FamilyLife Today®

Dave Wilson: I found this week I'm thinking, "What am I doing scrolling through Facebook or Instagram looking for some funny reel or somebody talking theology or another home run?" It's just a waste of time.

Ann Wilson: We’re all hooked to it. You’re sitting over there doing the same thing. We’re in the same room, but we’re distracted. After days, weeks, and months of this, we have drifted.

Guest (Female): Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today. It’s just you and me in the studio today.

Ann Wilson: Yes, it is. Me and my man.

Dave Wilson: You and me and our cell phones. Let’s talk about the third person in our marriage.

Ann Wilson: You mean your girlfriend? Your other girlfriend? Go ahead, tell our listeners and our watchers. We’re talking about these devices that we’ve got in our hand right now in marriage. We’ve talked about them, but we haven’t necessarily talked about them in our marriage.

This has been a source of conflict for us over the years, to the point where I started calling your phone your other girlfriend. We’ll be on the couch watching this movie, and I want you to engage.

Dave Wilson: You don’t need to get that specific.

Ann Wilson: We’re engaging. I’m looking at you for your look of approval, "Isn't this so good?" and you’re on your phone.

Dave Wilson: I’m talking to your girlfriend. I literally looked down for one second.

Ann Wilson: No, because you watch it with it on your chest. I almost took a picture of you today driving to the studio because every time we get in a car—and I’m not exaggerating, this is 100%—I start driving, and I look over, and you're on your phone.

Dave Wilson: I have to get all my email stuff done.

Ann Wilson: It's like you’re not even in the car with me. It’s like my husband is over there with his phone. I’m going to call your phone your boyfriend, your little blue boyfriend, or whatever color you've got going now.

Dave Wilson: I had already begun working. That’s my work life right there. I’m working hard.

Ann Wilson: Whatever it is, it’s not me. I’m not your center of attention, and I should be.

Dave Wilson: You’re right. I get in the car because I’ve been busy, and I can sit down for the first time. By the way, tell them how many times you lose your cell phone a day. I’ve counted. She’s up to 4.8 times a day, every single day.

Ann Wilson: This is called the confession episode.

Dave Wilson: You want to hear something funny? We were doing a marriage conference in Arizona several years ago with three NFL couples. It was just a small little intimate retreat at this house.

Ann Wilson: Are you bragging?

Dave Wilson: No, I was just saying it was three quarterbacks and their wives. We’re driving to go have lunch together, and Ann is like, "I don’t know where my phone is."

Ann Wilson: I have an Apple Watch, so I can find my phone. I ding it, and I hear it: ding, ding, ding. It’s in the back seat. We’re good. It’s in the car somewhere.

Dave Wilson: We get to the restaurant, which had to be four or five miles away. She can’t find it in the back. Then the guy who is getting ready to park our car goes, "Oh hey, there’s a cell phone on the back bumper." It made it all the way to the restaurant bouncing around on the bumper.

Ann Wilson: It's because Jesus loves me. He takes care of me. He had a little angel sitting back there holding my cell phone on the bumper.

Dave Wilson: So you’re saying angels want us to have cell phones in our marriages? Is that what I just heard?

Ann Wilson: I’m saying some of you are thinking, "What are we doing today?" I think this is an important conversation to have in your marriage because it creates conflict, separation, and a drift many times.

We can be resentful, we can tease about it, or else we can just give up and not interact with one another. I think it’s a good conversation because it not only affects your marriage, but it affects your parenting too and your relationships with your friends.

Dave Wilson: And your kids have phones.

Ann Wilson: We are modeling to our kids. That’s probably why it’s worse for us now because our kids aren’t in the home.

Dave Wilson: Let’s talk about the cell phone in your marriage. Here are a couple of thoughts. The first one would be this: marriage attention leads to marriage affection.

Ann Wilson: Explain it.

Dave Wilson: Whatever you’re giving your attention to, you develop a relationship with. Obviously, if that attention is focusing on your spouse and you’re giving attention to your wife or to your husband, affection develops. It can also lead to conflict.

When your eyes are locked in, I’m going to be focused on you. It's not like you’re talking and I’ve got the phone in my hand or even on my leg. We think it’s off or it’s on vibrate. But what happens when you’re talking to me—which just happened on the couch—and my phone goes "buzz"?

Everything in me, because we’re so trained, the dopamine in my brain starts saying, "Reward, reward, reward. I have to see it." I can feel it. I’m fighting this thing where I want to give my attention to her, but I want to see what it was because maybe somebody’s asked me to play golf or something. It’s just crazy. But the second you do that, what does it say to your spouse?

Ann Wilson: Especially if we’re not in a big conversation, it’s not that big of a deal. But if we’re in something deep, or a conflict, or something that really matters, and the person is looking down and then they open it, it’s really hurtful.

I think what I can do at times, I’m like, "Oh, so you’re not even paying attention. You don’t even care." I think we can all do that, and it’s easy to do, especially if you’re in a relationship where you have conflict. It’s just an easy escape. I think that’s a big deal.

