How Do I Tell My Wife to Get off Her Phone?
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How can I talk to my wife about her phone use?
How can I talk to my wife about her cell phone use without causing defensiveness? It's hard for me to push through that and for us to get through that barrier.
You're never going to get through that barrier until you'll deal with the way you treated her in the past. What up, what up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show, taking your calls about your relationships. Your marriages, your kids, your emotional and mental health, whatever you got going on in your life. For 20 years, 20 plus years, man, I've been sitting with hurting people trying to figure out what's the next right move when everything's falling apart. Give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K. Fill out the form or leave a message and we'll holler back or let you. Love to have you on the show. Let's go out to Denver, Colorado. Denver CEO and talk to Martin.
What's up, Martin?
Hey, how you doing today? I'm doing all right, brother. How about you, man? I'm doing well. Thank you for having me on your show. I really appreciate it. Absolutely, man. What's up? So my question is, how can I talk to my wife about her cell phone use without causing defensiveness?
That's my favorite question of the day so far, Martin. Um, without causing defensiveness, why is that your goal?
Um, so there's a lot of, uh, background to, to the question. Um, okay, let it rip. So the first half of the first eight or nine years of our marriage were very, uh, emotionally abusive from my side and it caused a lot of walls, um, between us.
Okay.
And, um, When I would come home from work and I would see if the house is dirty or things that weren't the way I wanted them, and I would notice that maybe she was on her phone, I would automatically say, well, you've been on your phone for multiple hours. Why haven't you been cleaning the house? And that has led to other conversations, to other areas of our marriage. And now I feel like when I talk to her about her being on her cell phone, it automatically brings up all the things from the past. And it's hard for me to push through that and for us to get through that barrier.
You're never going to get through that barrier until you'll deal with the way you treated her in the past. Right. Like you have to heal that.
Sure. And we've spent a lot of time in counseling and a lot of... That's all well and good.
A lot of years. Are you different now? Yes. Okay. Does she acknowledge that and accept that?
Yes. Okay. But it, it still can. So that old, that old self, um, I feel like she's thinking that it's still going to come up and that can still, uh, cause walls. Um, and if I walk in the house and I see the house is dirty and I have a, the, the look on my face, like I used to have on my face, she immediately goes to, she's not enough and she's not good enough. And I'm, you know, going right back to those things and I'm not sure how to get, how to get past that. You can't.
And that's the hard part. She's going to have to make a choice. And so it's, it's a, what you're experiencing is really common. So let's take this out of this situation. Cause it's pretty raw with you. Let's say, um, let's say your wife cheated on you. Okay. Um, You walk through it all. You all figure it out. You get it all squared up. You decide to stay together. You all build something new. And then here you are four years later, and you bebop into the house 30 minutes early, and she looks surprised, and she sets her phone down face down really quick. Your body has a GPS pin in it. It's going to remember, oh, I know exactly what she's doing. I've seen this play out before. Sure. And as a part of having... a well-regulated home moving forward, two things have to be true.
One, you have to call out, hey, my body's doing, it just noticed this and this and this behavior. And y'all have a plan already in action where she goes, oh God, here's my phone. Right? You have already talked about, when I see you flip your phone over, it just sets, my body goes to set off. The second thing is, is you have to feel it, exhale,
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