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7 Tips to keep technology from destroying your marriage {Episode 191}
626 Plays2 years ago
This is another episode in our series on healthy marriages! In Episode 191 of Outnumbered the Podcast, Bonnie & Audrey share 7 tips for keeping devices from destroying your marriage, and actually using technology to improve it.
Mentioned in this episode:
Communication in Marriage {Episode 92}
Stephen Covey book (Urgent/Important Chart)
About Outnumbered the Podcast:
Two moms, parenting a combined total of 19 kids and finding joy in the chaos.
Join Audrey and Bonnie as they share real parenting tips for real people through humor, advice and compassion.
Whether it's tackling how to teach kids to work or discussing where to turn when you're all out of patience,
these two experienced moms are here to offer authentic tips for raising children joyfully.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Outnumbered Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
Navigating Technology in Marriage
00:00:33
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody. We are ready to talk to you about another topic today in our marriage series. So we've talked a lot about how to help kids navigate technology, but we think it's pretty important to talk about this topic in the context of marriage as well. So that is our topic today, marriage, navigating technology in your marriage.
00:00:56
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Two things that are very important to us for vastly different reasons, obviously, but technology is a huge part of our life today and hopefully our spouses as well and we want to figure out how to navigate them together, right? Okay, so I wanted to share a humor segment with you guys today. A while ago, my daughter
00:01:14
Speaker
were technically not YouTube watchers around here as far as children go, only for like, you know, experiments or something fun we're watching together. But my daughter had kind of snuck off and watched some dumb videos by herself. And a couple of them were like pranks to pull. And then she came up to me, came up to me and held her hand and went,
00:01:34
Speaker
Mom, ow, ow. And I look down and she has a thumb in what looks like, covered in what looks like is blood and a needle through it. And I immediately panic, right? And then I'm thinking, why is she not panicking? Why is she not crying? And I look closer and it's totally fake.
00:01:53
Speaker
She followed this thing. She's seven, you guys. It was hilarious. She followed this thing to a tee. I couldn't even be mad that she was watching YouTube without permission. She takes a safety pin and she cuts into it. I don't even know how she did this. Probably ruined some sewing scissors somewhere. And puts the hole in the metal around her thumb and then you're supposed to squirt it with ketchup. It looked like blood, but she tells me, I had to use hot sauce for the blood mom. We were out of ketchup.
00:02:18
Speaker
The blood did look a little watered down, a little orange. It was so well done. I thought, wow, bravo, prankster in the making. I actually have had to deal with a kid with a needle through the finger situation. Me too, actually. And I've had to deal with many of my own, which you probably have as well. Super fun.
00:02:39
Speaker
No, I haven't actually sewed from my own finger. What? Well, get to sewing. Your time is coming. Or maybe you're just a lot more coordinated than I am. The first time I sewed with my serger, though, I sewed right over. I didn't realize the blade would cut the end. I sewed first seam with a serger and I cut through pins. I cut the end of my fingernail and a little part of my finger off once because I put my finger right up in there. Super smart.
00:03:08
Speaker
I'm a quick one.
Technology's Double-Edged Sword in Relationships
00:03:11
Speaker
Speaking of not very smart things to do, we are going to be talking about navigating technology in your marriage. And since there are so many ways that technology can be used for good in a relationship, like you can look for it and you can find it, we're mostly going to talk about things to watch out for with technology and relationships.
00:03:35
Speaker
And we'll touch on some of the good, too, because we found ways to use that. We've got a bunch of tips for you guys and then just some general thoughts. And just like we talked about in our episode on helping kids navigate technology, we're the first generation married with technology with a phone in our pocket like that available. So we're like we haven't had our parents tell us how to navigate this kind of situation. And so we've got to figure some things out.
00:04:03
Speaker
And then hopefully we can pass on these lessons to the next generation so they don't have so many of the same issues that some of us and our colleagues have run into. I know, yay for us, right? This glorious generation of guinea pigs where we don't know what we're doing. We're just trying to figure it out as we go. I was just thinking about the last 20 years. What has happened in technology? I mean, we think the last 50 to 100 years has been big. What about the last 20 years? We went from, I mean, gosh, I guess there were sort of cell phones, but they weren't great.
00:04:32
Speaker
People still had corded phones, and we were just watching a TV show that came out in 2001, and they were still using cordless phones at the workplace to call each other, which we thought was cute. They'd stick them in their back pocket and walk around the office. Anyway, so so much progress in technology, but it means that a lot of things coming at us that can negatively impact our relationship, like you said, positively as well, but we're going to focus on some of the negatives so that we can watch out for it.
