People check Their devices so often, They do not notice a partner’s bids for connection” — JOHN GOTTMAN

of the devices. They come to embody distant relationships and networks — social nuclei, Misra calls them — and, acting as environmental cues, they make other relationships and interests more salient than those directly in front of us. “In their presence, people have the constant urge to seek out information, check for communication, and direct their thoughts to other people and worlds,” she says. They divide consciousness between the immediate and the invisible. Feeling less connected to a face- to- face partner, we avoid self- disclosure.

The ability of a partner to be physically present but absorbed by “a world of elsewhere” was first described more than a decade ago, in 2002, by Swarthmore College psychologist Kenneth Gergen. He called it “absent presence”. That, however, was before smartphones multiplied the power of mobile phones to remove us from the local.

In the realm of relationships, smartphones turn conventional understanding of vulnerability on its head — for it is the best couples that seem to be hit the hardest. The closer partners start out, the more irked they become by the presence of devices, says Misra; they expect the attentiveness of their nearest and dearest.

If there is a soundtrack of the new plaint, it’s less the gentle prodding Marilyn Suttle got than “Put down that damn phone and talk to me,” which captures the pain and frustration of being ignored