Are You Living in the Present?

Are you constantly on your phone when you’re with other people? Your friends? Your spouse? Your kids? In today’s short, but powerful podcast, learn the critical impact that constantly being on your phone can have on your relationships and some easy tips for being present when you're present!

---

Manny:

Welcome to another Art of Relationships podcast. We are grateful for listeners like you. Let's get right into it.

Chris Grace:

Well, it's good to have another podcast, Lis, and thank you too Manny for that awesome introduction. And so Alisa, we have questions that we get all the time from listeners, from people who attend conferences, and they write in and they have great questions. So let's do a podcast real quick on this question.

Alisa Grace:

Yeah. The one that we selected for today, you ready? Okay. He writes in and he says, "Date night last night with my wife was abysmal. I answered the phone with a call from an old friend on her birthday. Despite the fact that I told her I was on a date and at a seminar, I couldn't get off the phone for 15 minutes. My wife doesn't feel I put her first."

Chris Grace:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay.

Alisa Grace:

So.

Chris Grace:

So his question is, did I mess up.

Alisa Grace:

Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Chris Grace:

Right? Should I apologize? Or my wife feels like that was inappropriate. I'm not sure I do. Is that what he's saying?

Alisa Grace:

Yeah, he was saying I couldn't get off the phone for 15 minutes. It was my friends that had called in. I told her I was on a date, not a seminar, but I just couldn't get off the phone. And now my wife's ticked at me.

Chris Grace:

Okay.

Alisa Grace:

Basically, does my wife have a right to be mad? Did I mess up?

Chris Grace:

Yeah. Well, boy, here's... Alisa, these questions are always really simple for me. And they're simple for me because I have a view of-

Alisa Grace:

The answer is yes, you messed up.

Chris Grace:

Yeah, I just have a view of phones that maybe is archaic. And they're always there. We always have our phones. We're always connected. It is so different than... And I just, I don't really struggle in this area with that, but I know some people do.

And what I mean by that is I don't like carrying a phone with me. Some people, say, "Yeah, you never answer my calls or I text. You might not answer a text in two or three days, let alone in two, three minutes." And I think people now know that.

So for me, the answer is easy. Get rid of the phone. Don't take it on your date. Or if you have it on your date, turn it to silent, and if somebody calls, you ignore it. You can ignore it.

Alisa Grace:

Ignore it. Yeah.

Chris Grace:

Don't answer it during this time. If it's that important, someone's about to die, and someone is dead, then they'll probably call you right back. Right? And if they're dead, they probably won't call. But if they're alive and in danger, my guess is they'll figure out how to get ahold of you. Otherwise, you ignore that phone call.

Alisa Grace:

What is it that Tim Muehlhoff always says when he and Noreen are on a date night? He would tell his kids do not come downstairs unless there is blood, bone, or you've seen Jesus.

Chris Grace:

Yeah.

Alisa Grace:

It's like, I love what you said, Chris, is you put that boundary that, hey, this time is special because what does that communicate to his wife when he took the phone call in the first place? Even if it only lasted five minutes, what he did is he let that take priority over being with his wife, and that's what she's upset about. It's not the phone call. It's because it made her feel unvaluable or ignored or like she wasn't a priority.

Chris Grace:

Yeah. Like second place. Here we are, we spent all this time. We went on a date night. We now have our time, and that simply means the word date means you and me. And we put a boundary around that, and you have opened the door to you, me, and whoever was on this phone call.

And that's, by the way, why I don't like phones even on dates where people go. I might say something even with a friend. There's one friend that I could just say something, and they're like, "Oh, I know where that's out on the... Let me just show you real quick. There's a great song about that. Or there's a great webpage about this, or, Ooh, did you see this quote about that?" I'm like stop pulling up the phone and looking under Google for this cool thing that you saw.

I just want to talk with you, and I want to hang out with you. And I think, Lisa, you and I have pretty much made this one agreement. Here's how we do the phone. And it's like this. Lis, if there is somebody that's calling that we know is about to call. They're a family member, and there's blood, bone, or Jesus coming through, and we know that, they're going to this, or they've been at, they just went to the doctor and we're waiting on that call. Great. Take it. But if we're going to call this a date, then there is nobody that can interrupt that.

