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What to Tell the Children?

Originally posted at: http://vickitidwellpalmer.com/what-to-tell-the-children/

by Vicki Tidwell Palmer

Most parents—whether they’ve been impacted by addiction or not—struggle to talk to their children about sex.

The infamous “birds and bees” talk is the source of endless jokes and secret discomfort for parents who fear they haven’t done enough to educate their children about their bodies or human sexuality.

So when addicts and their partners want to have that difficult conversation with their children about the addict’s struggle with out-of-control sexual behavior, it can be daunting.

An addict’s past behaviors and addiction are his private information. However, there are a number of reasons addicts may choose to disclose their addiction to their children.

One of the most common reasons addicts disclose to children is concern—or knowing—that one or more of their children have been exposed to their secret sexual behaviors in the past through inadvertently “catching” the addict acting out, finding sexual material on a home computer, or unknowingly having contact with an affair partner while with the addict.

Other reasons addicts disclose to children include a desire to be accountable and to acknowledge the impact their addiction has had on their children, or the discovery that their adult child is now struggling with unwanted sexual behaviors.

When deciding who will disclose to children, it’s always best for an addict and his partner to talk to children together unless the couple are no longer in a relationship, or there are extenuating circumstances such as an imminent public disclosure.

Here are 8 best practices for talking to children about a parent’s addiction:

1
Share Age Appropriate Information

Giving children age appropriate information is crucial when disclosing addiction—especially to minor children (under the age of 18).

For example, if you’re talking to a 5-year old, you would speak in broader generalities than you would with a 14-year old. You might tell a 5-year old, “Remember when you were having trouble learning your numbers and you needed extra help? Daddy has a problem too that he’s getting help for. When he’s gone at night (or treatment) he’s going to meet with other people who have the same problem so they can work on it together and he can solve his problem.”

For children who are a little older, you could add, “Daddy make a mistake and lied.” Or, “Remember when you and Sue were having a fight at school? Mom and Dad are having some problems in their relationship kind of like that, and we’re getting help to work them out.”

The need to share age appropriate information can be made more challenging if you have several children ranging in age from 8 to 17, for example. In cases like this, I recommend you speak to all of the children at the same time with information appropriate to the youngest child, and then have additional conversations—if needed—with older children who can understand the issue at a deeper level, or need more explanation.

Keep in mind that most children—including adult children—don’t want to hear about their parent’s sex life. For this reason, it’s better to err on the side of disclosing more general information, rather than sharing things you can’t take back that create a permanent, painful memory for them.

For example, it is better to say to an older child (over the age of 12) that her parent is struggling with addiction than to specifically say sex addiction. Sex addiction is not well understood even in the general adult population. Disclosing sex addiction specifically to a minor child requires you to explain and define it, and can make the child feel unsure or “icky” (shame) as she imagines or tries to guess what it means.

Unless there’s a specific, compelling reason for you to share more details, stick to generalities. You can always have another conversation at a later time when the child is more mature and capable of taking in and processing additional information.

2
Seek Professional Guidance

If you want to disclose past addictive behaviors—whether to a partner or your children—I highly recommend you seek professional guidance from a therapist who has experience with disclosures involving out of control sexual behavior or sex addiction. Most addicts who attempt disclosure on their own tend to over-share, often in ways that actually traumatize—rather than help—those who receive the disclosure.

Unless you’re in a situation of forced or imminent disclosure (see below), there is no need to rush. Disclosure to children should not take place before a formal therapeutic disclosure with a partner or the completion of a significant amount of step-work in a 12-step fellowship. Take your time and get qualified professional help.

3
Discuss What’s Included in Advance

Addicts and partners should discuss what information will be disclosed to children prior to the actual event, and have a list of agreed on “talking points” to cover. If the addict has prepared a disclosure with the guidance of his/her therapist, the partner should have an opportunity to review and discuss any edits or changes with the addict prior to talking to their children.

4
Decide—in Advance—Where & When

When planning where to make a disclosure to minor children, home is typically best. There are some cases, especially with adult children, when it can be helpful to have the disclosure at a therapist’s office. Having a therapist present acting as a facilitator is recommended in cases where the addict and adult child have been estranged, or the child has strong feelings about the addict’s past acting out behaviors.

