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As a therapist, I know what’s breaking couples up
- getmeinrn 3y ago>Two years into the pandemic, something shifted. That’s when I was getting inundated with people who were in crisis and on the brink of divorce. Yet another unintended consequence of lockdowns
- fullshark 3y agoI wonder if we'll ever get an honest postmortem on this policy intervention, the largest and most intrusive domestic policy the gov't initiated in my lifetime, done without a law even being passed or any actual debate.
- nilespotter 3y agoI believe we're expected to be grateful that it's over, and in our gratitude, forget.
- jhp123 3y agowhich policy intervention are you talking about?
- fullshark 3y agolockdowns and forced business closures. 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.
- getmeinrn 3y agoDon't regret it. People will play word games with you and move the goalposts, but we all lived through it. Don't get demoralized by people who have boundless energy for gaslighting.
- theossuary 3y agoThat's funny because the only gaslighting I see is from people pretending that the pandemic didn't exist. Since the pandemic was declared over, I've started to see crazy people come out of the woodwork trying to gaslight me into thinking the pandemic wasn't as bad as I remember it.
- getmeinrn 3y agoWhy is that funny?
- darkerside 3y agoThe funny thing is, for a lot of people, it wasn't. They figured out a way to keep living their lives as all as they could, while minimizing concerns about whether this mysterious illness might be incredibly dangerous. And you never crossed paths with them because you were living in different worlds.
- jhp123 3y agowhat lockdowns? where? Obviously some places (e.g. China) had lockdowns and others (e.g. Wyoming) did not. I'm asking which government's policy, and which specific one, not trying to gaslight you into thinking that there were no policy responses anywhere.
- getmeinrn 3y agoA "stay at home order" is considered a lockdown, per wikipedia. If you disagree, take it up with the editors there. You will find them far more receptive than me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_government_responses_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic#Initial_pandemic_responses,_including_full_lockdowns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_governmen...
- hattmall 3y agoRight but not everywhere did that. I was in Georgia and schools did close for 2 months, but other than that there was no type of lockdown or anything. I think for 2 weeks you couldn't get a hair cut and some restaurants were to go only. Then everything was incredibly busy and everyone had extra money. I went on vacation to Florida 3 or 4 times in the summer of 2020 and it was far busier than I had ever seen it.
- defrost 3y agoI live in a "locked down" state - two million people, an area 3x larger than Texas. 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.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoThere has been admitted theft of literally hundreds of billions from the pandemic relief measures, but there has been no followup, no pressure from the public, no punishments. 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.
- sethrin 3y agoSocial justice is also economic justice. I'm not sure why you're talking about these as separate concepts.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoConsidering how happy corporate America is to adopt every social justice movement, while actively lobbying against every attempt to unionize or fight for better wages, you should be a little skeptical. 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.
- sethrin 3y agoCongratulations on successfully distinguishing rainbow capitalism from social justice. I don't think you're making the point you think you're making.
- TMWNN 3y agoI've heard it said that the people who were the most fanatical about the individual and societal dangers of COVID-19 are the ones who are most likely nowadays to chuckle and say "Boy, things sure got a little ridiculous back then, eh?"
- _hcuq 3y agoThere are decent proxies, eg divorce rate, which should provide good clues about the effects of lock downs. Another one would be domestic violence arrests and convictions. You can probably think of more. I would like to see someone try to do an honest look at this.
- watwut 3y agoPeople did had look on it and they are easy to find. 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.
- roenxi 3y agoI dunno, what counts as honest? Hot off the press: https://iea.org.uk/publications/did-lockdowns-work-the-verdict-on-covid-restrictions/ https://iea.org.uk/publications/did-lockdowns-work-the-verdi... 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.
- fullshark 3y agoSo is it the Pandemic hangover or smart phones?
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoThe article never actually says, which makes it feel like clickbait.
- svnt 3y agoIt is too early for population-level data but it seems likely that headed into the northern hemisphere summer there is a drop in mental health treatment being sought post-pandemic as social gatherings grow. 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.
- jb1991 3y agoPhones.
- pictureofabear 3y agoArticle seemed to end abruptly. It was a great start to what should be an article 3 to 4 times as long.
- jordan_curve 3y agoI bookmarked the article after the first few paragraphs to potentially share with some friends. Definitely a bit disappointed at the end. 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
- enneff 3y agoMake time to hang out when you’re not looking at your phone. Establish a norm that it’s rude to just pull out your phone while you’re with your partner or child.