00:04:58
Speaker
Sometimes we get really casual, not sometimes, probably most of the time we are very casual about our screen and device usage because it is such a part of our everyday lives now, right?
Urgency and Distraction of Technology
00:05:08
Speaker
We can't even imagine a life without a smartphone in our pocket. And it is very easy to forget just how easy they can distract us from real people and the connecting with humans outside of our screens.
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, we have opportunities to connect with people in ways that we never could before because we're separated by distance. Now, I bet every single person listening to this has heard or has had their life touched by somebody who found somebody else on Facebook and resumed an old relationship and destroyed another one because of it.
00:05:45
Speaker
Whereas that could not have happened in the past because of just being separated by distance and that could not happen so there's opportunities out there for connecting with people you know friends or people you've never met before that can be your friends and
00:06:01
Speaker
It's a whole minefield path that we have to navigate, and it's something new. We call it an opportunity, but maybe we should be calling it, I don't know what's the word that's opposite of opportunity. I think it's an opportunity cost, honestly. There are some amazing opportunities, but there's a cost involved. Yeah.
00:06:22
Speaker
I have a friend who found her husband on the internet and they got married just a few years after me. And I remember when she decided to marry him, we thought, oh, this is still a little weird for us. It's like 15, 16 years ago. But now, oh, totally normal. It's actually a little weird to meet someone in person first and end up together, right? You meet online or friends of a friend online or something. So yeah, it's just this new normal.
00:06:49
Speaker
Okay, so let's move on to the concept of priorities, right? So Stephen Covey has a really cool chart that he shares in a couple of his Seven Habits books. And I think he calls them his Four Quadrants. And they involve two columns. One is urgent and one is not urgent.
00:07:11
Speaker
and then two rows. One is important and one is not important. Obviously, when something is urgent and important, then that's an essential place to spend some time, right? Like, for example, a kid cuts off a finger. That's urgent and important. You know, stop what you're doing, go to the hospital, right? Something that's not urgent but is important tends to get
00:07:30
Speaker
left by the wayside sometimes, like deepening family relationships versus something that is not important and urgent. So if this is sounding confusing, I highly recommend you just Google Stephen Covey's Four Quadrants. You will see how it's all laid out. But the important thing to remember is that the important things are not always urgent, but they must be kept at the forefront of our priorities or other things will fill their place.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah. You know, um, cell phones devices are set up so that they are intended to be urgent. You get that little ding, that little notification and we're just like Pavlov's dog. You know, we hear the ding, we start drooling. We hear the little text message. We pick up our phone, right? Even if we're in a conversation with a real person and it's, you know, whatever it's like, Oh, Oh, you know, like even your eyes, you know, like maybe you don't pick up the phone, but you hear the dang and Oh, there goes your eyes, right? There goes your attention.
00:08:23
Speaker
It's urgent. It's set up to be
Positive Use of Technology in Relationships
00:08:25
Speaker
urgent. It's like a little child that wants your attention. And with your little child, you'd be like, be quiet. We're having a serious conversation. We'll talk to you when we're done. But with the phone, we're like, uh, what was that? What was that? Right. And now we have it like on our watches. So like we can even sort of, you know, like, let's say your watch, you know, or whatever. So that's just an example of that. Urgent versus important, really.
00:08:49
Speaker
Okay. And as we mentioned, there are also opportunities for connection with your spouse in a positive way. Just depends on how you use it. So technology is in our world. They're not going away anytime soon.
00:09:02
Speaker
And so we can use it to connect with our spouse in a meaningful way. In fact, if you're using a device and you're not using it to connect with your spouse in a new way or a different way, like why not? Because it's there and you use it all the time. So can you use it to connect with your spouse? One thing that we do is we have an app where we can see where each other is.
00:09:29
Speaker
and our family and it's like we got it so that we can see our kids that are out driving if they should need help we can go right to them that kind of thing and like there's this you can on there you can see where someone is and you can like heart their location or something like so I can know where my husband is at all times and
00:09:48
Speaker
Like that can be used like to, Oh, what's he doing there? What, you know, like a, like a spying thing or like a suspicious thing, or it can be used like, Oh my goodness, he's at the grocery store. He's getting groceries for me. That is so sweet. You know, like a, like a closeness, there's a connection to him, even when he's not there. And so like everything out there on a device can be used to connect or to
00:10:14
Speaker
You know, it's, so another thing for us is that like my husband and I text, but we, he knows that the kids read all my text messages. So like, if we're sending each other sort of, you know, personal private messages, we have to kind of put it in code. And that's like part of the game as well. Like we, we are using technology to kind of connect in a, in a different way than we do with anybody else because it's there and because we use it.
