With thousands of ways for us to communicate with each other, the way we choose to mediate our romantic and sexual relationships has become a bizarrely fraught subject. Texting, emailing, messaging, Instagram messaging etc have all come to replace phone calls or even (dare we say it) face to face contact. And according to one study there is one thing that we should stop doing now in order to improve our chances at a relationship or improve communication within a pre-existing one – stop texting! Why? Because we are incapable of telling someone’s tone and it does what one study out of Brigham Young University calls “lower relationship quality.”
Countless studies have shown that messaging and texting are counterproductive when it comes to early stages of a relationship precisely for this reason. Not only that, but a study carried out by The Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy showed that texting too much or texting about ‘the wrong things’ could cause havoc to a healthy and already solid relationship!
Texting your romantic interest is often categorised as ‘relationship maintenance’ psychologically speaking and it’s something that both parties engage in, in order to signal to each other that they’re on the same page.
The problem is that often texts get lost in translation and what happens is a watering down of the interaction and communication quality, particularly in that part of ‘relationship maintenance’ includes arguing. And unlike IRL arguing, where one party can apologise to another by means of physical touch or an expression, arguments are harder to denuclearise via text message.
So what to do? The advice most often given is to simply stop texting or at least reduce the amount of texting considerably and use them only for practical purposes and not for serious relationship conversations. So just get rid of your phone straight away! What’s more another thing hurting relationships this week according to the latest YouGov study.is the fact that 1 in 3 Britons has either carried out or experienced “some form of screen snubbing” meaning they are either ignoring or being ignored by their partner. And what of it? Well the solicitor that commissioned the report said it was on the back of a rise in numbers of divorce enquiries as a result of people being on their phones too much!
So now you know what to do so you don’t end up needing a divorce!
