The Tiny Glowing Vote Against Your Marriage
Wednesday, July 29, 2026.
There was a time when the greatest threat to a marriage was thought to be an affair.
Then it was workaholism.
Then television.
Then the internet.
Today, millions of couples are slowly bleeding intimacy one notification at a time.
The villain isn't the smartphone.
The phone is just glass, aluminum, and enough computing power to land Apollo 11 on the moon.
It has no agenda. It doesn't wake up plotting the demise of your sex life.
You do that all by yourself.
Or, more precisely, you do it every time your spouse begins a sentence and you reflexively glance down because your pocket buzzed.
Every time someone says, "Can I tell you something?" and you answer, "Hang on..." while scrolling through photos of a stranger's Labradoodle.
Every time your partner reaches for connection and loses a fair fight against an algorithm specifically engineered to hijack your attention.
Therapists have a wonderfully awkward word for this behavior: phubbing—snubbing someone you are physically with in favor of your smartphone.
It sounds silly.
It isn't.
A new study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy suggests that this ordinary, almost invisible habit may reach much deeper into a marriage than most couples realize.
Women who perceived that their husbands frequently phubbed them reported less family peace, more household distress, and significantly greater sexual distress.
Notice what the researchers did not discover.
They didn't discover that phones destroy marriages.
They didn't prove that smartphones cause sexual dysfunction.
They didn't argue that everyone should throw their iPhone into the nearest lake and communicate exclusively through carrier pigeons.
What they found was something subtler—and, in many ways, more unsettling.
They found that repeated experiences of not feeling emotionally chosen appear to ripple through an entire relationship.
The hurt doesn't stay in the living room where one partner was ignored. It follows the couple into the kitchen, into family life, into unresolved arguments, and eventually into the bedroom.
That's a much bigger story than screen time.
Because attention has always been love's behavioral expression.
Long before anyone owned a smartphone, lovers wanted exactly the same thing:
"Look at me."
"Listen to me."
"Stay with me for a minute."
Technology changes.
Attachment doesn't.
This Isn't Really a Study About Phones
One of the reasons I enjoyed this paper is that the title almost undersells what the researchers actually accomplished.
At first glance, this looks like another article warning us that "phones are bad."
We've all seen those.
Usually they're accompanied by a stock photograph of a gloomy couple lying in bed while each stares mournfully into a separate glowing rectangle.
The implicit message is that civilization peaked sometime around 1994, before anyone knew what Wi-Fi was.
This paper is considerably more sophisticated.
The researchers weren't interested in smartphones as pieces of technology.
They were interested in what smartphones communicate psychologically.
That's a profoundly different question.
Imagine two husbands.
The first checks his phone because the pediatrician is calling about their daughter.
The second checks his phone because someone on Reddit is passionately arguing about whether pineapple belongs on pizza.
The behavior looks identical.
Psychologically, it couldn't be more different.
Human beings don't simply react to behavior.
We react to meaning.
What hurts isn't the phone itself.
It's what the phone appears to say.
"Something over here is more compelling than you are."
Sometimes that's true.
Often it isn't.
But marriages don't operate on objective reality nearly as much as they operate on perceived emotional reality.
If I consistently experience you as unavailable, distracted, or difficult to reach, my nervous system doesn't care whether you were reading work email or watching a raccoon steal cat food on YouTube.
It records one thing.
"When I reached for you...you weren't really there."
That's the beginning of attachment insecurity.
Not betrayal.
Not abandonment.
Just thousands of microscopic disappointments that accumulate quietly over months and years until one day a couple walks into therapy saying,
"We don't know what happened."
Therapists usually do.
Nothing happened.
Everything happened.
One ordinary Tuesday after another.
The Great Attention Economy
Economists like to talk about scarce resources.
Marriage therapists should talk about attention.
Because attention is the most valuable currency inside a long-term relationship.
Not affection.
Not sex.
Not communication.
Attention.
Everything else grows out of it.
John Gottman spent decades observing couples in laboratory apartments.
Again and again, he noticed something fascinating. Healthy couples continually responded to one another's tiny invitations for connection. A smile. A joke. A sigh. "Look at this." "Listen to this." "Guess what happened today."
He called these bids for connection.
The strongest marriages weren't built on dramatic declarations of love.
They were built on thousands of successful responses to ordinary moments.
The husband who looks up.
The wife who pauses her book.