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I love that. I know my darn kids read my texts too. And I'm like, excuse me. What if I want to text your father something cutesy that you do not need to read? Honestly. Yeah, so many opportunities to help relationships and build them up. But like you said, so many opportunities to disconnect as well, for sure.
00:11:00
Speaker
So technology is arguably the most powerful tool available to us on the earth, I believe. It seems a little bit benign. It's just this little black box sitting there without power. It does nothing. It was just a paperweight, but with power brought to it and the internet, there's almost nothing we can't do with it. I believe that it is an amazing tool that was inspired by God to help us connect with each other and help us spread goodness. But just like any tool,
00:11:29
Speaker
it can be used for good and for bad. So we get to decide. We get to decide and not just alone, but with our spouse and with our families, the best way to make it work for our relationships. Yeah. And I have a question for us to ask ourselves, what would we be doing together with our spouse if we weren't on a device? So like if you're, um,
00:11:56
Speaker
So even, let's say you, you've decided that one of the things that's allowable in your relationship with your spouse is just hanging out in a room together and being on a device together. Like he's on his device. You're on yours and you're together, but like just to put it into perspective, what would you be doing? What would you be talking about if you weren't on a device together? So like we think, Oh, it's okay. We're together, but still like it's the mental that's like separated or something. So just, just throw in that question out there. Like it's a good one maybe to ask ourselves often.
00:12:26
Speaker
what would I be doing right now with my spouse or for my spouse or you know whatever if I wasn't if if this technology didn't exist yeah I like that thought and you know there's nothing wrong with being together and doing your own thing right you could both be reading a book separate books or both be working on a hobby in the same room or something but technology is so
00:12:45
Speaker
addictive and sucks you in so quickly that it's very easy to let hours go by and just completely ignore another person who's important to you in your life because your brain is just being so sucked into whatever you've got up on the screen. So I love that. Okay. So our number one tip for
00:13:03
Speaker
navigating technology in a marriage is to talk about it. Set up some expectations and we might even say some rules or guidelines. Our relationship had rules and guidelines before technology was ever an issue. I mean, we didn't have smartphones when we first got married. Things like one of our rules is we don't get in cars with a member of the opposite sex alone, right? So I wouldn't go get a ride to say I went to work. I wouldn't go get a ride to work with a male coworker. That's just one thing that we've talked about.
00:13:29
Speaker
So you should have these same guidelines surrounding technology and you get to decide what those are. But if you have a nice peaceful conversation where there's nothing divisive that's coming up, it's just a very benign conversation. You can talk about this without any feelings being hurt or emotions or you don't want to cast blame. You just want to come to an agreement on what your technology usage looks like.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So now how does this work? Because all of us have already had devices. I bet everybody listening has a device and their spouse has a device. So like, how does this work? You're already in a relationship. Maybe you don't have any rules, guidelines, boundaries set up and you wish you did just start small. Like don't, don't create a big list because there is this huge addictive element of devices. You're not going to be able most likely to set up and
00:14:19
Speaker
complete a huge list of rules and guidelines and make huge changes. So just start a little bit. Just start with a little bit if you're not there, if you don't have those rules or guidelines or boundaries set up already. And whatever you do, talk about it. Talk about it. Because you can be over there resenting your spouse's usage, and they not know anything about it. How would they know? We have a whole episode on communication and marriage. And so I don't know. I think these devices are
00:14:48
Speaker
communication devices primarily. I mean, they
Setting Tech Boundaries in Marriage
00:14:51
Speaker
can't cook, they can't do our taxes, they can't mow the grass. They're communication things. So keeping communication outside of technology completely open is probably why it's our number one tip. Because this is a communication device and we have to get it into our flow as well and get it part of our system. How do we do it?
00:15:15
Speaker
So what we're talking about here for guidelines and rules is when you're on the usage, you're on Facebook. Do you have private messages with your old high school sweetheart? What is the guideline there? Just as you wouldn't say go to a gym and run into your old high school sweetheart and then say, hey, let's go get a coffee and then have a two hour long conversation. How would you're supposed to feel about that?