Dave Wilson: There was a little reel of Simon Sinek, a corporate speaker, writer, and author. He’s on stage and he says, "What happens when you’re in a conversation with somebody and you have this in your hand?" He has a cell phone in his hand. He goes, "You know what happens? It says to everybody in the room, 'You’re not the most important person.'"

Even if it’s just in your hand. He says, and it’s convicting because he says, "You go out to lunch with your friend or your spouse or anybody, and what we do to say it's not in my hand is we put it on the table. We even turn it over so we don't see it." He goes, "It still says, 'You’re not the most important person. This is. And if something happens that I need to see...'" He says, "Get rid of it." He throws the thing down.

He says you don’t need it. You can get through this hour without a cell phone. I don’t know if you know this, but doctors have done research. If you don’t have your cell phone around you for an hour, you’ll still live. Did you know this? They’ve proven you’ll still live.

Ann Wilson: Think about this as a listener. Before you go to bed, do you look at your phone? Is it beside the bed? For me it is, because I have my alarm on my phone. Also, is it the first thing you do in the morning—pick it up and look at what’s going on?

Dave Wilson: Obviously, we have to get a handle on it. It isn't like we’re going to live in a world with no digital or cell phones. We’re going to have them. We just have to have boundaries.

Ann Wilson: The truth is, and this is what our second point was at the conference: marriage distraction leads to marriage drift. I think that’s really true. Distraction in any area—it could even be video games—but when we’re both distracted, we disconnect from each other in every way.

Dave Wilson: It’s interesting. Remember our first year of marriage?

Ann Wilson: Yes.

Dave Wilson: We were sitting at the Weekend to Remember two weeks before we got married, and Dennis Rainey said something about the book of Deuteronomy. It said men in those days, when they got married, did not go to war for a year. It was a principle to say you need to stay home and build your new marriage to a place of stability, and then you can come back to your job basically.

We decided the first year of marriage, no TV. Remember that? We had one, and we put it in the closet. Deuteronomy 24:5. The only time I really struggled, and we might have pulled it out, was for the Super Bowl.

Ann Wilson: We also pulled it out at Christmas because we watched one movie we had never seen before, "It’s a Wonderful Life."

Dave Wilson: There were no cell phones back then, but it was like TV or anything could have been a distraction.

Ann Wilson: You don’t talk; you just watch.

Dave Wilson: We built our marriage because what do you do? You sit and you talk. You communicate.

Ann Wilson: It was probably our year that we fought the most because it was our first year and we’re figuring things out. But also, if we did have the TV out or if we had a phone, it’s really easy just to not engage with each other because it’s hard. It’s difficult.

Dave Wilson: And that’s easy. You do get dopamine hits. I found this week I'm thinking, "What am I doing scrolling through Facebook or Instagram looking for some funny reel or somebody talking theology or another home run?" It’s just a waste of time.

Ann Wilson: But we’re all hooked to it. You’re sitting over there doing the same thing. We’re in the same room, but we’re distracted. I think the point is you look up after days, weeks, months of this and you’re like, "We have drifted."

Drift is natural. The only way you get oneness is you have to work at it. Part of it is maybe we encourage our listeners and ourselves to do a digital Sabbath. Maybe it’s a day a week. Maybe it’s an hour a day. We have a son that does that.

Ann Wilson: This is going to be convicting for a lot of you, but especially if you have kids in your house, what would it look like when you came home from work or you stopped working if you’re working at home? You said, "Hey, from 5:00 to 8:00, there are no phones going on in the house. We’re going to engage with each other."

What I remember about that first year of marriage is we played a ton of games and we laughed. Remember our workouts? We’d work out together and we would laugh our heads off.

Dave Wilson: I remember doing sit-ups at the top of the stairs and running sprints in the street so I could go beyond horizontal and you’d hold my legs. We should do that again. Those card games—we would fight and laugh. That connection is from God, and it’s this gift from God.

If you’re listening or watching and you’re like, "We’re going to do this," shoot us an email. We’d love to hear what your plan is to get a grip on the digital part of your marriage.

Ann Wilson: Let’s ask the booth. What would you do, Bruce or Chancelle, if your spouse came and said, "I’d really like to do a digital fast from even 5:00 to 8:00, or maybe it’s a Sabbath on Sunday"? Would you guys do that?

Bruce: There are two things. One, I would want to, but I wouldn’t want to. It’s kind of like exercising. What I feel like is not exercising, but what I want is to exercise. So what I feel like doing, the fast from the phone? No. Do I want to? Yes. In my heart of hearts, I would appreciate that, but I would definitely not love it.

Ann Wilson: Is there a way to approach your spouse if they’re like, "This is dumb; I don’t want to do it"? Maybe we make it really simple like, "Hey, let’s try it once a week."