The partner who says:
"Tell me more."
Those moments appear so insignificant that couples barely notice them.
Until they disappear.
The smartphone has quietly become one of the most efficient bid-killers ever invented.
Not because it is evil.
Because it is endlessly available.
Every notification asks a silent question.
"Would you like to leave this conversation?"
Most of us answer yes.
Without realizing we just declined the more important invitation sitting three feet away.
One ignored bid means nothing.
Five thousand ignored bids become emotional climate.
Climate eventually becomes culture.
Culture becomes marriage.
What the Researchers Actually Did—and Why It Matters
One of my pet peeves about science reporting is that writers often sprint straight to the conclusions.
"Coffee causes cancer!"
"No wait—coffee prevents cancer!"
"Marriage makes you happier!"
"Actually, no, happiness makes marriage easier!"
By Thursday we're all exhausted, and by Friday we've decided scientists are simply making things up between grant applications.
Good research deserves better than that.
If we're going to learn something from this study, we need to understand how it was conducted before we decide what it means.
Fortunately, this is a carefully designed piece of survey research—not perfect, but thoughtful, transparent, and considerably more nuanced than the headlines suggest.
The Study Wasn't About "Phone Addiction"
Let's begin by clearing away one misconception.
The researchers never attempted to diagnose anyone with smartphone addiction.
They didn't monitor screen time.
They didn't install tracking software.
They didn't ask husbands to surrender their iPhones for forensic examination.
Instead, they asked a far more psychologically interesting question:
"How often does a woman feel ignored because her husband chooses his phone instead of engaging with her?"
That's an entirely different phenomenon.
A husband could spend six hours a day on his phone and never make his wife feel neglected if most of that use occurred while commuting, during work breaks, or after the couple had intentionally spent meaningful time together.
Another husband could spend only thirty minutes on his phone and create enormous resentment if those thirty minutes consistently arrived during the most emotionally important moments of the day.
Psychology is rarely about counting behaviors.
It's about understanding how life partners experience those behaviors.
That distinction runs through this entire study.
Who Participated?
The research team recruited 343 married women through a family health center in Türkiye.
Participants ranged in age from 20 to 66 years old, representing women at very different stages of married life.
Some were likely newly married.
Others had spent decades building families.
Some were raising young children.
Others were probably watching grandchildren race through the living room.
That diversity matters because the emotional demands of marriage evolve over time.
Yet despite those differences, remarkably similar patterns emerged.
Three Questionnaires, One Story
The researchers administered three well-established psychological instruments.
Each measured a different part of the marital experience.
Think of them as three cameras filming the same relationship from different angles.
Camera One: Partner Phubbing
The first questionnaire measured perceived partner phubbing.
Notice the word perceived.
Some readers see that and immediately object.
"Well, that's subjective."
Exactly.
Marriage is subjective.
If my wife experiences me as emotionally unavailable, it doesn't matter that I personally believe I was "only checking one email."
Relationships don't run on objective reality.
They run on lived reality.
Therapists hear this every week.
One spouse says,
"I wasn't ignoring you."
The other says,
"I felt completely invisible."
Those are not competing facts.
They're competing experiences.
And marriages survive or fail largely because of experiences.
The researchers understood that.
They weren't measuring screen time.
They were measuring the emotional impact of screen time.
That is a much smarter question.
Camera Two: Family Peace
The second questionnaire assessed something wonderfully old-fashioned.
Family peace.
I love that phrase.
We spend enormous amounts of time talking about communication skills, conflict resolution, emotional regulation, and active listening.
All useful.
But if you asked most couples what they actually want, they'd probably answer much more simply.
"I'd just like some peace around here."
Family peace isn't the absence of disagreement.
Healthy families argue.
Healthy couples disappoint each other.
Healthy parents lose their patience.
Family peace is something deeper.
It's the feeling that the home itself remains emotionally safe, even when people disagree.
Think of it as the emotional climate inside the house.
Does it feel warm?
Predictable?
Supportive?
Or does everyone seem to be walking around carrying invisible thunderstorms?
The questionnaire measured both overall satisfaction and deeper household distress.
Together they offered a picture of the emotional atmosphere surrounding the marriage.
Camera Three: Sexual Distress
This may be the most misunderstood concept in the entire paper.
Sexual distress is not the same thing as sexual frequency.
Nor is it simply low libido.
