264. Red Flags To Look For When It Comes To Technology, And Boundaries To Set Together

Have you ever felt like your phone controls your life, or your spouses life, and takes priority over everything else? Your device is with you when you wake up, when go to bed, and go on date nights. We go into full blown panic mode if we forget it somewhere.

These devices are the most addicting thing in our lives, and they are having profound negative impacts on our marriages and relationships.

If you have listened to our other podcast episodes such as 234. with Nate Kemp, or 197. Why you need to disconnect if you want to connect as a couple, you know how addictive technology is.. or can be if we are not careful.

In this episode, we discuss the red flags to look for when it comes to technology, and the boundaries you should set as a couple to keep from falling into this abyss that will take your marriage down. Join us for this important episode.

If you haven't already, go check out the Ultimate Intimacy App in the app stores, or at ultimateintimacy.com to find "Ultimate Intimacy" in your marriage. It's FREE to download and so much fun! Find out why over 700,000 couples have downloaded the app and give it such high ratings and reviews!

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If you have any feedback, comments or topics you would like to hear on future episodes, reach out to us at amy@ultimateintimacy.com and let us know! We greatly appreciate your feedback and please leave us a review.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You are listening to the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast, where we discuss how to find ultimate intimacy in your relationship. We believe that, no matter how many years you've been married, you can achieve passion, romance, happiness and ultimate intimacy at any stage of your life. Join us as we talk to not only marriage experts, but couples just like yourself and people who are just flat out fun. The Ultimate Intimacy Podcast is for couples who have a good relationship but want to make it even better.

Speaker 2: 0:41

Red flags to look for when it comes to technology and boundaries you can set together.

Speaker 2: 0:45

Welcome to the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast with Nick and Amy, and I don't want the title to be misleading we're not talking about people with unhealthy relationships.

Speaker 2: 0:57

We're, of course, talking about people with healthy relationships. Most of you that are listening to the podcast are people with healthy relationships. The listening to the podcast are people with healthy relationships, and so you know again the red flags to look for. These are more of just signs to kind of look for to say, hey, maybe we're abusing social media a little bit, maybe you know we're a little too addictive. Or you know, just just taking a self, I guess, look at things and recognizing, hey, do we have a problem with this right? And then also the boundaries of things you can do to set boundaries together to make it so you can combat these issues with social media, because social media really is a massive issue in life and is affecting a lot of marriages in a negative way. And so let's, let's have a good conversation about it, talk about it and figure out healthy ways to protect your marriage from it and not even just social media.

Speaker 3: 1:54

Today we're gonna be talking more like social media, yes, but like technology in general, phones in general. I mean phones. We have so many spouse saying that phones are wrecking their intimate lives. Right, the emotional connection's off because of addiction of phone use. So many husbands saying their wife can I'm too tired tonight to be intimate. Oh, but she can scroll TikTok for hours, no problem, right?

Speaker 3: 2:20

Her eyes aren't too tired for that, so it's causing a lot of issues and I think a lot of issues, and I think a lot of us are guilty of that, even in healthy marriages. I think this is attacking healthy marriages too. Oh, no question and and it's.

Speaker 2: 2:33

It comes down to this. It's just a distraction, right, if we can be distracted from doing better things just with time wasters like, like Amy said, this is a distraction that's keeping couples from connecting. They'd rather be on their phones than connect intimately, or at least one spouse would, and so, yeah, it is causing a lot of destruction.

Speaker 3: 2:56

Well, sexual or emotional connection, like a lot of husbands will get home maybe from work or sit on their couch, the couch, scrolling their phone to kind of relax what which is can kill the emotional intimacy first right.

Speaker 2: 3:09

Well, and I and I will be the first to admit that we do the same thing, right like there's a lot yeah, there's times that we're like in the evening we're just on our phones and we're killing time, which is now now for us.

