As a therapist, I know what’s breaking couples up
thewalrus.ca
thewalrus.ca
I don't know if I believe this _totally_. However, I can attest to the fact my relationship has more-or-less been permanently damaged by social media.
I am not a person who really wants to spend a ton of money traveling, extravagant outings, whatever. I will go out for a nice dinner and drinks, etc. I am not a miser. It's just not me to do those things - maybe because I never had them growing up. I much prefer going outdoors. I am not a prolific consumer which is what my wife has suddenly become.
For a decade none of this was ever a problem. Around the time instagram really took the world by storm I was constantly hearing about other relationships. Her friends, etc and how their lives are better than ours. This bled into other aspects of our relationship where it seems like I am constantly being judged against some standard that shifted under my feet. Perhaps it's because we are approaching middle age and it's dawning on her she probably settled - tough break.
A lot of this has stopped after a ton of work but the damage is done. I despise the modern internet because by the transitive property of social media it has damaged my self-esteem.
It is no surprise to me divorces are back on the menu. I don't think anyone can be happy in this environment if they're so deeply connected to the internet. It's a mixture of everything. Tinder, facebook, instagram, etc. "Flight risk" is probably the most succinct way I'd describe the situation. It's an extension of the political situation we face today. Relationships are so atomized along so many different parameters that it's impossible to find your commonalities.
My girlfriend is Thai and she has a Thai fried who got married with an English guy (about 10 years older than me). Also I know several retirees near my with Thai wives and they all do quite well on their pensions.
So while I as a “younger” guy (41 years old) still work a lot, she sees photos on social media of the retirees travelling. Or the English guy buying expensive gifts for his girlfriend.
We’re not in the same position, but by Thai standards we are still very well off. We don’t have the time to travel (our 6 year old daughter needs to go to school and I am not rich). But where many families here in Thailand are struggling with perhaps 25.000 THB per month (on 2 incomes) and still have to pay rents, loans and/or mortgages, I provide my girlfriend with at least 50.000 THB per month and we don’t have any debt. And I make quite a bit more still, but I need some money for investing, birthday gifts, car insurance, pay school terms for our daughter, rent a room in the city for work, etcetera.
We also got a farm on a nice plot of land (5000 m2) and 2 houses and a swimming pool. In the eyes of most villagers we are rich.
At times I wish my girlfriend would look less at social media. Doesn’t see what she thinks she is missing out on and sees what she actually got and how well she is doing compared to most people around us.
I mean OK you can argue that this is social media, but I mean Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. with personal profiles and all the photos and videos and such.
I really only just used sites like Slashdot, Reddit, and HN.
Sometimes they end up with someone who never understood them and still wants them to be something else.
OP is probably #2.
Once you get the ear worm that the grass is always greener you don't appreciate what you have in front of you. I'm not necessarily saying you're wrong but we did start out with significantly more compatibility than I think you're implying. It was only when comparison became the norm that we grew more distant. She wants the ability to brag to her friends and the internet.
Maybe she was always this way. Maybe she wasn't. It certainly was not obvious to me. People change and perhaps I have too. Some of it I think is escapism from the banality of life.
It is the difference between social compatibility and value compatibility, I think. If you were in the same cultural group and didn’t communicate values, then you were compatible at the moment. When social media came along if you both shared your value perspective you both might have responded as you did (or, if you shared her perspective, as she did). Instead it split your sociocultural compatibility along a value axis.
The best way I’ve found to communicate this in a straightforward way is as being seen/understood, which is when your partner understands and appreciates who you are and why you’ve done something, most importantly when you don’t want to do something.
edit to say: I made it sound like it’s too late, but I didn’t mean to. For social people, social media is more necessary and they can be more effective in it. It sounds like your partner is more social than you. They probably value the network more than they resent it because of this, and are probably feeling the reduction in offline opportunities for socializing. If so, this is likely functioning at an evolutionary level for them. If you found a way where you could see some positive aspect of their network and engage with that, it might alleviate their attempts to get you to engage with the materialistic aspects.
It also might not, but something like this is probably worth a try.
The fact that they dissociate and excuse their partner’s abusive mentality is whats interesting to me. And given the post voting, it seems like a lot of HN is quick to do so too.
This is the actual key insight in the article, not smartphone abuse. There's still a stigma around seeing a therapist: you don't need to see a therapist unless you have a problem, so seeing a therapist is evidence that you have a problem, and it's embarrassing to be someone who has a problem, so you avoid it until you have the emotional equivalent of stage 4 cancer, and then it's much more difficult to treat, takes much more time, and might not even be successfully treated (i.e. divorce). But if you go in for a regular checkup, to review your disagreements (which you will certainly have, since you're not a clone of your partner) and how you're communicating and compromising, then you're much more likely to stay in a healthy place with your partner.