The researchers weren't asking:
"How many times did you have sex this month?"
They were asking something much more psychologically sophisticated.
"How does your intimate life make you feel?"
Those feelings might include:
disappointment.
sadness.
anxiety.
frustration.
guilt.
emotional pain.
worry about the relationship.
This distinction changes everything.
Two couples can have identical sex lives.
One experiences closeness.
The other experiences rejection.
Objectively, nothing differs.
Subjectively, everything differs.
Therapists know this instinctively.
Most couples don't seek counseling because they're having sex twice a month instead of four.
They seek counseling because sex has stopped feeling emotionally safe.
Or emotionally meaningful.
Or emotionally wanted.
The numbers matter far less than the story attached to them.
The Statistics Tell an Elegant Story
Now comes the interesting part.
Once the researchers compared these three areas of marital life, a remarkably consistent pattern appeared.
Women who perceived more partner phubbing also reported:
less family peace.
greater household distress.
higher sexual distress.
Not one relationship.
Three.
Each pointed in exactly the same direction.
That's important because when independent measures begin telling the same story, psychologists become more confident they're observing a genuine pattern rather than statistical noise.
Then the researchers asked an even better question.
How much of women's sexual distress could these factors explain?
Their statistical models found that partner phubbing together with family peace accounted for nearly one-third of the differences in sexual distress scores.
Pause there.
That number deserves respect.
Human beings are gloriously complicated.
No psychologist expects one behavior to explain everything.
Sexual desire is influenced by hormones.
Stress.
Health.
Personality.
Attachment history.
Children.
Finances.
Sleep.
Medication.
Past trauma.
Relationship quality.
Culture.
Body image.
Conflict.
Exhaustion.
Trying to explain sexual distress with a single variable would be like trying to explain the weather by measuring only humidity.
Yet attention and household emotional climate explained roughly one-third of what women experienced.
In psychological research, that's substantial.
Not definitive.
Not deterministic.
But substantial.
This Is Where Journalists Usually Go Wrong
The temptation now is obvious.
Write the headline.
"Smart Phones Destroy Sex Lives."
That headline would attract clicks.
It would also be wrong.
The study never demonstrated causation.
It demonstrated correlation.
That's not scientific hair-splitting.
It's the entire ballgame.
Imagine two possibilities.
Possibility One
A husband spends increasing amounts of time on his phone.
His wife feels ignored.
Emotional closeness weakens.
Sexual distress rises.
Entirely plausible.
Possibility Two
A marriage has already become tense.
Communication has deteriorated.
Arguments have become exhausting.
The husband retreats into his phone because it's easier than another painful interaction.
The phone didn't create the distance.
Also entirely plausible.
Reality may include both processes feeding one another.
One partner withdraws.
The other feels rejected.
Criticism increases.
Withdrawal increases.
Before long, nobody remembers which came first.
Therapists call this a negative feedback loop.
Couples simply call it another Tuesday.
What This Study Really Measured
If I had to summarize the entire paper in one sentence, it would be this:
The researchers weren't measuring phone use. They were measuring the emotional consequences of interrupted attention.
That is why this study matters.
Because, trust me, Smart phones will change.
Ten years from now we'll be distracted by augmented reality glasses, artificial intelligence companions, holograms, or some other technological marvel that hasn't yet found a way to notify us seventeen times before breakfast.
The technology is temporary.
The psychology isn't.
Human beings have always needed to know one thing from the people they love:
"When I reach for you...will you turn toward me?"
This study suggests that the answer to that question may echo far beyond a single interrupted conversation.
It may shape the emotional climate of an entire marriage—and eventually, the willingness of two people to reach for each other when the bedroom door closes.
Why This Happens—The Psychology Beneath the Screen
By now we've established two things.
First, the researchers found a robust relationship between partner phubbing, family peace, and women's sexual distress.
Second, they were careful enough not to claim that smartphones caused these problems.
So now we arrive at the question every therapist eventually asks.
Why?
Why should something as ordinary as glancing at a screen have anything to do with emotional intimacy or sexual desire?
The answer is that human beings don't actually respond to smartphones.
We respond to what smartphones communicate.
And what they communicate is often far more powerful than the person holding the phone realizes.
Every Marriage Runs on Thousands of Tiny Moments
Most people think marriages succeed or fail because of the dramatic events.
Infidelity.
Financial ruin.