00:15:45
Speaker
So where do you go on the internet? Where does your mind go? Where does your thoughts, where are your emotions? So there's just certain things, places on the internet that you don't go, like you and your spouse have talked about that and agreed about that. There's so many danger places to go. But then also, I mean, I don't even know. It's going to be different for every couple.
00:16:12
Speaker
territory for you or for your spouse that might be getting into something that's going to
00:16:18
Speaker
Make the other one not feel like they're your number one. Sweetheart. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. So basically what we're saying is boundaries, internet boundaries. What are your internet boundaries in regards to what each other is comfortable with? And you have to really be willing to listen because there are probably things that my husband thinks are no big deal that would bother me and vice versa. But that leads us into tip number two. Yes. So tip number two.
00:16:48
Speaker
can stay completely open. Like my husband can access and look at anything on my device at any time, any of my passwords, he either knows them or knows where I keep them. And he can look at any, any of my accounts, any of my messages, anything. It's open. Our email, like he can get into my email. We share an email account, all that like,
00:17:08
Speaker
Anything is open before I'm like, I don't have anything hidden that like, that's a danger sign. So that's my tip number two. Just keep it open. If you wouldn't say it, do it, think it, go there. If he was right next to you, don't say it, think it, do it, go there.
00:17:42
Speaker
each deserve to feel totally comfortable in our relationships because that's where vulnerability comes in. If we want to have a deep relationship with our spouse, we need to be able to be fully vulnerable, and that means we need to have full trust. I've seen a lot of talk about this kind of thing on social media, on the internet, and many people say that, well, if you really trusted your spouse, you wouldn't need all this
00:17:44
Speaker
just because you're on
00:18:05
Speaker
to know all this. You wouldn't need to know his passwords, et cetera, et cetera. And I disagree. I feel like I trust him because I know that we're completely open with each other. And I want to protect my marriage more than I want anything else. And so we stay completely open at all times for that reason because it's more important than anything else. Yeah. Yeah. I think the frequency with which my husband and I read through each other's emails and messages is
00:18:32
Speaker
very seldom. But that we can is like the openness, the honesty. Yes. Right. Okay, so tip number three. Also, we need to agree on boundaries or guidelines, like logistical boundaries and guidelines when it comes to our devices. So for example,
00:18:52
Speaker
Phones in the bedroom. Do you bring your phones in the bedroom? Where do they where do you charge them? Do you take them to church and use them there like any number of things that might Make you uncomfortable or make you feel like there needs to be a guideline surrounding them. Yeah, how about date night?
00:19:10
Speaker
What if you take it on date night, but it always stays in your pocket
Reconnecting Without Technology
00:19:13
Speaker
or something like that, right? Yeah. How about when you're eating? Dinner table. Yeah. Family dinner. Yeah. So just something else to talk about. Communicates, a communication device. Let's communicate about this communication device. So these physical boundaries.
00:19:33
Speaker
Like one thing that I don't like, there's so many reasons like why we have a no phones in the bedroom rule, but that device is always listening. It has a camera. Okay. I mean, it does. So like, if we're going to have a personal conversation or something, who's listening? Yeah.
00:19:54
Speaker
Who's watching because the camera and the, you know, you can't say it's not always listening because I know you've talked about Fritos and then you start getting ads for Fritos popping up, right? You know, it's listening. Oh, yeah. I don't want it listening to the bedroom. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. But also I feel like it affects like your sleep, um, if it's in there and that kind of thing. So there's more than just, you know, the intimacy part why I don't want it in there.
00:20:22
Speaker
Okay, tip number four, take breaks from technology together.
00:20:30
Speaker
So maybe you're taking a break. That's awesome. Or maybe your spouse is taking a break at a different time. That's awesome. But then just do a cleanse together. In the health food world, there's huge benefits of fasting and doing cleanses and different things. There's a huge benefit. Take a break from technology. So for example, do an enforced one. Go on a whitewater rafting canoe trip. And you cannot take your device or it will be lost.
00:20:57
Speaker
And do that together and see what happens to your relationship. Yeah, I love that. I love that. And then be bored together. You know, like I tell my kids when there's no devices around, you know, we are having a device free time. They tell me how bored they are. And I just say, great, let's be bored together. You know, let's be bored and wander around the house and find things to do and get creative. You know, you do the same thing with your spouse.
00:21:19
Speaker
Vacations are a great place to do this. Go to a cabin, preferably where there's no internet service, right? Or an amusement park for the day or any number of things like you say is a little bit forced can be helpful because there's things to do already. The trick is when you get back home and you're trying to unwind from the day, what's the first thing you do? Do you go to social media? Do you go to a dumb game on your phone? Do you go to your email? Where do you go? Right? And can you eliminate that together? And maybe not permanently, but to just kind of get a reset for your relationship. I love that.