Chancelle: I would definitely do it, but I feel as though to your point, there would probably need to be a, "Let’s do this instead of doing that." In other words, "Hey, let’s watch a movie together instead of being in separate places of the house and on our phone." Or, "Hey, let’s go for a walk," or, "Hey, let’s go out to dinner. We’re going to leave our phones at home." I think just to say, "Let’s be off our phones," might be like, "Okay, then what?"

Ann Wilson: Strategize what to do instead.

Bruce: That’s so funny you say watch a movie together, which is great. But Maria and I have said that before. We’ll both be in bed just scrolling on our phones, watching shorts. It’s like, "Let’s not waste the night. Let’s do something. Let’s watch a show together." That’s how low the bar is, that "doing something" is watching a show—another screen.

Ann Wilson: We can totally judge each other. But I think it’d be an interesting conversation to have with God. God, what does this look like? Even talk to each other about it. What does this look like for our marriage, for our family? What could it look like? Are we satisfied with where we are right now?

Dave Wilson: Which brings you to another thought that we haven’t even talked about. This device—pointing to my iPhone or iPad if you’re just listening—could lead to sin as well. One of the stats I just came across says 75% of men and 45% of women admit to viewing pornography in the last 30 days. 50% of men said no one knew about their struggle. 84% said they have no one helping them with their struggle.

Again, this is an amazing tool. The Word of God, we can share Christ on this digital device. It’s an amazing blessing. There’s a lot of good, but it’s a portal to evil.

Ann Wilson: And not only that, but even comparison. You can watch reels about these husbands. This one husband just dances with his wife in the kitchen every night. I think, "I wish Dave would dance with me in the kitchen." Or another one is, "I will never let you take out the trash. This is my job." Every woman is like, "Aww, I wish my husband would say that." So it’s the comparison thing, too.

Dave Wilson: Anyway, just a heads up: be very careful. There have to be boundaries, restrictions. I will say, she has total access to my phone. She knows my passwords. She knows everything. Your spouse should be able to pick it up any time you want, look at anything. If you’re hiding that from your spouse, that’s a red flag.

We need men in our lives to check us, to ask us questions about that. Your spouse—women need the same thing. I remember one time I was going to dinner. We were on a Lions road trip, so we’re in a hotel in a city somewhere. Dan Orlovsky, one of our backup quarterbacks, and I decided to have dinner that night. I go down to his room. It’s just down the hall in the hotel, and his door—the lock was open.

I push open the door. "Hey Dan, let’s go." He’s not there. Nobody’s there. Where is he? He’s not even there. Then I called him, and he’s down in the lobby. He goes, "Dude, I’m down in the lobby. I’m waiting for you." So I shouldn’t tell you this, but before I left his room, I took toilet paper and TP’d the whole room. It’s pretty funny. We can do those things, right? It’s fun. So when he came back, there was toilet paper all through his hotel room.

I go downstairs to meet him to go to dinner. Many people know Dan Orlovsky is an ESPN broadcaster now. He’s more famous now than he ever was as an NFL player. But I said to him, "Dude, why did you leave your door unlocked?" He said, "Dude, I never lock my door on road trips because I don’t ever want to be alone and have that door locked and get in trouble with something on the TV or my phone. So I want a teammate to be able to walk in any second, and that helps me take care of temptation in my life." I thought, "Whoa, that’s pretty cool."

All that to say, what boundaries do you have? What safeguards are you employing? I think it would be just a great conversation to have with your spouse, with your family, with your kids. What’s your goal? What do you want this to look like as a family?

At the end of the day, if you want your marriage to thrive, if you want your family to thrive, it’s this simple: get your eyes off of this and get them on this and this. I’d say go vertical and go horizontal. Put them on your family, put them on your spouse, put them on your God, put them on the Word of God. If you’re going to use your phone, use it to do the One Year Bible or study your word.

Ann Wilson: I’m thinking of Romans 12:2, where Paul says, "Don’t be conformed by this world." When we’re on our devices, we’re being conformed to the world, even the algorithms. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind. How do we renew our minds? We’re in the Word. We’re talking to God. That’s the best place to go.

Dave Wilson: I wrote this at the end of our talk at the marriage conference. What if you treated your spouse like your phone? Think about it. What if you responded to your spouse as quickly as you responded to a text? What if you carried their words in your heart the way you carry your phone in your pocket? What if you checked in with them as often as you check your apps? It would change everything.

Here is the last thought. Your phone isn’t the enemy, but it’s a competitor. Every day, you’re casting votes with your attention. So here is the question: what or who is getting the best of you? Because the marriage you want tomorrow is built by the attention you give it today.

If you want help in your marriage, we have put together some of our best stuff on marriage. It’s at FamilyLife.com/marriagehelp. It’s yours for free. Again, it’s FamilyLife.com/marriagehelp. If you want a great resource, I think it’s one of the best books ever written on marriage—the one we wrote a few years ago called "Vertical Marriage." You can get that at FamilyLife.com as well.

Guest (Female): FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.