Addiction.
A devastating argument.
Those things certainly matter.
But after many years of working with couples, I've become convinced that marriages are shaped less by their biggest crises than by their smallest habits.
A marriage is built one Tuesday evening at a time.
One dinner.
One greeting at the front door.
One conversation before bed.
One distracted glance.
One "Tell me about your day."
Or one...
"Hold on a second."
Repeated often enough, ordinary moments become emotional climate.
Climate eventually becomes character.
Character becomes the marriage itself.
That's why this study feels so important.
It reminds us that intimacy rarely disappears all at once.
The math has no pity.
Intimacy just evaporates over time. The math tells the tale.
John Gottman: The Bid You Never Knew You Made
If there is one researcher whose work fits perfectly alongside this study, it is John Gottman.
Gottman spent decades observing couples in laboratory apartments, videotaping thousands upon thousands of ordinary conversations.
He wasn't looking for fireworks.
He was looking for patterns.
One pattern appeared over and over again.
Healthy couples continually made what he called bids for connection.
These bids are astonishingly ordinary.
"Look at this bird."
"Listen to what happened at work."
"I can't find my glasses."
"Do you remember that restaurant?"
Most people hear these as requests for information.
They're not.
They're requests for relationship.
Every bid quietly asks the same question:
"Will you join me for a moment?"
Healthy couples don't respond perfectly.
Nobody does.
But they turn toward one another often enough that each partner continues believing,
"When I reach for you, you'll usually be there."
Now imagine what smartphones do.
Every notification competes directly with a bid.
Your spouse says,
"Can I tell you something?"
Your phone vibrates.
Without thinking, you glance down.
The interruption lasts four seconds.
The emotional meaning lasts much longer.
The issue isn't that you looked at your phone.
The issue is that your partner's nervous system quietly recorded,
"Something else came first."
One missed bid means almost nothing.
Five thousand missed bids begin telling a story.
Bowen Would Have Recognized the Pattern Immediately
Murray Bowen spent his career studying anxiety inside families.
He believed emotional systems work much like weather systems.
Anxiety moves.
It spreads.
It settles into the atmosphere.
Nobody has to announce it.
Everyone feels it.
Bowen also understood something else.
Human beings are remarkably creative when it comes to avoiding anxiety.
Some people work.
Some drink.
Some overeat.
Some become experts at talking about everyone except themselves.
Today we have a new strategy.
The smartphone.
Think about how often we reach for it.
Standing in line.
Waiting at a stoplight.
Sitting through an awkward silence.
Feeling criticized.
Feeling lonely.
Feeling bored.
Feeling vulnerable.
The phone has become the world's most socially acceptable anxiety regulator.
That's not entirely bad.
Sometimes we genuinely need information.
Sometimes we need to answer an important text.
But often we're doing something much simpler.
We're escaping discomfort.
Unfortunately, many of the moments we escape are precisely the moments where intimacy might have grown.
Bowen would probably smile and say,
"You've invented a new symptom. The family process remains exactly the same."
David Schnarch Saw This Coming Before Smartphones Existed
Few therapists understood erotic intimacy better than David Schnarch.
Long before anyone carried a smartphone in their pocket, Schnarch argued that passionate marriages require something surprisingly difficult.
Presence.
Not constant agreement.
Not endless reassurance.
Presence.
Schnarch believed mature intimacy develops when two differentiated adults remain emotionally available even while experiencing anxiety.
That's a beautiful idea.
It's also profoundly inconvenient.
Because anxiety makes us want to leave.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
The smartphone offers the perfect exit.
You don't have to storm out of the room.
You simply disappear while remaining seated.
You can be physically beside your spouse while psychologically attending to a stranger reviewing camping equipment on YouTube.
Schnarch would likely argue that the problem isn't technology.
The problem is that we've become experts at escaping precisely the emotional tension that helps marriages mature.
Every uncomfortable moment now comes with an escape hatch.
The conversation pauses.
The nervous system calms.
Growth doesn't happen.
Esther Perel Might Call It an Erosion of Curiosity
Esther Perel often says that desire depends upon curiosity.
I think she's exactly right.
Eroticism isn't fueled simply by familiarity.
It's fueled by continuing to wonder about the person you've lived beside for twenty years.
That curiosity requires attention.
Not half-attention.
Actual bestowed attention.
You cannot remain fascinated by someone you barely look at.