Speaker 2: 3:19

We spend a lot of time together during the day, so I think it can be justified a little bit right Like we connect. We have the opportunity to connect a lot more than maybe the regular couples do. Where the husband's going to work or both spouses are working, we spend more time together, but we're also guilty of this. What we don't want to have happen is for our relationship is oh, we're on the phone, so we're not talking and connecting on the phone, so we're not talking and connecting. So we recognize that, hey, when we're talking about this podcast, we're talking about things that we uh, maybe struggle with a little bit or want to figure out how to better um, you know, deal with it in our relationship as well. We're not immune to it either.

Speaker 3: 3:59

Absolutely, Absolutely. So we're going to jump into some red flags that maybe technology not just necessarily social media, like we said, but technology could be kind of destructive to your relationship. And then we'll jump into some healthy boundaries to set so that it doesn't wreck your intimacy.

Speaker 2: 4:16

Yeah, so if you're if, as we go through these things, if you're doing any of these things, just recognize, hey, this might be a red flag and something that I want to be careful about right and and then sit down together as a couple and say, hey, how do we do better at this, um, so that we don't fall into that abyss, so to speak, of letting our marriage go, you know, deteriorate, and we head down the wrong road?

Speaker 3: 4:39

and not even deteriorate sometimes. Sometimes it's just causing your marriage to stay mediocre instead of being passionate and thriving and we always talk about like we don't. We didn't get married just to have some boring, mediocre marriage. We got married to have a passionate, exciting, fun marriage. Right like marriage can be amazing if you make it, but these, these phones, they're wrecking that.

Speaker 2: 5:01

So totally agree. All right, sweetie. So let's dive in and let's get to business okay.

Speaker 3: 5:07

So the first red flag is secrecy. And I'm not talking about, like, online cheating, necessarily. I'm talking about like sometimes we're secret secret too secret with our phone use. Like sometimes we'll sit in our car and do it so our spouse doesn't see it, or yeah, you know what I mean. Like I think that we need to be very mindful of like what our screen times are and and talk to our spouse and communicate, but do you feel like me being on, I'm on my phone too much. Like it takes a pretty humble person to ask that, but I think a spouses would weekly say do you feel like I need to cut back on screen time? Do you feel like it's affecting our emotional and intimacy? Is it affecting our sexual intimacy? Would be if couples would just ask each other that question, then like genuinely taken the response and try to work on that. That would help marriages hugely well, I think.

Speaker 2: 6:05

Secrecy- as well, too, is like trying to maybe hide something, and even if it doesn't seem bad, if you're just like I really don't want my spouse to see it, that's probably not a great place to start, because that's probably going to lead to other things, right? So, like amy and I, amy can knows my password on my phone, she can get on at any time.

Speaker 2: 6:24

Uh, vice versa with hers, like we just just being open there's nothing to hide, and I think if you have that that type of outlook, um, where you're just like I have nothing to hide, they can get on it. I think that's going to help you be like anytime you're maybe looking at something or what have you maybe really think, oh, is this something that I'm okay with my spouse seeing, or right, whatever, that is a good way to protect your marriage. That's not, it's not babysitting, it's not taking away your freedom or anything like that. It's just it really helps you be in a good place to to figure out, like you know, do I want to go down that road? Right, what am I looking at? How much time am I spending?

Speaker 3: 7:06

So just any kind of secrecy, like you talked about. And I like that you pointed out like anything we look at or anything we do would my would I be okay with my spouse sitting next to me? Like we should live our entire life like that right, yeah, right so um. The next one is excessive time online and we're all guilty of that. We're not just talking social media, though. We're youtube. We're talking just watching videos, just scrolling online.

Speaker 2: 7:34

Even even if you're online learning stuff, it can be too excessive if it's impacting your marriage negatively right, just like anything else, like work, careers, hobbies, like balance, right, healthy balance well, I think what most couples do is most couples fill the time of their day with just tons of different stuff and then they say, well, we don't have enough time at the end of the day for each other, so maybe tomorrow, if we have more time?

Speaker 2: 7:58

And my point is is a time for couples typically takes the backseat, like that's the last thing on the priority list? So instead of looking at it that way like set time each day to connect as a couple, and if that means it's 30 minutes or an hour or 15 minutes, whatever that is you is that you and your spouse needs to connect fill that time first and then whatever leftover time you have, then you can use it on a time waster because the important stuff has already been fulfilled absolutely, and a great tip for this would be is to climb into bed and like emotionally connect Use conversation Start, spend 30 minutes just connecting with each other or making love to each other.

