomplete and inaccurate search tools.
[+] [-] hayst4ck|2 years ago|reply
If one of the partners is narcissistic then one of the partners probably is the problem and divorce is the right solution.
You can't really treat narcissism. You can't make a person who doesn't feel empathy and doesn't want to feel empathy, to feel empathy.
I think a therapist represents change, and change can be bad, especially when someone like a narcissist threatens deep emotional harm or "war" for asserting ones boundaries.
I think it's more of the dynamic between comfort and growth. Seeing a therapist is seeking growth, and it requires discomfort. You can't really have growth without discomfort. So people put it off until their "comfortable" environment becomes unbearable.
Denial is an extremely powerful (and often normal) state to be in.
[+] [-] wetwater|2 years ago|reply
When you are going to a therapist youre throwing the dice that the experiment works , with odd highly against you. There is a better chance you'll come out damaged then cured .
[+] [-] BlargMcLarg|2 years ago|reply
People used to do without them just fine before, yet now they are almost necessary to salvage a good 50% of the relationships or so?
And what about the stories of therapists basically telling one side (often the woman) they can do no wrong and the other side has to compromise? Therapists don't even have a long history of evidence to draw from, with ever changing circumstances.
[+] [-] rcme|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idopmstuff|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n3storm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Groxx|2 years ago|reply
If we've got stuff to talk about, it mostly comes up other times. Down-time and idle-togetherness is good.
[+] [-] Foobar8568|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrange|2 years ago|reply
On the other hand, there's something you could try called meditation. Though I wouldn't do it for two hours as you may literally lose your mind.
[+] [-] Rapzid|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] topkai22|2 years ago|reply
The CDC shows the rate going from 4 per thousand in 2000 to 2.5 per thousand in 2021.
A lot of that is driven by people never getting married in the first place, but I’m still surprised at how few divorced parents I encounter as an parent myself compared to even I was a kid.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/marriage-divorce/national-...
[+] [-] jb1991|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiernanmcgowan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nifty3929|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jahewson|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rapzid|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] teunispeters|2 years ago|reply
And usually money as the primary problem. Weathering past money problems also only seems to be getting worse. (from observing both a lot of people, and a lot of discussion over the subject by professionals).
[+] [-] borissk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dangus|2 years ago|reply
It’s already got one major bias built into it: happy couples don’t go to therapy.
[+] [-] wetwater|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ineedasername|2 years ago|reply
Sort of an inverted survivorship bias?
[+] [-] pictureofabear|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thelastgallon|2 years ago|reply
― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina
[+] [-] bix6|2 years ago|reply
And then all the memes are way funnier than any of my stupid jokes. And how could I ever compete with cute fluffy kittens.
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|2 years ago|reply
If you're in the position to become a father, all of your jokes will become significantly funnier than anything you see on social media.
Of course, your spouse and kids may disagree.
[+] [-] tayo42|2 years ago|reply
Do you people really put this much conscious thought into their relationships? Idk sounds tedious. My SO and I just kind of exist and split bills and just do what feels right? Id probabaly be miserable too if I sat down and talked about roles like business.
[+] [-] martindbp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BLKNSLVR|2 years ago|reply
We discuss this though. We know and acknowledge that this is just the situation, and it won't last forever (we'll both die eventually). :)
[+] [-] svnt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kashunstva|2 years ago|reply
I can’t speak for the rest of us people, but for my wife and I, yes. Kids introduce such a complexity into a relationship that I can’t imagine how we would support each other’s goals and our shared goals without making them explicitly-stated and all of the ways of doing that openly talked about. Some of it is business-like. Run the calendar, divide up tasks, etc. But some is like: “This (insert goal) is really important to me; is there a way we can make it work?” Not misery-inducing for us.
[+] [-] watwut|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asmor|2 years ago|reply
There are so many ways to escape your partner. Doesn't mean they're root causes.
[+] [-] wiredfool|2 years ago|reply
Not many relationships survived, the ones that did are the outliers. And they definitely don't fall into her two categories. Can't say smartphones really caused it, timing isn't really right for covid. There was a lot of historical trauma either childhood or through the relationships, and issues with teenagers not adjusting well to their additional independence.
So, n=small, but I think there are a lot of reasons that relationships fail, and you can't really blame the smartphone for it.
[+] [-] BLKNSLVR|2 years ago|reply
If the relationship doesn't survive the smartphone, the relationship probably wouldn't have survived anyway.
Relationships that survive smartphones are able to communicate properly and interact with each other and able to prioritise their life duties etc.
If it wasn't the smartphone or would be some other distraction as the cause of tension. PlayStation, Xbox, sports cars, fishing, going out with the lads, shopping, watching reality television, tinkering in the shed, anything but doing the little bits of relationship maintenance that prevent it from falling apart.
[+] [-] fullshark|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pier25|2 years ago|reply
People walking in the street blasting music with the crappy speaker. People watching videos at full volume in the restaurant. People playing games in the theater with the phone at full brightness because a movie is not enough stimulation apparently. Etc.
[+] [-] jkhdigital|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] getmeinrn|2 years ago|reply
Yet another unintended consequence of lockdowns
[+] [-] hidninthewdpile|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] impissedoff1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] turtleyacht|2 years ago|reply
How relationships come to an end and the scourge of the smartphone
[+] [-] bandyaboot|2 years ago|reply