You know what, I’ve sat with so many couples where this exact thing is happening, and here’s what I want you to know first: the phone is never actually about the phone.
Let me explain what I mean.
When your partner picks up that phone instead of talking to you, what’s happening in your body? I’m guessing something tightens. Some version of “you’re not here for me” starts ringing like an alarm. And then you do something, right? Maybe you push, maybe you get quiet, maybe you say something sharp. And what does your partner do? They go deeper into the phone.
That right there is the system. That’s the infinity loop you two are living inside.
Here’s the thing about the person on the phone. They’re not doing it because they don’t care about you. They’re doing it because being close, being in a real conversation with real feelings, feels threatening to some part of them. The phone is a way of not having to feel something that feels too big or too dangerous. Connection sounds wonderful in theory. But for a lot of people, when it actually shows up at the door, something in them goes “not right now, not safe enough right now.” They’ll connect with you, but not today. Next Tuesday.
And you, the person watching them disappear into a screen, you’re not just annoyed. You’re scared. Some part of you, probably a very young part, is asking “am I enough for you? Are you actually here with me?”
So you’ve got two people who are both hurting. One is disappearing because being present feels like too much exposure. The other is watching them disappear and feeling abandoned. And the way each of you responds to your own pain makes the other person’s pain worse. You’re not bad people. You’re just scaring the hell out of each other.
What actually needs to happen isn’t a conversation about phone rules. It’s not, “can you put that down when I’m talking to you.” That conversation will go nowhere, or somewhere ugly. What needs to happen is for one of you, ideally you, to be able to say something true and vulnerable. Something like, “when you’re on your phone when I want to connect, I get scared that I don’t really matter to you. And I hate that it scares me.”
That’s a completely different conversation than “you’re always on your phone.”
Now I know that feels terrifying to say. Because what if they just go back to the phone? What if they dismiss you? That’s a real risk. And that’s honestly why this kind of work is hard to do without someone in the room to hold the space for both of you.
But start here. Ask yourself: what am I actually feeling when the phone comes out? Not what I think about it. What I feel. That’s the door in.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Stonewalling in Relationships: What Your Partner’s Silence Actually Means
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