00:21:46
Speaker
Okay, so tip number five, have each other's back. Watch out for each other and set up ahead of time a way to discuss danger signs. Okay, so let's say that ahead of time we've said, you know, I can tell that you really enjoy
00:22:04
Speaker
playing this game or whatever. And I know that you don't want to waste your time doing that, but I noticed that when you're really stressed out at work, you start playing this game. How can I help you with that? Like when I see that you've downloaded a game, do you want me to step in? Do you want me to say something? Or I've noticed that you've been bringing your phone into the bedroom and I know we talked about not doing that.
00:22:22
Speaker
How should we help each other out with these things? Because I have weaknesses, too, that I tell myself I shouldn't be doing this. I shouldn't be scrolling Instagram again at 10.30 at night. So having each other's back can be really helpful to follow our own rules, right? Yeah, this is so good. And again, I think this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where
00:22:44
Speaker
if you talk about it beforehand when nobody is upset or seeing any warning signs in the other, then it can be a completely open sign. And then, you know, just like if it gets to a point where your spouse is talking to you or you're talking to your spouse, just remember that this is like what we agreed on before because we love each other and we want to help each other. And we're not like parenting each other. That is such a bad dynamic in a marriage.
00:23:09
Speaker
but like we're, we're caring for each other and we're helping each other. And just like if we're on a hike and there was like, there's a really slippery slope and you were starting to fall, I would, I would try to grab you or throw you a stick or, you know, like help you. Yeah. Um, and, and keep that in mind. Like if your spouse comes to you, like it's because they care and because they love you.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Another thing I want to mention on this tip too is that even beyond just silly things like playing games and scrolling social media, there are real corrosive, poisonous dangers out on the internet. Things like pornography, things like emotional affairs. We need to be aware of each other's weaknesses and know that generally when it comes to women, our weakness is emotional connection, right? And sometimes we don't get that in our marriages if things are unhealthy or we're not
00:23:57
Speaker
making sure our needs are being met. And for men, very often it's visual stimulation. So pornography is often a temptation. So being aware of these things can just help us keep our guards up and always watching to protect this relationship and this person that we love so much.
Supporting Each Other's Tech Habits
00:24:12
Speaker
Yes, yes. All right, tip number six, use technology for good. There are so many ways that you can use technology for good. And so we wanted to include it here, of course.
00:24:25
Speaker
You have it. It's available to you. What about setting up a reminder? At four o'clock, you send your hubby a little text and say, love you, looking forward to you coming home tonight. Right? That's there. You're using technology for good. You're using it to improve your relationship. I am sure there are thousands of apps out there that you could download and would help you improve your relationship.
00:24:50
Speaker
in so many different ways. So you've got it. You spend time on it. Just do it a little bit for good. How can I use this tool, this communication tool, to be a better communicator, to communicate in a more meaningful way with my spouse?
00:25:06
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. One tool I wanted to offer to you guys is an app called Gottman Cardex. I don't think I've shared this with you guys before, but we really like John Gottman. We've talked about him on other marriage episodes. He's a marriage expert, a therapist, and his app called Cardex has just basically what it sounds like.
00:25:25
Speaker
virtual card decks to stimulate conversation in a marriage so sometimes on a date night we'll just open this up and we'll open one one called date questions and it's just a way to explore each other like hey what did you want to be when you grew up and just kind of sometimes I actually told my husband this the other day
00:25:42
Speaker
Sometimes when we're on group dates, I learn more about my husband than I do when we're on our dates on our own because he shares things, you know, because somebody else brought up something that I'd never thought to ask. And he shares something related to that. And I think you never told me that, you know. So this kind of can stimulate those conversations, especially in a relationship where you've been married or known each other for a long time. Right. So that's a really great tool.
00:26:04
Speaker
I also wanted to say that technology in general can kind of get, especially like social media or being bombarded with other people's opinions can kind of get old. I remember kind of feeling really burned out by Instagram in particular. I was using it for my business and just was a little bit tired of all the negativity I was seeing. And I actually went to an event where a social media, a popular social media person was sharing about her experience in talking about God on social media.
00:26:34
Speaker
And I had gone there thinking, you know what, I think I'm just gonna quit Instagram. It drives me crazy, I hate it. And she went on to say, just talk a little bit about all the good that she was doing online. And I just thought, wow, I guess maybe I just need to change my attitude, right? And the same thing goes for our relationships, right? If we feel like it is pulling us apart, look for ways to flip it on its head and get us pulled together.