Alisa Grace:

Right.

Chris Grace:

Or a drive. Sometimes it's just a two hour drive, let's say down from LA down to San Diego. We want to go to a great restaurant. You will say to me, "Chris, I have my phone here. There's only one person that I'm going call. Are you okay if I accept this call from this one person that I'm waiting on?" And I say, "Yeah, I think that's great."

Alisa Grace:

Or our kids. If it was our kids, we'd probably say, okay.

Chris Grace:

Yep. Because we've been waiting on that particular phone call.

Alisa Grace:

Right.

Chris Grace:

Otherwise, if I say, Lis, there's on call I'm waiting on and this-

Alisa Grace:

I'm going to have to take it.

Chris Grace:

Yeah. Family member, friend, whatever. And I know, and you know that, and then we take it and hopefully end it. And hopefully they don't call during that time.

Alisa Grace:

But I love too, is that you always make sure that you communicate my importance as you're asking permission. So we ask of each other. We defer to each other and say, "Hey, Chris, it's Caroline, our youngest calling. So is it okay with you if we go ahead and take that call?" And you'll say, "Yeah, absolutely."

It's not because I have to ask your permission because you're the boss. I'm doing it out of common courtesy. It's a way of saying, "Chris, you're important to me, and I want to make sure that you know that I'm not ignoring you, but I feel like it's important, and I need to take this call."

Chris Grace:

And it is important. She's only two and a half, and if she's on the phone calling us at three, there's probably something wrong. Like she can't find woobie, and she's hungry and she's off by herself in the house and I'm all alone. Well, take the phone call, doggone it. We're going on a date anyway, but take the call, help her out.

Alisa Grace:

But it's that issue of asking permission or alerting them, "Hey, just so you know, this important call may be coming in, and I don't want it to intrude, but I have to take it, but I'll keep it short."

Chris Grace:

Yeah, and then-

Alisa Grace:

Something like that.

Chris Grace:

That's right. And so-

Alisa Grace:

And then you keep it short.

Chris Grace:

Yeah. And you do. You follow it. You keep it short. And hopefully there is nothing on a date night. When you're out, you're like nobody calls. I'm not taking any calls and you should know that ahead of time.

Now what about when you are dating. To me taking phone calls or looking at the phone, I'm just going to give you my bottom line. I think it's an ultimate show of disrespect.

Alisa Grace:

It's rude.

Chris Grace:

It's rude. Now, that's the way I view it. I'm also old. I'm in my late twenties. And so as a late 20 year old, I'm just not a digital native, and I look at the phone as not part of my life.

And I think if you are on the phone with somebody else on a date and looking up things, even if it's related to the conversation, oh, how many airplanes land at LAX? Look at all these cool planes. I wonder how many land on a daily basis? And you look it up. I'm like-

Alisa Grace:

What airplane is that?

Chris Grace:

... I don't really want to know what the plane is and how many land at LAX.

Alisa Grace:

And where that came from.

Chris Grace:

It's just a conversation. Don't look it up, and don't distract because then you find this text that came in or somebody gives you an update and you want to just, I want to see if they commented. I want to see how many people liked. No, stop. How about if I comment on you right now? And I like you and you like me and we don't do that. So I don't know. I just, I'm not a native.

Alisa Grace:

No, but you make a valid point. You have the statistic that you quoted once about the percentage of college students that reported feeling snubbed or phubbed, snubbed with their phone, phubbed by other people, by being on their phone. It was pretty large, it was like 40%?

Chris Grace:

On a daily basis, between 30 and 40% of college students have reported feeling snubbed by the presence of a friend who looks on their phone for whatever reason. They're checking-

Alisa Grace:

While they're interacting.

Chris Grace:

While they're interacting.

Alisa Grace:

Yeah.

Chris Grace:

And these are just probably friends that they're sitting there having lunch or coffee with or studying, and all of a sudden they're talking and the person looks down at their phone and picks up some things and does that.

Well again, if it's something that's important then great. And if you're just studying and sitting around doing nothing that they don't feel phubbed in that way. But they do if they're having a good conversation that's heart to heart, and all of a sudden the person looks down and picks up their phone.