Avoid making disclosure to children on an important day such as a birthday, holiday, or other special occasion so that they don’t have to carry the burden of having a joyful occasion “paired” with receiving confusing or painful information from one of their parents. Also, allow plenty of time after the disclosure for conversation and processing, rather than rushing off to an already scheduled event.

5
Don’t Ask for Forgiveness

I always cringe when I hear an addict ask for forgiveness when making a disclosure to his partner, or children.

The primary purpose of disclosure is to give the other person information they need and deserve to know. Addicts should avoid including any information in a disclosure that has the effect of evoking pity, or that highlights how he was harmed or victimized in the past.

Forgiveness is an organic process that arises in its own time.

6
How to Handle “Forced” Disclosure

There are some times—although rare—when a disclosure of sexual acting out will be disclosed due to an arrest, legal matter, or other situation involving the media. In cases like this, it is highly recommended that you seek guidance immediately about how to disclose to children so that they get the information directly from a parent rather than from the media, peers, or law enforcement.

7
Invite Their Questions & Accept Their Feelings

Once you’ve shared the information, ask your children if they have any questions. Depending on their age, personality, and temperament they may have no questions—or many. If they don’t have questions and appear eager to end the conversation, tell them you’re open and available for any questions they may have in the future.

If children become visibly distraught or cry during disclosure, don’t assume what they’re thinking or feeling. Start with a general question like, “Can you talk to me about how you’re feeling?” rather than assuming what may be happening for them. Whatever their feelings, tell them they have a right to all of them, and that they’re perfectly fine.

8
Tell Them It’s Not Their Fault

And last but not least, any disclosure to children should include a statement to the effect of, “This is a grown-up problem/adult problem and I am 100% responsible for solving it. It’s not your fault.”

Children—by their very nature—are ego-centric and interpret the painful events in their life as their fault or as a reflection on them. When you tell them it’s not their fault and that you’re in charge of taking care of the problem, you release them from taking on undue guilt and hardship.

For more information about disclosure to children, see Disclosing Secrets: An Addict’s Guide for When, to Whom, and How Much to Reveal by M. Deborah Corley and Jennifer P Schneider.

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Partners of Sex Addicts Struggle with Loneliness and Isolation

Originally posted at: https://gentlepathmeadows.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/partners-of-sex-addicts-struggle-with-loneliness-and-isolation/

By Dr. Georgia Fourlas, LCSW, LISAC, CSAT, Clinical Director of Rio Retreat Center Workshops

Partners of sex addicts often find themselves feeling alone and isolated. First, the feelings of loneliness come when the addicted partner is acting out. Although the partner of the sex addict is not always able to identify what is wrong, they often sense the addict’s distance and are aware of a shift in the addict or in the relationship.

Trying to figure out what is wrong in the relationship can be exhausting. Many times partners end up feeling like they are going crazy. They know something isn’t right, but they are not able to put their finger on it. When the partner tries to confront the addicted person, he or she often denies everything and accuses the partner of acting crazy, imagining things or being overly jealous and controlling.

Partners may begin to doubt their own sense of reality. They may recognize that they are attempting to control something, but they are not even sure what that something is! When partners attempt to explain to family and friends what they are experiencing, it is hard to describe. How are they supposed to describe what they do not understand? They begin to feel shame, and they are not even sure what that shame is about.

There are other times when the partner knows exactly what is going on. The addict has not admitted it yet and has not considered recovery so the partner hesitates to share anything with their family and friends. They may feel embarrassed and wonder if there is something wrong with them that caused the addicted person to act out.

The partner may not want to hear the opinions of family and friends who may give them advice on whether to stay or leave. They may not want to risk sharing their pain with those who may judge their decisions about the relationship. There is also sometimes the fear that others have known all along, and that they view the partner as a fool. This belief can deepen the shame they already feel over the addict’s behaviors.

The Pain Doesn’t End When The Addicted Partner Enters Recovery

Even after the addicted partner stops acting out and enters recovery, loneliness and isolation can continue. While it is great to have the addict in recovery, it can be frustrating to have the time and energy still focused outside of the home as the addict enters treatment, commits to regular therapy, and begins involvement in 12 step meeting attendance and activities. Partners can become resentful of the time spent away from the family and can feel as though they continue to carry the family and parenting responsibilities alone. All of the time spent covering family and household duties while supporting the addict can lead a partner to further isolation. Another isolating factor can be the reactions of family and friends to the partner when they discover the addict’s behaviors. Well-meaning family and friends can react in ways that are not helpful and can be extremely shaming and disempowering of the partner. Some reactions can lead to the partner feeling guilty for wanting to leave.

