Most stable, long-term couples share the password or unlock pattern for the mobile phone. At least all those questioned, of diverse ages and backgrounds, have responded affirmatively. “One is driving and maybe the other needs to open Spotify to play music in the car,” they say. “One is making dinner and her hands are dirty, and she may have to ask the other to look at who called her a while ago,” they reflect.
Is it normal to share the password with your partner? Is it discouraged to avoid problems? “It is not about the act itself of sharing the code or not, but about the use that is made,” explains in RAC1 Lara Castro, psychologist, sexologist, Pleasure ConSentido therapist and coordinator of the Sexuality and Couples Working Group of the Official College of Psychology of Catalonia. “There may be times when you need the other person to know the combination, but the point is not to break into the phone to spy,” she says.
“Spy. Observe cautiously, secretly (at someone, what they do, what they say, etc.).” Logically, doing it with your partner’s phone is never a good idea. And in addition to having dire consequences, it can be an indicator of distrust, jealousy, the need to control others and also a lack of self-esteem.
“It’s one thing to go into someone else’s phone to play music; the other to look at the messages they send, for example. The solution is not to know or stop knowing the password, but rather therapeutic work, individually or as a couple, may be necessary, if there is a history of infidelity,” according to Gastro.
I don’t want my partner to look at my phone. Is it normal because my phone is my world? Is it understandable and healthy that there are spheres of intimacy that are not shared with absolutely anyone? Or if I don’t want my partner to look at my phone, is it because I’m hiding something? “Everyone can have their privacy. There are aspects such as the life of the past or anything that a friend tells you that belongs to privacy, if they are issues that do not affect the couple’s relationship,” Castro points out. In fact, each of us has intimate aspects that belong to ourselves. They are 100% private, and this is positive.
Messages or chats with another person in a flirtatious tone or with a point of trust beyond friendship is one of the main things that you may want to hide from your partner, as Castro explains. Infidelity on WhatsApp? There may be more cuckolding in a message than in a sexual act. “It must be made very clear that everything depends on the agreements previously established in each relationship. If you have to do something secretly, like chat, it is clear that it is infidelity. If you hide it because you know it will hurt the other person, you already have a sign.”
Mobile phone and relationship is a binomial with other points of potential conflict. It’s not just infidelity that looms on small screens. “Dependency on the telephone takes away quality time, individually and with the person we are with, and perhaps we share life,” says the psychologist. If you look more at Instagram or Twitter notifications – which can wait – than at the person you are sharing dinner or conversation with, problems may arise.
“If you look at the phone more than at your partner, it is a symptom. You need to stop and ask yourself why you need to look at your phone so much. And also ask yourself if this happens to you when you are with anyone, or only when you are with your partner. You have to explore what is behind it,” says the therapist.
There is no need to repeat the negative health effects of sleeping with your cell phone next to you and checking it until minutes before turning off the light in the room. Screen, likes, notifications, stimuli, constant connection and temptations to endlessly check what comes to us: the latest WhatsApp message from a friend or the notification from the children’s school app. Knowing how to disconnect is basic for well-being. But how does the omnipresent phone on the tablet affect the relationship?
“This depends on the quality time that each couple has. There are couples who only see each other at dinner and bedtime. At that time, then, there should be no cell phone involved,” continues the specialist.
If 9 to 11 in the afternoon is the time of day when there is a small space for conversation, intimacy, and why not, sex, it is positive to take advantage of it, to connect with the other. “Now, other couples have moments of connection at different points of the day, and at night they make appropriate use of the screens,” says Castro. This is the idea: the screen should not destroy quality time with yourself or with your partner.
This article was originally published on RAC1.