And I just think it's rude. And so here's what I would say is like, "Hey buddy, I really have to pick up this phone call. So I just want you to know if it happens." Or, "Hey, this is, I'm sorry, it's my spouse." Or "Hey, it's my it's mom or-"

Alisa Grace:

It's my kid.

Chris Grace:

Or "I was waiting for this. I'm really sorry." And you just acknowledge what you're doing. And I think the other person that wants to acknowledge it is also very helpful.

Alisa Grace:

Yeah. And then you try to keep it as short as possible. Like if you're sitting in a restaurant, and the menu is on the QR code, okay, fine. You have to pull out your phone to get the code to be able to see what you want to order. The point is you just don't stay on it. Put it aside, put it in your pocket, put it in your purse, put it away, so when you get those alerts, you're not tempted by it because you want to communicate that the other person is special enough to warrant your entire attention.

Chris Grace:

I still remember one of our kids saying this. There were five or four or six, I can't remember, friends that all tended to go out on a regular basis. They were all just friends, but one of them was constantly on their phone, and you could see it in pictures that they would take. The one person would be looking down, always going over their phone. And what they started to realize was somebody asked all your best friends are right here. All of us are friends. Who in the world would you be talking?

And in this particular case, I remember, it was one of their parents. It was like their mom. And they kept talking. Well now even like five, six, seven years later, people still remember this person always talking on the phone, texting back and forth in a friend group with their parent.

Alisa Grace:

Right, yeah.

Chris Grace:

Telling them everything that's going on. Hold on, are you even enjoying this moment? Do you know how it's going to leave you? And the impression is you were never engaged with us. You were never connected to us. And by the way, that friend was somebody that in our particular situation, fell out of that group because there was never an emotional connection. They were always tied into, in this case, mom. And I just think that was so sad to see. I wish one of the friends would've said, "Hey, you, stop, listen, engage with us. Be part of the... Connect with us, put the phone down."

Alisa Grace:

Let your mom know you're in the middle of something and that you'll get back to her.

Chris Grace:

Yeah.

Alisa Grace:

That's all you've got to do.

Chris Grace:

Yeah, just have one hour of the quiet time with your friends. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Alisa Grace:

Yeah.

Chris Grace:

There's always somebody checking this. I got to post this. Oh, do you hear what they said? And then there's... Anyway, don't get me started. What do you think, Lis?

Alisa Grace:

I think that's good. I think we covered it.

Chris Grace:

Yeah. And so I guess it's this. If you are dealing with feeling phubbed, I think you need to just establish and talk about it, set your boundaries and talk about it with people and express how important they are and that you're going to make this effort to be technology free with them for this hour, half an hour, or whatever it is.

And with your spouse, I think it's the same thing. Right? You want to have that conversation.

Alisa Grace:

Absolutely.

Chris Grace:

And you want to be able just to say to them, "Listen, there are times in which you can take a phone call because I know it's important to you." But overall it seems important that I'm going to take this date night, and it is our time to be together to be alone technology free.

And by the way, for us, my problem is if we go to a restaurant, I cannot face a TV that has sports on.

Alisa Grace:

Oh, I hate that. Yeah.

Chris Grace:

Right? I mean, you go to certain restaurants, and here's the big game on or bunch of games on Sunday. And in fact it happened last night, and what did we do? I sat with my back away from the TV because I just want to see it.

Alisa Grace:

It's distracting.

Chris Grace:

It's a strain.

Alisa Grace:

I hate it.

Chris Grace:

And it's distracting, and so. Anyway, I think that's how I'd answer that question. What a great question. And I hope they go back on a second date night.

Alisa Grace:

Okay. Well, we're going to wrap it up this time for Art of Relationships podcast. And if you have a question that you would like for us to address, just get in contact with us at cmr.biola.edu, click on that button and send us your question. We would be happy to possibly address it in our next podcast.

Chris Grace:

And rate us with the thumbs up star.

Alisa Grace:

Five stars, baby.

Chris Grace:

There you go.

Alisa Grace:

Okay. You guys have a great day. Bye.

Manny:

Thanks for listening to the Art of Relationships. This podcast is only made possible through generous donations from listeners just like you. If you like it and want to help keep the podcast going, visit our website at cmr.bio.edu and make a donation today.