It's not the smartphone that's breaking couples up, it's their unwillingness to ask for help until it's too late.
I did 3x2h sessions with 2 different therapist (both of them on recommendation by other psychologists). They have been incredibly not helpful, in that they were unable to empathize with the problem, offer any insights, or give tools to address any of my issues.
One thing I take away from this experience, is that navigating this system is a difficult exercise on it's own, even when you're searching for one for yourself. If you add a partner, and a disagreement to this equation, the choice of psychiatrist may become an issue in itself -despite it not being their job, they will be perceived as the arbitrator for the issue, and choice of arbitration almost always decides the outcome -making this an even bigger issue than it was.
I don't have answers for this, just noting that the current rage of "go see a psychiatrist" fails to answer accessibility, and addressability questions, which makes it not really actionable.
If you have a real logistical problem, or something that centers around legitimate cultural differences, I can see why most of them would have trouble offering useful advice.
If I were you I would seek a mentor who had lived through something similar and accomplished what you are hoping to accomplish, if such a person can be located.
Not just the stigma but the whole health insurance bureaucracy around it to prevent you from seeing a therapist easily too, like intentionally incomplete and inaccurate search tools.
If one of the partners is narcissistic then one of the partners probably is the problem and divorce is the right solution.
You can't really treat narcissism. You can't make a person who doesn't feel empathy and doesn't want to feel empathy, to feel empathy.
I think a therapist represents change, and change can be bad, especially when someone like a narcissist threatens deep emotional harm or "war" for asserting ones boundaries.
I think it's more of the dynamic between comfort and growth. Seeing a therapist is seeking growth, and it requires discomfort. You can't really have growth without discomfort. So people put it off until their "comfortable" environment becomes unbearable.
Denial is an extremely powerful (and often normal) state to be in.
When you are going to a therapist youre throwing the dice that the experiment works , with odd highly against you. There is a better chance you'll come out damaged then cured .
Then you claim 'therapy' is "not based on science", which (a) suggests you might have a very narrow STEM-y view of what "science" is, and (b) suggests you might have a limited understanding of what different forms of psychological and psychiatric therapies there are. I invite you to read some scientific peer-reviewed papers on how comparatively (in)efficient different forms of therapy are for different syndromes. You will find, most therapies are very much based on science.
And then you end with claiming there "is better chance you'll come out damaged then[sic] cured", even claim the odds are "highly against you", without any support whatsoever. For someone who cares about a basis in science, you sure have some strong opinions without any basis in fact.
>And then you end with claiming there "is better chance you'll come out damaged then[sic] cured", even claim the odds are "highly against you", without any support whatsoever. For someone who cares about a basis in science, you sure have some strong opinions without any basis in fact.
Because I care about basis in science thats the reason I wrote it. Going to therapy is akin to going for homeopathic medicine to get cured. Homeopathy was popular in 18th century on the coattails of vaccination and its still a big industry in US but it has more in common with Goop than medicine. With current credibility crisis Psycological therpay will also face similar demise.
People used to do without them just fine before, yet now they are almost necessary to salvage a good 50% of the relationships or so?
And what about the stories of therapists basically telling one side (often the woman) they can do no wrong and the other side has to compromise? Therapists don't even have a long history of evidence to draw from, with ever changing circumstances.
Of course the "theory" behind the advice was an entirely different one than modern psychology uses, but the social role was similar.
When you are going to a therapist youre throwing the dice that the experiment works , with odd highly against you. There is a better chance you'll come out damaged then cured .
Yes, the standards are a lot less rigorous and reproducability is worse than in the "hard sciences", but at least they are trying to get some kind of objective, reproducable result in the first place.
The alternatives to therapy are basically: Religion, family knowledge, random self-help books or trying to work it out yourself. In all three, the methods are even less stringent and objective than in psychology.
In my experience, psychology as a field is also open to new information from biological hard sciences, such as neuroscience.
Finally, note that psychology is not just used in therapy but also in advertising, UX design and tech in general, often in manipulative ways which run counter to the interests of users. Evidently, it works there. So then, why would the same knowledge suddenly be useless pseudoscience when it comes to therapy?
This is a major red flag. This whole field is reeling under Credibility crisis.
People should be exposed to medical treatments which are tried , tested aproved and regulated. Which this field cant be further from yet they have the authority to advice people as under pretext of psycologists and therapists.
There should be even more regulation for psycologists and therapists , just like there is approval process for vaccines . Howcome we are allowing so many people to be exposed to medical treatments which have barely any regulation and no reproducablity.