- jayavanth 3y ago[flagged]
- pavel_lishin 3y agoThis walrus must be stopped immediately!
- GloomyBoots 3y agoCall in the eggman
- jb1991 3y agoWhat’s the reference here that I’m not getting?
- jjtheblunt 3y agoThe Url
- pavel_lishin 3y agoThe original title was "As a Therapist, I Know What’s Breaking Couples Up - The Walrus", since when you typically copy things to share to HN, it'll include the source, based on the HTML title of the page. I promise I was funny until editorial decisions kneecapped me :P
- bix6 3y agoDoesn’t help that tik and insta feed people super hot guys/babes spending massive coin all day. You too can date a sexy rich supermodel! And then all the memes are way funnier than any of my stupid jokes. And how could I ever compete with cute fluffy kittens.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago> And then all the memes are way funnier than any of my stupid jokes. 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.
- germinalphrase 3y agoI don’t know, man - I’m batting a thousand on how funny potty talk is to a three-year-old.
- bandyaboot 3y agoSame here, except for a seven-year-old. I’ve seen no indication that that sort of thing is going to get less funny any time soon.
- mturmon 3y agoWait a few years, and enjoy the pleasure of introducing them to the top shelf potty talk: Veep by Armando Iannucci.
- mensetmanusman 3y agoMy kids are old enough to have their eyes reach roll earth orbit after my jokes.
- aogaili 3y ago[flagged]
- turtleyacht 3y agoSub-heading is How relationships come to an end and the scourge of the smartphone
- Rapzid 3y agoYoung people may not remember this, but us elder millennials and earlier generations never had parents get divorced. Just didn't happen before smartphones. Family life was perfect.
- Rapzid 3y ago[flagged]
- jb1991 3y agoIn the United States, the 1980s was the decade with the highest divorce rates in the country’s history. In some states, the divorces even outnumbered the marriages!
- khuey 3y agoThat's the joke.
- kiernanmcgowan 3y agoDivorce was invented by the wedding industry in ‘96 to sell more weddings
- jahewson 3y ago
- rcme 3y agoEvery night my wife and I put the kid to bed and just kind of zone out on the couch for two hours, each on our smartphones. We don’t talk. I kind of love it? Like it’s not lonely but it’s a time for our brains just to do nothing after a long day. I’m sure we’d do something else if we didn’t have smartphones, but for us it seems ok.
- idopmstuff 3y agoPreach. Put some garbage reality TV on and she looks at IG while I look at Zillow or whatever. I work from home and she's home with the kid, so we're talking all day. Nice to just sit next to each other and relax.
- trustingtrust 3y agoMakes me wonder if the couples real reason is not the smartphones in this article but the fact that the relationship is already incompatible to begin with.
- Groxx 3y agoI think it's mostly a symptom, yes. People in an un-good relationship look for things to take them out of it - phones are always available and don't have the same stigmas or costs as, say, always staying out late or lots of drinking[1]. Previously the blame often fell on TV, radio, news, etc, and now practically all of that combined is in your smartphone. It's really not surprising why people use them for distraction. 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.
- idopmstuff 3y agoYeah, it seems fairly obvious to me that the underlying issue is that you're not being appropriately attentive to your partner. Whether that's because you're looking at a smartphone, addicted to meth, out of town on business constantly, working 20 hours a day on your new startup or whatever else is secondary.
- teunispeters 3y agoIt's not cell phones that's the stress, it's too much demands for attention, time and money combined with too little income. Cell phones are just where you see it showing up the most... 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).
- borissk 3y agoIf your hypothesis is right rich people should have very few divorces - and from my humble experience that's not the case.
- sk0g 3y agoFinancial and social constraints also prevent divorces, which may be less of an issue for people well off. 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.
- watwut 3y agoPoor people in fact divorce more then rich ones. Statistics really show what he says.
- defrost 3y agoIn absolute numbers, sure. 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 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.
- watwut 3y ago
- dangus 3y agoNone of this is a scientific analysis of the situation so I’m not sure how we’re supposed to take away a lot from this. Obviously it’s not really a therapist’s job to conduct a wide reaching study. Even keeping that in mind, it comes across as a baseless hot take. It’s already got one major bias built into it: happy couples don’t go to therapy.