Those reactions might include statements like…

  • “Why would you leave when he just went for help?”
  • “You can’t leave, what would you tell the children?”
  • “How could you leave her at her most vulnerable? She needs your help.”

Other reactions can lead to the partner feeling guilty for wanting to stay. These include reactions such as…

  • “You need to leave that cheater right now!”
  • “You can’t possibly stay with her after she has been with so many other people.”
  • “What will you be teaching your kids if you allow this kind of thing?”

These well-intended messages can be perceived by the partner as shaming and controlling. It can feel like no one understands what the partner is going through. It can begin to feel like there is no help or support available.

Partners of Sex Addicts Deserve Help Too

It is important that partners know that the addict is not the only one who deserves help. Partners deserve and need help and support too. Loneliness and isolation are not a life sentence that partners of sex addicts must endure. It is okay for partners to insist that their own healing is also a priority.

It is important for partners to connect with others who have been through similar situations, who can lend a non-judgmental listening ear and who can offer support regardless of whether the partner decides to stay in the relationship or leave. There are others individuals out there dealing with the same things and even some who have already survived it.

There are also a variety of options for partners who are seeking help and healing. Partners can go to inpatient treatment, they can participate in intensive workshops designed specifically for partners, they can enroll in outpatient therapy, and/or participate in the numerous 12 step recovery groups that are just for partners of sex addicts.

Rio Retreat Center at The Meadows offers 5-day intensive workshops designed specifically for partners of sex addicts. The Healing Intimate Treason workshop, designed by Dr. Claudia Black, has been very successful in helping partners heal and connect with others who are struggling with the same feelings and issues.

To enroll in a workshop, or discuss any of our inpatient and outpatient treatment options, please call our intake department at 800-244-4949. Our experts are happy to answer any questions you may have, and help you find the best options for getting you on the path to healing and happiness.

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The Unconscious and Sexual Acting Out

Originally posted at: https://gentlepathmeadows.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/the-unconscious-and-sexual-acting-out/

The Use of Psychodrama in Treating Sexual Addiction

By Tian Dayton Ph.D., TEP

Note: This article originally appeared on The Huffington Post.

It is the body’s natural mandate to act; we are beings designed for movement and expression. It’s how we get around the world, communicate our feelings and thoughts, eat, sleep, cry, wail, kiss, dance and sing! We are conceived, carried, born and die all through our bodies. We feel our emotions physically; feeling, in fact, comes first. Before words enter the picture we are engaged in what Stanley Greenspan refers to as a “rich tapestry of gestures” and expressions that communicate our desires and feelings to others. Hopefully, there is a reciprocal response from another caring person so that we feel seen, heard and responded to. This is what lays down the fabric neurologically, emotionally and psychologically that maps our inner world and our capacity for intimacy, communication and connection.

These maps function both within and outside of our conscious awareness. They are part of how we learn to attach to another human being. One of the things that happen when we’re deeply distressed or frightened by less than satisfactory interactions with significant others is that we go numb inside. The child who reaches out for comfort and connection and receives instead of warmth and a friendly expression a sort of coldness, disinterest or rejection grows up feeling like a stranger in a strange land. It is as if their needs and desires are somehow invisible or inscrutable to those they depend on; or worse, that there is something wrong with having them at all.

The word “trauma” has a big ring to it. But in my own practice what I find is that the larger more visible traumas that everyone agrees are wrong or hurtful can actually be easier to treat than the constant drip, drip, drip of feeling alone in the presence of another. These emotional deficits or these empty spaces in our inner world, become a part of what we learn to expect when we look to fulfill our very human need to be intimate with another person.

Sexual Addiction As A Result of How We Learned to Connect

So when we talk of sexual addiction we need to go back into the root system of how we learned to connect and/or compensate for a feeling of disconnection— What we do to fill the empty/anxious hole inside of us.

Sexual acting out that is unconscious might be seen as both a way to self medicate unhealed, unconscious emotional and psychological pain and as a way of trying to finally get the closeness that we have longed for, for a lifetime. But as with any form of acting out, it keeps pain unconscious. Rather than feel the vulnerability and fear that accompany our desire to connect, to love and be loved, we use the excitation of the chase, the deliciousness of secrecy or the body chemicals themselves that are part of the sexual experience to override feelings of anxiety around intimacy.