Speaker 3: 8:43

Sexually connect first, and then you have plenty of time after to be like, hey, we're already connected. Can we sit on our phones for an hour? Like well, like it doesn't take long.

Speaker 2: 8:53

And how often do you see and us included couples climb into bed. They're getting ready for bed, they both get on their phones.

Speaker 2: 8:59

They're both on there for 30 or 45 minutes no one's talking, they're just on their phones and then they go to bed, right, like imagine how much better that would be, like amy said, if you were like talking and snuggling and connecting. And then you know you get done making love and you're like, oh, we got 15, 20 minutes before we probably need to go to bed. Then you can get on there and you know, do, do whatever you want to do, I guess, so to speak absolutely.

Speaker 3: 9:25

It's all about priorities too, right, and it's about if your wife needs to talk over you being on your phone. That's emotional connection, or maybe she has a higher drive. If your spouse has a high drive and wants to sexually connect a few nights a week, maybe prioritize that first. That's going to make a really big statement in your marriage that you're choosing your phone over your spouse.

Speaker 2: 9:46

Well, we've also talked about this before in past episodes. Like a lot of, I think maybe women more so but sometimes men might get their emotional needs, or some of their emotional needs, met through social media or online or different things like that, which may sound weird, but I think that does happen. Right, when you're on social media, you're obviously fulfilling a need that you have, so is that need coming from something like social media, then you don't need that need from your spouse, and if that's the case, if social media is replacing the needs you get from your spouse, then that's a problem as well.

Speaker 3: 10:26

And what he's talking about is that we've heard from several husbands that their wife gets a lot of comments and messages and stuff on their social media, which is kind of feeling that bucket of. I need words of affirmation or something right so it's important to talk about and figure out for yourself. To not just talk about. Figure out why. Why am I being driven to mindlessly scroll social media? Or why am I needing compliments from other people? Or why am I needing to post certain things like what? Why is it that I need that?

Speaker 3: 10:58

so bad over a deep relationship.

Speaker 2: 11:01

What needs am I missing right, instead of getting the needs from your spouse?

Speaker 3: 11:05

absolutely. The next one is a red flag is noticing that your spouse is a more emotionally detached from you. I think a lot of couples are starting to recognize the more that both of them are scrolling, or just one of them are scrolling, the more detachment they're feeling in their relationship.

Speaker 2: 11:23

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3: 11:24

I mean that's a pretty common and very noticeable sign is when your spouse starts to kind of detach themselves to you right Like the emotional connection's not very strong.

Speaker 3: 11:34

Your conversations are going down, you're not really. I think in our last podcast episode we talked about being able to sense what your spouse is going through, like if they're stressed, if they're sad, if they're depressed just like being able to sense their emotions, and how important that is to know, to kind of be able to look at them and know how they're feeling. Like when you're emotionally connected, you can kind of read your spouse and be there for them, and when phones get totally prioritized over the relationship there's going to be that disconnect.

Speaker 3: 12:03

That starts to disconnect, you stop. You stop reading your spouse's emotions, and that's a big barrier.

Speaker 2: 12:09

Well, we did a podcast on that, I think, why you need to disconnect, to connect as a couple, right? So absolutely.

Speaker 3: 12:16

The next one is inappropriate communication which is not just on social media.

Speaker 2: 12:23

This could be anywhere, right yeah, but you see a lot of it on social media obviously, like I mean, how many affairs have started on social media, like they start emotionally unbelievably high of the amount of couples that end up having affairs that started on social media so I think this one comes down to who are you private messaging?

Speaker 3: 12:44

what are you private messaging? Who are you privately like those kind of things?