- ineedasername 3y ago> happy couples don’t go to therapy. Sort of an inverted survivorship bias?
- wetwater 3y agoSince therapy is not an actual science . This whole article and the opinions are hot air.
- simbolit 3y agoWhy are you posting this to very second comment? What do you mean by "actual science"? Like it's not based on chemistry? Boy, have I got a surprise pharmaceutical industry for you. 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.
- dangus 3y agoTo be clear, I’m not going as far as you here. I’m not saying therapy is bunk or isn’t scientific at all. 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.
- jkhdigital 3y agoRight as I clicked the link, I thought to myself “I bet it’s smartphones.”
- bandyaboot 3y agoWell this one certainly hits home unfortunately.
- tayo42 3y ago> couples have to reconsider the balance of power: Who’s working? Who’s the primary parent? And that’s coming with a lot of renegotiations 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.
- svnt 3y agoI feel like having children before having these kinds of discussions is a leading cause of divorce.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoMy better half doesn't like when I refer to us as "roomies with kids", but that's just because we're at that point in our lives when we're so busy with work and kid activities that we can go a few days without having any time for each other. 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). :)
- kashunstva 3y ago> Do you people really put this much conscious thought into their relationships? 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.
- martindbp 3y agoYou have to think about these things when you have kids, how can you not? Especially during the pandemic, people were stuck in their houses with kids. It's almost impossible to get any work done with young kids in the house. Even as the pandemic was winding down we had so many restrictions at preschool that any little cold (of which every winter there is one every other week) meant staying home for about 7-10 days, which basically means one parent is busy taking care of the kid at all times. Add several kids with a rolling schedule of colds and stomach flu's and you have an untenable situation. You just can't have two parents working full time at that point, so someone has to sacrifice their career to some extent so that you can both stay sane. The pandemic was living hell for many families. And somehow the standards for how severe of a cold your kids can have before it's ok to send them to school have lowered permanently now, adding to the permanent pressures of parenting.
- zer8k 3y ago> Smartphones have caused more upheaval than anything I’ve seen in my career. 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.
- wiredfool 3y agoI just had a trip back to the small town island we moved from 8 years ago -- most of our cohort is in the "first kid is at the end of highschool/first year of college" sort of age, most have two + kids. 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.
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago(didn't read article, but...) 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.
- samuellevy 3y agoI did read the article, and it only vaguely describes the "problem" with smartphones in one paragraph, then it spends the rest of the article talking about the effects of the pandemic. The problem that it attributes to smartphones is that people will get distracted, then expect instantaneous communication, relationships require time & attention... 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."
- 3y ago
- solatic 3y ago> I can’t do any deep transformative work when the fire is raging. We need preventative care. If people come in when something is starting to be an issue between them instead of when they’re at a breaking point, I’d love that. Because then, in two or three sessions, you can be good to go—see you later! 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.
- sedatk 3y ago> There's still a stigma around seeing a therapist 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.
- wintermutestwin 3y agoYes, and the therapists rarely have a web presence, particularly the good ones.
- sdrinf 3y agoDuring covid, I did a bunch of soul-searching, and after covid, I reached out for psychologists to work through some issues I have (context: I'm single, so not with spouse, and the issue is mostly generational and geographical divide between me, and rest of my family). 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.
- thelastgallon 3y agoAll happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina
- malablaster 3y agoLiterarily, gibberish.
- tetromino_ 3y agoNah, it makes sense. Enormous variety of reasons for family unhappiness. Some couples get into fights because one person thinks the other is cheating. (Or knows the other is cheating, as in the case of Tolstoy's heroes.) Others get into fights because one person thinks the other is washing the dishes wrong for the 1000th time. Yet others get into fights because there is not enough money, no food on the table, only frustration which must be let out onto someone.
- hidninthewdpile 3y agoWonder in what percent of cases the smartphone is not causing the break up ... but rather providing one or both partners with an escape hatch that allows them to avoid having to go through with a break up.
- impissedoff1 3y agoWhy. Does. Every. Website. Pop. Up. A. Subscribe. Button. after. 5. Seconds?
- pier25 3y agoI love technology but smartphones have fucked so many things. 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.
- _cenw 3y agoI'm still waiting for a "Noise cancelling headphones culprit in divorce rate" headlines. There are so many ways to escape your partner. Doesn't mean they're root causes.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]