Nina In New York: Stop Pphubbing, Start Loving

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

You've just wound down after a long day. As you pour yourself a tumbler of wine and text with a friend, your romantic partner, the love of your life, walks in the door. He's telling you about his day and yammering on about some meeting or something, and you're mostly listening and sometimes responding as you continue engaging in three WhatsApp chats and four text conversations while you browse Twitter.

If this sounds familiar to you, you are a phone snubber, known now as a "phubber." Worse, you are a partner phone snubber, or pphubber, if you will (I most certainly will not). And this may mean you are damaging your relationship and contributing to making your lovah feel depressed, according to a new study out of Baylor University.

From the folks at Baylor, who may as well now be regarded as the presiding experts on the subject, you may be a pphubber if you:

• Place your cellphone where your partner can see it when you are together.
• Keep your cellphone in your hand when you are together.
• Glances at your phone when talking to your partner.
• Check your cell during a lull in conversation.

Check, check, check, aaaand double check. Sorry honey. I guess I'm the worst. But if we're being honest, so is he. Okay, maybe he's the second-worst.

The study revealed that nearly half of the couples who participated reported feeling pphubbed, and a quarter felt that this was a cause of conflict. Roughly a third reported feeling depression, and a whopping 68% were dissatisfied with their relationships.

Is this a new phenomenon that is one day going to contribute to an even higher divorce rate? Perhaps. Phubbing is irrefutably obnoxious, disrespectful, and alienating. Nothing makes a person feel quite so undervalued and uninteresting as having the person across from you whip out a phone and begin blatantly ignoring you to your face. If a spouse is a repeat offender, I can see how that person's partner would begin struggling with depression, loneliness, and insecurity. If your spouse doesn't find you worth talking to, who does?

Maybe . . . lots of other people? Like, all your friends and your siblings and probably (definitely) your mom? Not to sound jaded or unromantic, but haven't spouses been disregarding each other since Eve ate that apple? Before the cellphone, there was the computer. And the regular phone. And the television. And the radio. And the phonograph. And the sewing circle. And wine. And sleeping. And friends. And the bar. And ale? And the toilet! Oh, the toilet. Also boats and fishing rods and smoking clubs and lawnmowers and hammocks and children and pies and football and newspapers and laundry. And the time-honored, remarkably-honed skill of selective partner listening (splubbing). Has the relationship satisfaction rate actually gone down significantly? Or is this just the newest way in which long term partners can take each other for granted and tune each other out? I'd love to know of a time when more than a representative 32% of us were positively satisfied in their relationships. The fact that once upon a time, chasing after your good-for-nothing husband with a cast iron frying pan was considered funny doesn't bode well.

I'm not defending phubbing, far from it. I'm just saying that everything must be kept in context. It's like my husband always says: something something something, blah blah blah candy crush.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!