One of the more poignant examples of how this gets set up is illustrated by a psychodrama— well, many psychodramas I have done with “Pete.” It is a “model scene” from his childhood home, one that incorporated the relational dynamics from childhood that are core to his acting out in adulthood. We have done many versions of this but here is one capsule. We begin with his walking home from school. As he comes down the sidewalk to his home he feels exited to see his mother after a long day away from her. His father has gotten him off to school again that morning; mom was “tired,” she was “sick.” I ask him to soliloquize as he walks, to narrate the goings on inside his mind:

“I am so excited to tell mom about my “A” on my science project. She’ll be so proud of me. Maybe we’ll go out for a walk together.”

Pete’s childlike grin betrays an innocence that belongs to childhood and an ability to hope against hope again and again and again.

“Mom, I’m home!”
“Mom, I’m home!”
“Mom, I’m…”

Pete goes up the stairs now again narrating his walk.

“I hope she’s home, where is she, was she sick this morning? Why is she always sick? I want to show her my paper with the “A” on it.
“Mom,” Pete knocks on the door, “Mom, I’m home, I’m here, open your door please.”
“Mom, open your door, Mom I got an “A”, Mom, come on open the door, come on, come on, come…..”

A look of confusion and hurt comes over Pete’s face, it is the look of a child on the face of a man. His shoulders slump and he draws his chin in.

P: “Well maybe it doesn’t really matter, maybe it’s not a very big deal. Maybe…”

Pete falls to his knees in front of her door.

“I might have fallen asleep, I don’t know, sometimes I did, I think I am crying, I am…” At this point, the pain Pete felt over and over again while collapsed in a heap in front of a door that would not open, became excruciatingly evident. He let it in in fits and starts, squinting, holding back tears then suddenly belching a little, crying, then nothing, dissociating. Keeping him engaged in the drama was challenging. Once he’d gotten some real emotion out, I decided to let him reverse roles with his mother, to enter the forbidden space and inhabit, for a moment this inaccessible world that he so longed for. I “interviewed” Pete in the role of his mother.

Tian: “Your son is crying, he wants to come in.”
Pete in the role of his mother: “What?”
T:“I said your son is crying outside your door, he desperately wants to come in.”
P:“Do you have a light, I can’t find my cigarettes.”

Pete describes that his mother was always sitting in a cloud of smoke, that she used one cigarette to light the other.

T: “Your son, are you drunk, can’t you hear me?”
P: “Oh there they are, no I never drink.”
T: “I don’t believe you.”
P: “I never drink, Pete is always ….is school out already?”
T: “He is home and wants to be with you.”
P: “Have you read this new National Geographic Magazine, it’s wonderful, all of these pictures of other countries.”
T: “Your son, he wants you to open your door.”
P: “Right here, look at this one…”
T: “Are you drunk?”
P: “No, I never drink, why do people say that? I never drink.”

At this point I knew that Pete was stuck forever in the reciprocal role with his mother, he was being true to his memories, true to his traumatized mind, to the truth he’d internalized as a boy.

T: “I think you may be drunk right now”.
P: “No, I told you, I don’t do that”.
T: “Where do you keep your bottle?”
P: “Right here, under the bed,” “mom” reached down under the bed and pulled out a bottle of gin.

Pete learned to fill his empty afternoons with a neighbor boy who initiated him into the secrets of sexual play. At the very most basic level, he found somewhere to go on these searingly lonely afternoons. He also began a life of using sex to medicate loneliness. As an adult, his trigger for sexual acting out remained loneliness and rejection, he could be sexually sober for a long time, but if he felt rejected by his wife, he acted out sexually to medicate the unconscious pain it triggered from his childhood.

Seeing Trauma in Three Dimensions Through Psychodrama

Putting this kind of confusion, this weird mix of love and lies out into the here and now through psychodrama, allows us to look at it in three dimensions. It brings what lies in our repeated past out into the present in concrete form where we can observe it and deal with it. To actually stand in the shoes of the hurting child that we were, and feel their loneliness and pain brings self compassion. Then to reverse roles with the parent and more often than not feel their pain, confusion, or inability to feel and focus because they were lost in a world of addiction, loosens up the memories that have laid petrified in the unconscious.