00:26:57
Speaker
Absolutely.
Modeling Tech Behavior for Kids
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, that is, like I said before, technology is not going away. So let's learn to use it in ways that help each other and help our relationship with each other.
00:27:08
Speaker
Tip number seven, be sure to model the behavior that you want with your spouse and your kids to follow in regards to technology. And this is so hard. It's the one we never want to talk about, right? Just the other day, my son, we finally got my oldest smartphone. And so I've been kind of like always on edge watching what he's doing, seeing how he spends his time. And the other day we were sitting down to watch a movie together as a family and he was doing something on his phone. And I said, can you just put that down while we're, you know, enjoying another screen together?
00:27:38
Speaker
And he brought up the fact that sometimes I do that. Sometimes I'm checking my email while I'm sitting there, you know, bored to tears with a kid's movie. But I thought, oh, dang it, he's right. How often do I model really bad technological behavior that I do not want my kids to follow?
00:27:57
Speaker
Yes, yes. And thinking about it here specifically, because I have kids that are getting into relationships, older and into relationships and married, like what kind of relationship, technological relationship do I want them to have with their spouse? Or what kind of relationship do I want them to have with their spouse that involves technology? Because it's going to be there. And how can I model for them a healthy relationship that includes technology?
00:28:27
Speaker
Because it's going to be, they won't be the first generation navigating marriage and technology. Like I want to have some tips to give them. I want to have modeled good behavior. I want to share my mistakes that I made and learned from. I remember when I first got a smartphone, there was these, I was kind of attracted to the word games, like games that
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah, just different word games. I love words, I love, you know, like, it wasn't like crosswords, but there's all these different versions of word games.
00:28:59
Speaker
And then when one of my kids got there, and I kind of worked through that and got like, I don't do that. It's kind of a waste of my time, even though it's fun or whatever. Not unhealthy, not an unhealthy thing to do, or a bad thing to be doing. Words, exercising your brain and all that, but just a time waster. So then one of my kids got their first smart device and here they were doing word games. And I was like, oh, where'd they learn that from? Right here. They learned it from mom.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah so um just you know thinking forward to that. Where do I
00:29:35
Speaker
Where do I want to be in 20 years with my spouse and our relationship with each other? And how do I envision what would be the perfect amount or way that this communication device, I'm going to keep calling it a communication device, is used. Because even though we can do so much with it, it's a communication thing. So how have I used that to make my relationship with my spouse stronger?
00:30:04
Speaker
um, healthier, better, and can then share that with my kids and pass it on to them. So I don't feel like I have any huge breakthroughs or ideas, but I like want to use more of these tips that we've been talking about myself and, um, so I can be a help to others too. Yeah. You know, when we sit down and discuss with our spouse guidelines or things that we think are healthy to follow specifically in our relationship regards to tech in regards to technology.
00:30:31
Speaker
how dedicated are we to following the guidelines? Like, are we kind of like a, well, you know, we said no phones in the bedroom, but he's not even at home. So it's fine if I just lay in bed and scroll for a while, you know. Sometimes we like to be a little bit more lax with ourselves than we are with other people, right? Like I'm always getting on my husband for throwing his dirty socks on the floor instead of in the hamper, but how often do I throw my, it's not socks, it's pajamas. I hate socks, I don't wear socks.
00:30:56
Speaker
You know, like, let's be honest is, are they going to want to follow the guidelines when they see our own behavior? Are we treating them as like a non-negotiable, like this is what we agreed on, and so I'm going to honor
Wrap-up and Community Engagement
00:31:09
Speaker
it, right? If we want our spouse to do the same, it's got to start with us. Yeah, so that's what we have for you guys today. Our thoughts, our feelings are kind of navigating ourselves on things we've learned
00:31:21
Speaker
and some tips for you guys. If you have any tips that you've learned that have really helped your relationship and navigating technology in your relationship, reach out to us, share them, outnumber the podcast at gmail.com or message us on Instagram, comment on any of our posts, comment on YouTube. We want to hear from you guys because we're, this is like a learning thing for us too. And we're taking in all the information that we can.
00:31:46
Speaker
and learning it too. We hope this episode has been helpful to you guys. We hope you guys can help us more with that and we'll talk to you next week. I'm Audrey. I'm Bonnie and we're Outnumbered. Thanks for listening, friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.