Speaker 2: 12:50

all right, bottom line is you just if you're married, you probably shouldn't be having conversations with the opposite sex on social media, right? Right, it's one thing if you're commenting on something or responding to a comment, but having conversations, but even that there's such a fine line with who you're conversing with online. For sure, right yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:15

I mean, that's just a whole other situation. But the next one is, like we already said, kind of but obsessive use of social media, like so how you. If you notice that your spouse would literally rather scroll for hours, then have a conversation with you, go on a walk with you, be intimate with you, have a date night with you, you are going to feel very unloved very fast.

Speaker 2: 13:39

Yeah, I was going to ask the question how do you know if a spouse is kind of addicted to their device, right? What would be the threshold of that?

Speaker 3: 13:47

Well, I would go back to the one before. Are you feeling emotionally disconnected?

Speaker 2: 13:50

right, yeah, and I think if the answer you're exactly right.

Speaker 3: 13:53

If it's yes, then they are.

Speaker 2: 13:54

If the answer is yes, then it doesn't matter if they're on their phone for an hour a day or 10 hours a day. If you're feeling emotionally disconnected in a relationship, then the answer is yes.

Speaker 3: 14:03

The answer is yes, and this that's what I was going to say is like a husband, I think a wife, I mean, this is just what we hear from other couples but, like a lot of men complains, the wives can scroll social media at night in bed instead of being intimate, like that's their excuse. I'm too tired, I'm too stressed.

Speaker 2: 14:25

I'm whatever all these things, but they can be on their phone, but vice versa.

Speaker 3: 14:29

The way you can ruin emotional connection is being a husband that sits on the couch on his phone while his wife's taking care of the kids cleaning up after dinner making dinner, she's doing all the tidying of the house or all those kind of things Like that. They both go hand in hand, right? So?

Speaker 3: 14:45

the phones are wrecking both areas of intimacy. The next one that I want to bring up is defensiveness. This one takes a lot of humility, like if your spouse says, hey, I just kind of feel like you're on your phone a lot.

Speaker 2: 15:02

I think the average person is gonna know I'm not, no, I'm not you are too.

Speaker 3: 15:06

Yeah, right, you're on your phone as much as I am, instead of just saying you know what you know.

Speaker 2: 15:11

Maybe you're right. Maybe we need to set some timelines or boundaries or things like that.

Speaker 3: 15:17

But even defensiveness when it comes to hey, I would appreciate if we could set some boundaries with this. Or maybe we could be more careful about who we follow on social media. Or when your spouse starts to get defensive about any of those kind of things, it's a red flag.

Speaker 2: 15:36

Oh, for sure.

Speaker 3: 15:36

Right, that's going to make you feel automatically emotionally disconnected, just like that, yep, because defensiveness usually means guilt. Sometimes.

Speaker 2: 15:45

Especially when you're trying to express your feelings of how you feel, right, right, like. I feel like you're on your phone too much and it's getting in the way of our connection or whatever, and you're expressing how you feel and then they get defensive.

Speaker 3: 15:58

Right, right. And the last one I want to bring up is comparing your spouse to others. Okay, I would like to add not even comparing your spouse. I would compare almost anything to others is going to wreck your marriage, and we've talked about this before. But social media, when you're constantly lusting after people, the opposite sex, houses, cars lifestyles whatever it is, jobs doesn't matter Like that is wrecking your intimacy.

Speaker 3: 16:26

Like that is wrecking your intimacy and I think this is a personal thing that we need to look at ourselves and think are the things that I'm looking at or lusting after affecting my marriage? Are they affecting the way I think of my spouse and of my life?

Speaker 2: 16:38

Yeah, If you're constantly looking at things and thinking, well, why is my life not like that? Why don't I have that? And we've shared in past episodes that we felt like that right In certain areas and we've actually eliminated certain things or doing certain things or seeing certain things from our life just because of those feelings.

Speaker 2: 17:00

And so yeah, just to really be aware of those things. How are they making you feel? Are they uplifting you and making you feel grateful for what you have, or are they making you just feel like you don't have enough and and you need more? And why can my husband not provide and give me what I want? Or vice versa?

