Husband who’s on tech-free crusade met with resistance by family
Dear Carolyn: For years, my husband has had an issue with cellphones and computers, andmakes life very difficult for our family. For example, he will not let me or our college-age kids use our phones in the dining room; he refuses to look at anything we want to show him on a phone; he immediately responds with, “How did you hear that?” when I tell him something like an old friend passed away (instead of “ohmy that is sad”); he makes me turn my alert volume down so he doesn’t “have to listen to your phone beeping all the time”; he avoids our bedroom when I am in there on the computer; and so on.
When we are out with others, he has no problem looking at something on their phones. When we call him out on his hypocrisy, he says he doesn’t live with these people.
None of us are “addicted” to our phones and clearly I feel the problem lies within him. He feels his issues are understandable and that society has the problem, not him. I amso tired of living this way.
— To Phone or Not
to Phone
To Phone or Not to Phone:
The problem is not “clearly” all within him.
Even if we agree you aren’t (ahem) “addicted,” it can still be utterly lonely to inhabit a home with people all bent to their screens. So go easy on “hypocrisy” charges, too.
While your husband has apparently escalated from objections to campaign to unhinge-y crusade, and his doing so is anathema to home as refuge for all, your most effective first move is to grant him fair points where he’s made them. OK, no phones in the dining room. OK, I’ll disable all alerts except for work or emergencies, and use custom tones where possible.
OK? OK.
Commit yourself to listening, defenses down — and/or surrender your entrenchment and agree: no dining room, no alerts, no screen-showing, no laptop habit in bed.
These minor steps — they really are — create tech-free spaces at home without appreciably limiting tech use. And they allow you this response to him: “Please stand down. I’ve met you two-thirds of the way.”