For Phub’s Sake Put that Phubbing Phone Down

I JUMPED at the opportunity to write about ‘phubbing’ (a recently coined term which is a fusion of phone and snubbing by your partner, see this article here) because although I admit I can be guilty of it at times, my husband is the biggest PHUBBER ever. And it drives me crazy.

It starts first thing in the morning when he gets out of bed. On goes his reading glasses and he is glued to Facebook while we have breakfast. Scroll, scroll, scroll while I sit there and watch Sunrise pretending he is actually in the room.

Then we don’t usually see each other much through the day but when he gets home after work, it’s bad enough I have to sit through one hour of M*A*S*H re-runs (which I note he does NOT look at his phone once during), but then the rest of the night he is glued to that fucking thing.

No matter what we are watching on TV that phone (or iPad) is in front of his face. I often glance across at him to see if he’s paying attention to the intricacies of the movie plot and he swears that he is, and when questioned he can tell me exactly what IS going on in the movie which disproves my long-running theory that a man can only concentrate on one thing at a time but it still drives me crazy. I feel like my presence isn’t enough for him and that I must bore the crap out of him if he needs to be entertained by not one screen but two.

In addition to scrolling constantly through his Facebook feed, he’s also on YouTube and generally browsing the internet looking for new golf courses to try or adding to his mountain bike equipment collection of clothes, tools and accessories. Wait, there’s the postman now with another package…

He has that thing out on the kitchen table when we have family dinners ignoring everyone else and when we are waiting for a meal in a restaurant while I gaze around pretending I’m not dining alone before I finally resort to pulling mine out too because frankly it’s embarrassing to sit there like that, ignored.

And when we go to bed at night? While I’m scrubbing my makeup off and applying moisturiser, he is sprawled across the bed, head hanging over the edge STILL looking at that thing. I get into bed, shove his legs over to his side and then lie there waiting, waiting, waiting for him to turn his best friend off so it can re-charge for another day.

On the few occasions I have raised this as an issue he says that I spend just as much time on my phone and given I have a job which involves using social media I actually have to check, and respond to various things I have going on, on a regular basis but I do not spend anywhere near the time that he does on it. If I’m watching a movie, I want to watch the movie and be present in what is going on and then be able to talk to him about it; you know, laughing at that guy or whatever but that doesn’t happen anymore.

Am I that boring or maybe it’s time to put some rules in place? After 8pm, the phones go to bed?  Is this happening to everyone?