Speaker 3: 17:16

or vice versa, right, so we're going to talk about some quick boundaries that you can set up in your marriage that will help with screen time, phone addiction, social media, just so you feel more emotionally connected to each other and sexually, hopefully. Um. The first one is designating screen free times in your marriage.

Speaker 2: 17:36

Yeah, I think that's important.

Speaker 3: 17:37

Like we. We're not good at not taking our phones in our bedroom. We'll flat out admit that because that's not a problem for us. We feel like we can connect, talk about it. We still really prioritize emotional connection and sexual connection all the time, but if it's a problem with you that this is important well, I think you you hit on the.

Speaker 2: 17:56

The point a few minutes ago is um, is an issue like, do you recognize there is an issue? And I think you and I both in our relationship because we spend so much time together during the day like, we recognize it's not an issue, right? So we're okay being laxed in this area, um, where maybe for other couples it would be a lot better to say yeah, no, no devices in the bedroom. What we're saying is find what works for you in your relationship, based upon what you're dealing with and what your lifestyle is like and things like that, because everyone's plan of what works for them is going to look different.

Speaker 3: 18:33

For sure. But this could also, instead of just saying no phones in the bedroom maybe that won't work for you but no phones at dinner time, that's a big one. Like what happened to family dinners, right, like even at dinner when you're all connected, or if it's just the two of you and you're on your phone while you're eating like even just that simple change can can be huge. And date night no phones on date night like that's a big. Yeah, we get, you might have to get your phones if you have kids at home or whatever for emergencies, but what we're saying is don't yeah, what we're saying is like, don't be scrolling your emails and social media and different things while you're at dinner.

Speaker 2: 19:05

right, you know what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. If you get a text from your kids, yeah, absolutely Answer the text.

Speaker 3: 19:13

Yes, but we see so many like our date nights now we just love to look around at the restaurant or the movie, wherever we go and everybody is on their phones.

Speaker 2: 19:22

It's sad. You literally will be at a restaurant and everyone's looking at their phones.

Speaker 1: 19:27

They're not talking at all and then they get to the dinner table, and half of them are like that as well.

Speaker 2: 19:31

While they're eating dinner, they're looking at their phones. You're like this is unbelievable, right you can't go an hour you can't, you literally don't want to sit and talk to your spouse and connect that way. You'd rather be on your phone looking at just junk, right it usually is a time waster yeah, unless you're doing business and we understand that it's usually a time waster um.

Speaker 3: 19:53

The next boundary I would hope everyone would set is around passwords, sharing passwords, how you feel about that in your marriage, what you're going to do about that in our marriage. It is a here's all my passwords. Here's all my passwords. I got nothing to hide.

Speaker 3: 20:09

I've never had to check his phone I've never had to check any of his accounts or anything because he's so open to give them to me. I'm like I trust you. When someone's like I don't want you to know my phone, that would be red flagged me. I'd be like now.

Speaker 2: 20:22

I think the trust is gone oh, absolutely the second year spouse says well, I don't want you on my phone. I, I mean that's a huge red flag.

Speaker 3: 20:28

Why not Right Like?

Speaker 2: 20:30

and it has. It really has nothing to do with privacy. If they're doing things they shouldn't be doing and trying to hide that from you, that's that's an issue.

Speaker 3: 20:39

Wrecking emotional connection, just that quick. I would hope that every spouse would be like you know what, babe? I am a hundred percent transparent. I got nothing to hide. I love you more than anything. I would never do anything to jeopardize our marriage. Here's my phone, here's my passwords. You feel free, I can guarantee. Even if your spouse was like, okay, I'm going to look at your phone and you're kind of bugged by that, whatever, if you had to have said you have free access to my phone, I have nothing to hide, they might look at it a few times and they're gonna build trust so fast with the fact that just you're handing it over. They're not even gonna want to look at it two days later yeah I say they probably won't even want to look at it.

Speaker 2: 21:14

If just the fact that you're willing to do that it shows that, hey, I got nothing to hide right absolutely, absolutely, um.