(This is different from the horrible transgressions of the 19th and 2/3rds of the 20th century where the "results" were mostly how the patients appeared to others but not how they felt themselves - if you bothered to see them as humans at all)
Please read up on the science before claiming "is not based on science". Thanks!
The Gottman Institute has produced solid work for relationship counseling.
>Do you have conclusive scientific evidence on your hypothesis? It doesn’t sound like it is based on science and might suffer from the replication crisis.
The onus of providing proof and supporting evidense lies on "therapists" and "psycologists" who make the claim that their work is science and it "helps" people in any way.
Are they causing more problems than stuff before? Probably! Much of what's on it is explicitly designed to be addictive. But I suspect it's by a relatively minor amount, and mostly stolen from other also-bad-for-you options that have declined / been out-competed. People have done this kind of stuff for literally forever, phones didn't invent it.
1: Not to imply they should or should not have that stigma. Just that they exist and work as a distraction too, and few people will immediately judge you for using it, unlike many also-popular alternatives.
If we've got stuff to talk about, it mostly comes up other times. Down-time and idle-togetherness is good.
On the other hand, there's something you could try called meditation. Though I wouldn't do it for two hours as you may literally lose your mind.
Your brain can not signal its status to you like a limb, saying ‘this is too hard’ or ‘this hurts’. While this barrage of input at the end of the day may relax you in some ways, it is hard work for your brain.
The effects of a tired brain are varied, but include trouble sleeping, memory issues, trouble reasoning, but also and often emotional issues(!) like irritability or sadness. Consider this in the light of the relationship issues discussed in this thread.
Much has been made of mindfulness as some form of spirituality. It is also a way to give your brain a break in an economy that is set up to hold your attention for as long as possible. Like many here, I’m quite saddened by the inability or unwillingness of my loved ones to direct their attention away from social media.
The CDC shows the rate going from 4 per thousand in 2000 to 2.5 per thousand in 2021.
A lot of that is driven by people never getting married in the first place, but I’m still surprised at how few divorced parents I encounter as an parent myself compared to even I was a kid.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/marriage-divorce/national-...
And usually money as the primary problem. Weathering past money problems also only seems to be getting worse. (from observing both a lot of people, and a lot of discussion over the subject by professionals).
Divorce rates are low in lots of poorer countries, but that doesn't mean the relationships there are perfect. From what I've seen, often the woman would become a pariah and have no real source of livelihood. Divorce isn't even an option, no matter how toxic or abusive their spouse or relationship may be.
It doesn't always show up in the form of divorces. Also, if you're poor enough (say : on disability or welfare) - government rules may make getting married very penalty-high. Or even revealing one has a relationship. (my own Canada has this problem, for instance, as do some states).
As for "rich people" ... there are other factors, and see also "demands of time" not just money. I've met very few rich people who had time that was not in constant demand.
But then there are more poor people than rich ones.
This breakdown of income levels of the divorced:
https://flowingdata.com/2021/05/04/divorce-rates-and-income
acknowledges that there is less data for those with incomes > $1 million .. but doesn't appear to normalise for the weighting that most people who "XX" for some "XX" will have lower incomes.
I did not meant in absolute numbers. And I stand by that claim.
Also, in the context of this thread, there is no reason to focus on super Uber rich. The money cease to be stressor long before that.
Good for you.
What's your dataset, sample description, and normalisation then?
It is not my fault you don't trust your own link or did not read it. Because that link is about "divorce rate" among "married at least once" subset of population. not about number of divorcees in the whole population.
As it stands, without any clarification on your part, your statement that
"Poor people in fact divorce more then rich ones."
is just as meaningful as
"Poor people in fact breath more then rich ones."
ie. trivially so by weight of numbers.
It's also a great pity you are unwilling or unable to the shortcomings of the graph in the link I provided, which has nothing to do with being restricted the core population of people who at least been married.
What country are you thinking of, what are the definitions of rich and poor that you are thinking of, and what is the distribution of rich V. poor that meets that criteria - these are your starting points against which you can bring in whatever measures of divorce you wish to compare against rich and poor.
This is your claim - expand upon what you mean.
It’s already got one major bias built into it: happy couples don’t go to therapy.
It seems you don't have a good understanding of either "therapy" and "science"
Calling other's ideas "hot air" is just the cherry on top.
Rather, I’m saying that an individual therapist making anecdotes about their individual clients doesn’t constitute a scientific study.
Believe what you want but don’t mistake what I said for being anti-therapy.
Sort of an inverted survivorship bias?
Was hoping the author would share their intuition for how to make relationships work in the smartphone world.
