5 Ways Marriage Is Harder in 2017 (and What You Can Do About It)
SOCIAL MEDIA CONFLICTS WITH COUPLE’S QUALITY TIME
While it may have been considered rude less than a decade ago, taking the time to scroll through your phone while in the presence of another human being is considered pretty commonplace nowadays. But according to Jim Seibold, PhD, LMFT, practicing in Arlington, Texas, the seemingly harmless act of checking Instagram while on the couch with your spouse is leading to bigger issues in present day marriages.
“For many of my marital clients, social media has become quite intrusive for two related reasons,” Seibold explains. “First, it takes away from interactive time together. Spending too much downtime checking social media limits face time with each other. A lack of interaction ultimately leads to feelings of disconnection. Second, couples become resentful of social media use, and often report feeling that social media is more important to their partner than they are. They feel that given a choice of spending time with each other or their smartphone, their partner will choose the smartphone.”
People feel that given a choice of spending time with each other or their smartphone, their partner will choose the smartphone.
Another way that social media is putting stress on today’s relationships? Comparing your own, unfiltered marriage to what other married couples are posting on their profiles. “An additional issue that arises occasionally is when people start to compare their lives with what they are seeing displayed by others on social media,” he says. “This is particularly problematic when couples compare their lives in a more negative light.”
RELATIONSHIPS ARE GIVEN LESS PRIORITY
Not so long ago, men and women had a very short runway before their new spouse became their top priority. Tying the knot a decade or more after you’ve graduated from high school opens up opportunities to establish other priorities, like forging strong friendships and carving out career trajectories. Michael D. Zentman, PhD and director of Adelphi University’s post graduate program in couples therapy, says that this can end up competing with the amount of attention a marriage needs in order to be successful.
“The overall impact is that, for many contemporary couples, their relationship is unwittingly given much lower importance than most marriages can endure,” he says. “If the job, the children, the gym and the friends are consistently prioritized over the marriage, the marriage, over time, can wither like an underutilized muscle.”
MORE PRIVACY MEANS MORE INFIDELITY
Before the age of cell phones, extramarital affairs were much more difficult to carry out — and as a result, more easily found out. Today’s marital indiscretions can all be carried out on a personal, password protected phone that it is not at all uncommon for our partner to be constantly glued to — which Beth Sonnenberg, LCSW, practicing in Livingston, NJ says has a lot to do with rising infidelity statistics.
“One of the biggest changes in modern marriage is that people have more private lives thanks to texting, emails, IMing and Facebook Messenger that make dishonesty more prevalent,” she says. “Whether it’s having an emotional or sexual affair or gambling or porn addiction, it’s easier to hide things from your spouse. Gone are the days of the mistress calling the home phone during dinner time. This makes cheating more prevalent than ever before.” Men have long been thought of as the cheating sex, but a recent study of over one thousand men and women done by the Kinsey Institute found that nearly 20 percent of both the men and women surveyed have cheated on their partner.
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