Speaker 3: 21:20

The next one is discussing between the two of you online interactions. So this would look like like us when we first got married and Facebook was just coming out, we both had a couple exes that tried to defriend us. So that was the perfect opportunity for us to look at each other and be like what do we do in this situation? I don't really want you following an ex, do you want me following an ex, because we saw in our own lives from family members marriages that got destroyed, because they connected with exes.

Speaker 3: 21:53

And so we decided in our marriage you know that's not going to be a problem in our marriage we're just going to be like nope, no exes in our marriage. We don't even do opposite sex.

Speaker 2: 22:03

I didn't choose them. Why do I need them?

Speaker 3: 22:05

in my life, right, yeah, it's time to move on. So that's just us. It's going to look different from everyone, but having I think the most important thing with this is having those discussions absolutely what boundaries are we going to set that we both feel good about, what keeps us both feeling emotionally secure and safe in our relationship?

Speaker 2: 22:23

so you, know what's what's accepted and what's crossing the line and what's not crossing the line. I mean, if there's no line, you don't necessarily know what's crossing the line.

Speaker 3: 22:33

And the worst thing that can happen is six months down the road something happens, and it was all because you didn't set, you didn't talk about it first off, right?

Speaker 2: 22:42

You set a boundary about it.

Speaker 3: 22:43

It just totally helps with trust. The next one is common sense just limiting your screen times and I know this sounds so dumb because we're adults and we're mature but I, even on my own apps, realize sometimes how I don't realize how fast time's going. So I set a time limit on my app and it's like oh, you've been on your app for so and so.

Speaker 3: 23:05

And it shuts it down and it says would you like to ask for more time? Of course you're asking yourself, but so many times I've noticed, okay, I'm going to give myself 15 more minutes and then I'm literally going to be responsible, I'm going to shut it off, but at least that's a warning. Like this is how long you've been on your phone, and I think warnings or little reminders are great for adults.

Speaker 2: 23:25

Oh, I totally agree.

Speaker 3: 23:26

Right, totally agree, are great for adults. Oh, I totally agree. Right, totally agree, totally agree. Um agreeing on privacy settings, I think that every marriage needs to talk about this, like what kind of settings they have on their phone, how much is like? I don't. I don't know why anyone needs privacy settings, honestly.

Speaker 2: 23:42

Yeah, I don't, I was gonna say I don't even know what we're talking about privacy settings are really.

Speaker 3: 23:48

Yeah, there's just a lot of you don't even have social media, but there's, so there's privacy settings on social media accounts. So I think with this one, it's just about being very transparent with your social media, who you're following, who you're messaging, just like we said, not keeping secrets and being all open.

Speaker 2: 24:05

I mean that's what marriage is?

Speaker 3: 24:06

you're committed to your spouse?

Speaker 2: 24:07

Yeah, because it's so easy. I mean that's what marriage is You're committed to your spouse. Yeah, Because it's so easy. I mean, if you get in a fight or something and then all of a sudden you have someone reach out to you and I mean there's so many bad things that can happen, no, I don't think any person ever thinks oh, I'm going to get on and have an affair, right, Right.

Speaker 2: 24:22

Like it just starts out with little things, and that's why it's so important to protect yourself, your marriage, your boundaries, even in the vulnerable times, by saying you know what? I'm putting up a fence. No one's getting past this fence, they're not going to do anything to impact my relationship.

Speaker 3: 24:38

The next one is checking in with each other regularly. I don't know what that looks like for you.

Speaker 2: 24:44

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 24:44

Right, like we don't. He doesn't even have social media and we just use it mostly for business. So I'm like there's not really any check-ins in our relationship. But if you are constantly on your phone, if you feel like screen addiction is a real thing, I think, it's good to have a weekly meeting in your marriage where you're just like, hey, how can we cut back screen addiction so that we can be more intimate or more emotionally connected. What kind of activities.

Speaker 2: 25:14

Can we do this week without our phones so that we can feel like we're still in love, right, even for us for business, like I'll get emails that come in and I'll ask him? I'll be like, hey, how do we respond to this together, right, or what's an appropriate thing to say? Um, even dealing with work things, we still are like some things there's probably better to respond together or at least have amy see, or vice versa. If it's the opposite sex asking a certain question, um, like we still. I mean, even even then it's still important, right, even for just our work stuff and I was gonna say you've done nick's done a really great job lately on.