You cannot discover new layers of another human being while simultaneously reading comments beneath a video titled Ten Kitchen Gadgets That Will Change Your Life Forever.
(For the record, they won't.)
Curiosity is impossible when attention has been outsourced to algorithms.
The phone doesn't merely steal time.
It steals wonder.
Without wonder, relationships become efficient.
Efficiency is wonderful for airports.
It's terrible for romance.
Your Nervous System Notices Before You Do
One of the most remarkable discoveries in neuroscience is that much of human attachment happens below conscious awareness.
Long before we think about whether someone feels emotionally available, our nervous system has already formed an opinion.
Eye contact.
Facial expression.
Voice tone.
Timing.
Small pauses.
Tiny smiles.
These signals constantly answer one biological question:
"Am I safe with this person?"
When partners repeatedly interrupt conversations to attend to a device, these signals become fragmented.
The nervous system experiences unpredictability.
Not danger.
Just inconsistency.
Imagine trying to dance with someone who disappears every thirty seconds.
Eventually you stop expecting rhythm.
You begin expecting interruption.
That expectation changes how relaxed, playful, and emotionally open people become.
Sexual desire isn't simply biological.
It is profoundly neurological.
A nervous system that rarely feels emotionally prioritized eventually struggles to become emotionally vulnerable.
And vulnerability is the doorway through which genuine eroticism enters.
Emotional Labor: The Invisible Weight
One of the most insightful aspects of this study is that the authors considered the cultural context in which these women live.
Türkiye remains, in many regions, a society where women often carry primary responsibility for maintaining emotional harmony within the family.
Some readers may dismiss that as culturally specific.
Don't.
American couples argue differently.
Canadian couples argue differently.
Japanese couples argue differently.
But almost everywhere researchers look, women tend to shoulder more invisible relational work.
Remembering birthdays.
Scheduling doctor appointments.
Monitoring children's emotions.
Keeping peace between relatives.
Repairing hurt feelings.
Tracking anniversaries.
Managing social relationships.
Listening.
Anticipating.
Smoothing.
Therapists call thisemotional labor.
Most husbands don't wake up intending to avoid this work.
Many simply don't notice it.
Now imagine carrying much of that invisible responsibility while your partner repeatedly drifts into his phone.
The frustration isn't really about the phone.
It's about feeling emotionally alone while carrying work nobody else even recognizes.
That's exhausting.
Exhaustion has never been an aphrodisiac.
Attention Is Love Made Visible
The greatest contribution of this study may be that it quietly reminds us of something psychologists have known for generations.
Love is not merely a feeling.
Love is behavior.
Specifically...
Love is attention expressed consistently over time.
We often tell our spouses,
"I love you."
That's important.
But our nervous systems pay closer attention to behavior than vocabulary.
When someone consistently looks up as we begin speaking...
That feels like love.
When someone remembers what mattered yesterday...
That feels like love.
When someone puts down the phone before we have to ask...
That feels like love.
The opposite is equally true.
No marriage collapses because of a single notification.
But thousands of tiny moments eventually answer the same painful question.
"When the world wants your attention...how often do I actually win?"
That question reaches far beyond communication.
This study suggests it reaches into family peace.
Into emotional security.
And eventually...
Into the bedroom itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is partner phubbing?
Partner phubbing occurs when one person repeatedly gives a smartphone more attention than the romantic partner sitting beside them. The word is a portmanteau, combines "phone" and "snubbing." It includes behaviors like checking notifications during conversations, scrolling social media while eating together, or repeatedly interrupting face-to-face interactions to look at a device.
The behavior may seem harmless in isolation, but relationships are built on repeated experiences.
A partner who consistently feels less important than a screen may begin interpreting these moments as emotional rejection rather than simple distraction.
Why does being ignored by a phone hurt so much?
Because human beings are wired to notice attention.
Long before we consciously evaluate a relationship, our nervous system asks one fundamental question:
"When I reach for you, do you turn toward me?"
Eye contact, facial expressions, listening, and emotional responsiveness reassure us that we matter.
Repeated interruptions—even brief ones—can quietly communicate the opposite:
"Something else is more important right now."
The phone is rarely the real issue.
The loss of emotional presence is.
Is phubbing emotional neglect?
Not necessarily.
Everyone becomes distracted.
Everyone occasionally checks a message during dinner.