The relief and release involved in these simple role-plays is quite profound. Not only do we get to feel our own pain and finally make some sense of it, we feel our parents immaturity and confusion and often this serves to reveal to us that they too were lost, that their inability to give us what we needed was not personal. We were not in other words bad or undeserving, we were more or less just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We can gain compassion for ourselves and for the other and this compassion lights a path to awareness and emancipation from a past that has its grip on our throat.

Meadows Senior Fellow Bessel van der Kolk, while being interviewed by Tami Simon of Sounds True explained, “When you get traumatized you have a breakdown in your imagination that anything can ever be different than the way it was, that anyone will ever love you or care for you. …you don’t know what it feels like to be held and loved. In our field we tend to be very passive, we reflect. We focus on the bad things that happen, but we don’t focus on what is missing. But moving on with life, is to take new actions.”

In other words, traditional psychotherapy tends to reinforce the block. By focusing constantly on the past trauma, we strengthen the block against trying new things.

“A very powerful point in getting over trauma,” continues van der Kolk, “is to act in ways that are different from the way you have acted. We are a symbolic species and we live by our imagination…we continuously imagine in our minds what outcomes will be…if I do this, then this will happen. What you do in so many of these psychodramatic therapies is you explore…let’s see…what will happen if we do that….let’s see what it’s like to explore… what it feels like to try something else.”

Exploring new ways of being, is part of what heals us in psychodrama. I often invite protagonists to choose new parents, or their own parents the way they wished them to be, or to rearrange the family as they wish it had been; to experiment in other words, with different ways of relating, to experience getting what they didn’t get and giving what they felt too blocked to give. It is often in these moments of finally getting what they longed for that the pain of not having it emerges. Working through this pain is what gives them the ability to be vulnerable to new feeling.

Role-play allows us to practice new behaviors, to “role train.” Trauma tends to lock us into behaviors that become repetitive and rigid. J.L. Moreno, the father of psychodrama, put it this way in a brief conversation with Freud:

He was attempting to explain the difference between psychoanalysis and psychodrama; “Dr. Freud, you analyze their dreams, I give them courage to dream again.”

References

Greenspan, Stanley, 2000, Building Healthy Minds, De Capo Press, Boston, Mass.

Moreno, JL, 1973 Psychodrama Volume One, Beacon Press, New York, New York.

Simon, Tami, Sounds True, An interview with Bessel van der Kolk

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Can You Ever Affair-Proof a Relationship?

psychologytoday.com · by Linda and Charlie Bloom

 Can love and good sex “affair-proof” a relationship?

This myth is deeply embedded in our culture and is even held by a fairly large number of marriage counselors. But a lot of people who hold this belief have been deeply disappointed to discover that it’s not necessarily true. While it may seem reasonable to assume that if both partners love each other and have a mutually satisfying sexual relationship, there would simply be no reason for either to stray. Well, that is true: There is no “good reason.” Affairs, however, are generally not motivated by reason or rational thinking, but tend to be matters of the heart, which is the source of passion and desire, and not the mind, which deals with abstraction and logic.

So while it does seem logical to assume that there would be little motivation for partners in a happy relationship to go outside of it to fulfill their most intimate desires, particularly if they’ve made an agreement to be monogamous, it does happen—and more frequently often than most of us realize. A study cited in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy in 2015 reported that 54 percent of female respondents, and 57 percent of males, stated that they had been unfaithful in their relationship. What may also be surprising: The average length of the affairs was two years.

Still more surprising is that according to relationship and sexuality expert Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity, the motivating drive to have an affair is a desire not necessarily for sex, but rather for experiences their relationship is no longer delivering. What they desire, according to Perel, is attention, novelty, adventure, vibrancy, aliveness, and passion. They crave the experience of losing themselves in the intensity, excitement, and stimulation of a new relationship, with the hope of re-invigorating the feelings that occur in the stage of infatuation.

Too often, it seems that couples fail to keep that spark alive after they formalize their commitment, and so they run the risk of weakening the glue that keeps their relationship passionate and healthy. When daily routines and responsibilities dominate their attention, the risk of a violation of their monogamy agreement increases. When either partner feels that they must submerge aspects of themselves to maintain peace or avoid conflict, the risk factor is similarly heightened. The fantasy of being free to be fully authentic, and to experience aspects of oneself with another person that one’s partner disapproves of, is a compelling motivator for anyone who has withheld or concealed aspects of themselves out of fear of judgment, rejection, or punishment.