Speaker 3: 25:48

If we are on date night and we're doing something important and he gets a work thing that he feels like he needs to answer really quick, you're pretty awesome. Be like hey, I just got this work question. It looks kind of urgent. Do you care if I just jump on there really quick and and that's just respectful? I think in both husband and wives it shows that you're like hey, I know that we're in the middle of something. This is what it is. I don't want you to think I'm just mindlessly scrolling and not paying attention or that what you're doing or what we're doing together isn't important, and I think that's really important in marriage for sure right, um.

Speaker 3: 26:19

The next one, like we already said, is establishing tech free zones. We talked about that. Seek permission for sharing, like you, you just said, I think that, and we see that a lot on our account because we have quite a big it's growing Instagram account where a lot of spouses will come just hammer their spouses in the comments.

Speaker 3: 26:43

And it breaks my heart. It's not personal attacks, but it's if you have a ton of awful stuff going on in your marriage, go seek professional help. Go talk to your spouse about it. Don't go releasing on social media.

Speaker 2: 26:58

And if you do want to share, it ask your spouse Say hey, are you okay if I share this issue? We're going through to see if we can get some help instead of, yeah, doing a lot of stuff, maybe secrecy, and you guys, we're not saying don't reach out to us or don't reach out to other people at all if you have an issue, because we're totally, totally good with that.

Speaker 2: 27:20

We want to help just sometimes, and sometimes there are things or certain subjects that are more secretive, but just just keep that in mind, be careful. You know what? Okay, if my spouse were to see this email or see me writing this, would they how? How would they react to that?

Speaker 3: 27:36

and I really do appreciate. I do get a lot of direct messages where um, like a husband or wife will say hey, I told my spouse I'd like to reach out to you, like you said, and talk about this and get some help and I'm like that you know that's really respectful. That shows it shows where their loyalty lies right for sure, right yeah um.

Speaker 3: 27:54

The next one is staying present in your marriage, and we're going to end with that one, because making a conscious effort to just be there for your spouse and to just be present in the moment, like that, that's emotional connection to the tea, I think, a lot of spouses use social media to get away from things, to get away from the present, to clear their mind from stresses or things like that, to get into an alternate thing, and so I think what you're saying is don't allow that to be a something where it just keeps taking you away from being present for the important things with your spouse and your family and things like that Always be ready and being available to be present with your family, with your spouse.

Speaker 3: 28:42

And I want to bring up this one last thing that has to do with being present. When you're having a conversation with your spouse and say maybe you're on the opposite ends of the couch or across the room, your sprout, when your spouse is scrolling on their phone and you're trying to have a conversation with your spouse, that hurts. We've all done it, we're all guilty of that and sometimes it's okay when it's just like a question or it's not.

Speaker 2: 29:05

What did you say?

Speaker 3: 29:06

well, I wasn't really listening, and I've been accused of this I've done in our own marriage, even by my own daughter. She's like you're not even listening to me. You also have to be mindful that if you're going to come into the room and start talking to them, let them finish what they're doing, ask them to shut their phone off and then have the conversation so that they know that they can be engaged in that and that you're both paying attention. Right, right, it goes both ways right, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 29:31

But I think it's important, like eye contact, all those things that we're kind of missing nowadays in our conversations holding hands, eye contact when you're having communication and conversations, make those more intimate, make those more connecting conversations, Like it's going to deepen your emotional intimacy, which is always going to affect your sexual intimacy, which why we talk about this right absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 29:54

If you're on your phones, you should be on your phones with the ultimate intimacy app. At least be on your phones utilizing something that helps your marriage. So most of you know about the ultimate intimacy app, but if you don't go to ultimate intimacycom, checkcom, check out our app. The resources that we have that can really transform your marriage. So email us if you have any questions. Amyatultimateintimacycom, we really appreciate the opportunity we have to do the things that we do to share our experiences with you and hopefully help you all find ultimate intimacy in your relationship.