Emotional neglect develops when distraction becomes the normal pattern rather than the occasional exception.
Healthy couples repair these moments quickly.
One partner says,
"Sorry, put that away. What were you saying?"
Emotionally distant couples often never notice the interruption at all.
The difference isn't perfection.
It's responsiveness.
What did this study actually discover?
Researchers surveyed 343 married women in Türkiye using validated psychological questionnaires that measured:
perceived partner phubbing
family peace
sexual distress
Women who perceived more partner phubbing reported:
lower family satisfaction
greater household distress
significantly higher sexual distress
Together, partner phubbing and family peace explained nearly one-third of the variation in women's sexual distress, suggesting that everyday emotional attention plays an important role in intimate relationships.
Did the researchers prove that smartphones cause sexual problems?
No.
This was a cross-sectional study, meaning researchers collected data at one point in time.
That allows scientists to identify relationships between variables, but not cause and effect.
Several explanations remain possible.
Excessive phone use may gradually damage emotional intimacy.
Distressed couples may retreat into smartphones because the relationship already feels painful.
Both processes may reinforce one another over time, creating a self-perpetuating cycle.
Future longitudinal research following couples over several years will be needed to answer that question more definitively.
Why is emotional intimacy so closely connected to sexual intimacy?
For many couples—especially those in long-term relationships—sex does not begin in the bedroom.
It begins with emotional safety.
Feeling understood.
Feeling chosen.
Feeling emotionally prioritized.
When these experiences become less frequent, physical intimacy often becomes emotionally more complicated.
The current study supports decades of attachment research suggesting that emotional responsiveness creates the psychological conditions in which desire can flourish.
What is sexual distress?
Sexual distress refers to the emotional suffering associated with a person's sexual relationship.
It may include:
frustration.
sadness.
anxiety.
disappointment.
shame.
guilt.
feelings of rejection.
worry about the future of the relationship.
Importantly, sexual distress is not the same thing as having less sex.
Two couples may have identical sexual frequency while experiencing completely different levels of emotional satisfaction.
Why would Attachment Theory predict these findings?
Attachment Theory proposes that healthy adult relationships depend upon consistent emotional responsiveness.
Partners gradually develop an internal expectation that the people they love will be emotionally available during moments of vulnerability.
Repeated partner phubbing may unintentionally undermine that expectation.
Each interruption becomes a tiny attachment event.
One interruption means little.
Hundreds of interruptions gradually reshape emotional security.
What would John Gottman probably say about phubbing?
John Gottman's research suggests that relationships are built through thousands of bids for connection.
A bid may be as simple as:
"Look at this."
"Listen to this."
"How was your day?"
When smartphones repeatedly interrupt those bids, couples miss opportunities to strengthen emotional connection.
Phubbing is less about technology than about repeatedly turning away instead of turning toward.
What would David Schnarch probably say?
David Schnarch believed passionate marriages require emotional presence and differentiation.
Smartphones often become a way to regulate anxiety by avoiding difficult conversations, uncomfortable emotions, or vulnerable moments.
The problem is not the phone itself.
The problem is that every emotional escape also becomes a missed opportunity for intimacy.
How can couples reduce phubbing?
Most successful interventions are surprisingly simple.
Try creating intentional phone-free rituals.
These might include:
No phones during meals.
No phones during the first twenty minutes after arriving home.
Keep phones out of the bedroom.
Put devices away during emotionally important conversations.
Take daily walks without screens.
Agree that whoever notices phubbing first gently calls a timeout—without criticism.
Relationships usually improve through repeated small habits rather than dramatic gestures.
What's the biggest lesson from this research?
This study is not really about smartphones.
It is about attention.
Technology will continue to evolve.
Human attachment will not.
Every marriage eventually answers one silent question:
"When the world competes for your attention...do I still feel chosen?"
That answer shapes far more than conversation.
It shapes trust.
Family peace.
Emotional security.
And, ultimately, intimacy itself.
Final Thoughts
The researchers began with smartphones.
What they've really given us is a study about something much older than technology.
They've given us a study about human attachment.
And human attachment has always depended on one simple act that no algorithm can automate.
Turning toward the person you love.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Çakı Döner, B., Coşkun, E., & Eminoğlu Güven, A. (2026). The relationship between partner phubbing, sexual stress, and family peace in women: From household climate to the bedroom. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 52(3), 287–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2026.2636271