The expectation that one person can and should meet all of another’s needs, particularly when many of them appear to be at odds with each other—security and adventure, excitement and peace of mind, spirituality and sensuality, tenderness, and strength—can be a setup for disappointment or betrayal. This is not to justify violating anyone’s vows, but rather a warning to be mindful of the dangers of holding a partner responsible for fulfilling a range of needs and desires that may be beyond any one person’s capacity.

The experience of loneliness is also something that can occur even in good relationships. This often comes as a surprise to those who wrongly assume that once they enter into a serious partnership, their lonely days are over. But the experience of loneliness has more to do with our relationship to ourselves than whether we are in relationship, or with whom. It is a function of how comfortable we are in our own skin, whether we relate to ourselves with compassion or criticism, and how much we enjoy our own company. When we mistakenly hold our partner responsible for taking away our loneliness and making us happy, he or she will be likely to feel turned off by our efforts to coerce their attention.

There is a significant difference between desire and neediness: Neediness often feels manipulative and is seen as a turnoff. It can also include a sense of entitlement, or an expectation that one has the right to be taken care of by one’s partner. When we experience a partner’s desire, without their expectation of our reciprocity toward us, it feels pleasurable and attractive.

Sometimes the burden of fulfilling family obligations and responsibilities can feel oppressive, and the desire for relief, even briefly, can be compelling. At these times we are particularly vulnerable to the temptation of affairs. When partners take each other for granted and neglect their relationship, they put it in jeopardy. When unresolved conflicts mount up, resentment, anger, a lack of respect, and even contempt may form conditions that are an accident waiting to happen. Such animosity can become a perfect rationalization to go outside the marriage for intimate contact.

Infidelity can be as brief as a one-night stand, or a secret, years-long affair. Some people try to fulfill their need for attention and validation through sex. Some may rationalize their indiscretions with the justification that there was no intimate physical contact, but like emotional affairs, in which literal sex does not occur, even technical infidelity or virtual affairs can do great damage to one’s primary relationship.

No matter what their cause or nature, every betrayal harms a relationship and requires repair work to restore trust and integrity. Another statistic cited by the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy study was that, of marriages in which an affair was discovered or admitted, 31 percent lasted. The shock of the crisis can expose the source of the unmet needs that the affair was an attempt to fulfill, and in doing so, open the possibility for this breakdown to become a breakthrough, provided both partners do the work that is required to heal the relationship.

Pain can sometimes be a great motivator. It would, of course, be more efficient and less painful to avoid the torturous stages of wounding and healing that accompany unfaithfulness. There are many ways to enhance the quality of your relationship without unnecessary suffering. If you don’t know what they are, ask your partner: It’s likely that he or she will be happy to give you a few ideas. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Linda and Charlie Bloom are excited to announce the release of their third book, Happily Ever After . . . and 39 Other Myths about Love: Breaking Through to the Relationship of Your Dreams:

“Love experts Linda and Charlie shine a bright light, busting the most common myths about relationships. Using real-life examples, they skillfully, provide effective strategies and tools to create and grow a deeply loving and fulfilling long-term connection.” —Arielle Ford, author of Turn You Mate into Your Soulmate

If you like what you read, click here to visit our website and subscribe to receive our free inspirational newsletters.

psychologytoday.com · by Linda and Charlie Bloom

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Why Is Your Partner’s Smartphone Use an Issue?

Smartphones have now been with us for 10 years, and play a huge part in our lives. We use them to take selfies, connect on social media and dating apps, read the news, and play interactive games. Many people check their smartphones as the last thing they do at night and then first thing in the morning. Train and bus passengers constantly gaze at their phones; people even stare at them when walking down the street, oblivious to others. There is no doubt that phones have changed the ways we behave and live.

Smartphones provide a way for people to stay closely connected with family and friends, and the array of options arguably create feelings of connectedness with others, but excessive use means that users forgo face-to-face interactions. Diverting one’s attention to a smartphone while in the company of another is a behavior known as phubbing, a portmanteau of phone and snub, and generally considered to be impolite or inappropriate in the context of social interaction.

If phubbing is impolite and inappropriate, what is the effect of such behavior on romantic relationships? Is it tolerated because of the closeness of romantic partners, or is its impact exacerbated because of it? Further, are there gender differences in emotional reactions and responses to phubbing?

