I’ve never been a fan of the winter. I don’t like the snow. It’s a bother. A nuisance. The powdery white flakes are a pain in my ass. I don’t like the darkness. The days are too short. My mood is too low, and I don’t like the cold, especially the constant chill that consumes my face and chest and snakes down my back. But nothing is as cold as my marriage. At least not now. Not today. Why? Because my husband is addicted to his phone and it’s destroying our relationship.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: I must be exaggerating. It isn’t that bad. He can’t be that bad, but it is — and he is. When my husband wakes, he turns toward his phone: not to his son, his daughter, or me. Never me. He consumes IG Stories with his coffee, catching up on snaps and filtered images, not his wife or real life. He spends his afternoons scrolling through Facebook instead of talking. Instead of snuggling or tickling or playing with our kids. And at night he watches video after shitty video.
He communicates with me not through words, but through texts, tags, and memes.
But his addiction doesn’t end there: My husband is on his phone for work, which is both suggested and (in these current times) required. He answers emails at all hours. There is no shutting things off or “end of day.” He spends hours reading status updates about his friends instead of talking to them. Instead of being with them. And it isn’t just me who is affected. My daughter fights for his attention. My son says “dada” a dozen times before he blinks. Before he even looks up. And while we’ve been through a lot over the course of the last 18 years — we’ve endured four moves in three states; we’ve faced chronic illness and mental illness; we’ve battled addiction and survived suicide — I’m not sure we’ll make it.