I don't think you need an expert opinion to say that smartphones at the very least have radically changed relationship dynamics
― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina
And then all the memes are way funnier than any of my stupid jokes. And how could I ever compete with cute fluffy kittens.
If you're in the position to become a father, all of your jokes will become significantly funnier than anything you see on social media.
Of course, your spouse and kids may disagree.
Do you people really put this much conscious thought into their relationships? Idk sounds tedious. My SO and I just kind of exist and split bills and just do what feels right? Id probabaly be miserable too if I sat down and talked about roles like business.
We discuss this though. We know and acknowledge that this is just the situation, and it won't last forever (we'll both die eventually). :)
I can’t speak for the rest of us people, but for my wife and I, yes. Kids introduce such a complexity into a relationship that I can’t imagine how we would support each other’s goals and our shared goals without making them explicitly-stated and all of the ways of doing that openly talked about. Some of it is business-like. Run the calendar, divide up tasks, etc. But some is like: “This (insert goal) is really important to me; is there a way we can make it work?” Not misery-inducing for us.
There are so many ways to escape your partner. Doesn't mean they're root causes.
Not many relationships survived, the ones that did are the outliers. And they definitely don't fall into her two categories. Can't say smartphones really caused it, timing isn't really right for covid. There was a lot of historical trauma either childhood or through the relationships, and issues with teenagers not adjusting well to their additional independence.
So, n=small, but I think there are a lot of reasons that relationships fail, and you can't really blame the smartphone for it.
If the relationship doesn't survive the smartphone, the relationship probably wouldn't have survived anyway.
Relationships that survive smartphones are able to communicate properly and interact with each other and able to prioritise their life duties etc.
If it wasn't the smartphone or would be some other distraction as the cause of tension. PlayStation, Xbox, sports cars, fishing, going out with the lads, shopping, watching reality television, tinkering in the shed, anything but doing the little bits of relationship maintenance that prevent it from falling apart.
But the thing that they're blaming smartphones for is nothing new. Communication has always been a difficult thing, and before people had their heads buried in smartphones, they had their heads buried in TV, or newspapers/magazines/books, or they just simply went to bars/pubs.
The whole article seems like a vague, "hot take", nothing. It's an opinion backed up with zero research or evidence other than "I'm a couples therapist, trust me, I know."
The “author” who is a leader of a consortium of Canadian therapists dictated this to a journalist who may or may not be his friend.
The other giveaway is predicting “aftershocks” and the “come see me before it gets serious” line.
People walking in the street blasting music with the crappy speaker. People watching videos at full volume in the restaurant. People playing games in the theater with the phone at full brightness because a movie is not enough stimulation apparently. Etc.
Yet another unintended consequence of lockdowns
The measures have hollowed out the middle class, bolstered the land-owning class, and destituted the lower class.
Anyone who owned any assets - stocks, land, crypto - has seen their net worth increase 50-200%. Meanwhile the waging class has been priced out of ever owning houses or land - first through sheer asset appreciation, then through unaffordable interest rates.
The worst part of it all is that no one even cares to seek accountability. The working class has been led to believe that fighting about gender and race and identity are way more important than the economic war being systematically waged against them.
Detestable.
Uber will happily display pride flags and happily sue the NYC government for its minimum wage laws. That should tell you something.
When it comes to corporate America, believe what they do in the courtroom, not what they do on their social media.
Tl;dr, just like with any other crisis, divorces went down, because people don't divorce in the middle of these. Domestic violence went up, because abusers got more options and victims were locked down with them. After covid crises ended, uptick of 'delayed' divorces.
If there is reasonable doubt about the effectiveness of lockdowns then they were a disaster. Mass suspension of basic human rights isn't something that should be done on the basis that it seems like a good idea in the moment.
Edit: In case this is an invitation for a debate about what exactly is "policy" and whether it was a true intervention or a true forced lockdown... I have no interest in discussing that and I regret even bringing it up. Have a nice weekend.
And you never crossed paths with them because you were living in different worlds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_governmen...
We locked down by checkpointing the two land roads in|out of the state and requiring anybody coming in by road | air | ship to quarentine under observation before freely moving about the state.
Truckers dropped or picked up trailer loads w/out contact.
Otherwise people largely moved about freely within the state aside from a few (very few) localised incidents of COVID transfer outside of buffer zones, in each case small areas were asked to restrict movement and mask up until no more cases appeared.
That was kept up until vaccines became available and vaccination exceeded 90%.
As a state with a strong sense of self goverance by people at large this wasn't a draconion top down unwanted imposition, it was very much an overwhelmingly popular broadly supported measure with very proportionally few dissenters.
How relationships come to an end and the scourge of the smartphone
I promise I was funny until editorial decisions kneecapped me :P