McDaniel and Coyne (2016) suggest that smartphones can be intrusive and interfere with face-to-face interactions, with one partner feeling upset if the other becomes too absorbed in their phone when they are spending time together. Any distraction or intrusion when partners are together might cause upset, but are intrusions caused by smartphone use more of a problem? Does phubbing merely cause one partner to feel upset because they feel ignored? Or does it go further and cause them to be upset due to a feeling of jealousy as their partner is possibly connecting with a third party via their phone? Remember that one aspect of jealousy is the perceived threat to a relationship from another party.

Hanna Krasnova and colleagues investigated jealousy in partner phubbing and relationship outcomes (Krasnova, Abramova, Notter & Baumann, 2016). In their study, they employed participants between the ages 26 and 40, an age group they argue are most likely to use smartphones, while at the same time likely to be seeking sustainable romantic relationships.

The researchers asked participants to think of the last time their partner used their smartphone for too long in their presence. Participants reported that this happened:

  • When they were at home together (33.6 percent).
  • In bed before going to sleep (19.6 percent).
  • When they were home having a meal together (10.8 percent).
  • In the car or on public transport (9.8 percent).
  • When going out (4.5 percent).

(The remainder of the answers were watching TV, walking, and shopping.)

When asked to describe their emotions on these occasions, participants reported the following:

  • Loss of attention (28.6 percent).
  • Anger (19.4 percent).
  • Sadness/suffering (11.1 percent).
  • Boredom (3.2 percent).
  • Indifference (38.1 percent).
  • Happiness (4.4 percent).

The only notable gender difference was in happiness, with males reporting more happiness than females. However, compared to males, females reported more anger, sadness, and indifference.

The researchers then asked about participants’ coping strategies to phubbing. Reactions included:

  • Voicing intervention, such as making a request to stop using the phone (27.1 percent).
  • Showing curiosity by either looking at the other’s screen or voicing suspicion (7.3 percent).
  • Mirroring; for example, doing the same as a partner (6.9 percent).
  • Doing something else (13 percent).
  • Loyalty, such as showing tolerance, waiting, and understanding (22.3 percent).
  • Feeling negative—being annoyed or angry (7.3 percent).
  • No reaction (22.3 percent).

In terms of gender differences, males reported coping more in terms of loyal reactions compared to females. Further, males were twice as likely to exhibit mirroring behavior compared to females. Overall, it seems that males report more positive emotional responses and coping with phubbing behavior compared to females.

Finally, the researchers tested the relationship between partner phubbing, feelings of jealousy, and relational cohesion (the feeling of togetherness or emotional bonding). They found that it was not just annoyance or the feeling of being ignored when their partner used their phone that impacted on cohesion. Rather, it was more likely affected by an individual’s feeling of jealousy at their partner using their smartphone.

While jealousy is often discussed within the context of partner rivalry, jealousy is often experienced in other ways, such as a partner spending time with friends, or time at work; overall, jealousy can be associated with relationship deterioration. Previous research on jealousy revealed that not all interruptions to a social interaction are perceived equally; even from an early age we experience more intense feelings of jealousy towards social objects than inanimate ones (Hart et al, 2004).

The research of Krasnova et al. seems to suggest that we tend to see smartphones more as social objects—not just phones or computers—because they enable connection with others. Overall, it seems that it is not the process of phubbing itself (merely being ignored), but the feeling of jealousy (a partner connecting with another person) that phubbing triggers which ultimately leads to relationship dissatisfaction.

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References

Hart, S. L. Carrington, H. A., Tronick, E. Z. and S. R. Carrol (2004).’When infants lose exclusive maternal attention: Is it jealousy?’ Infancy 6 (1), 57-78.

Krasnova, H., Abramova, O., Notter, I.,Baumann, A. (June 2016) ‘Why phubbing is toxic for your relationship: Understanding the role of smartphone jealousy among ‘generation Y’ users’ (Unpublished). In: 24th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS). Istanbul, Turkey.

McDaniel, B. T. & S. M. Coyne (2016). ‘Technoference: The interference of technology in couple relationships and implications for women’s personal and relational well-being.’ Psychology of PopularMedia Culture, 5(1), 85-98.

 psychologytoday.com · by Martin Graff Ph.D.