Dear Husband,
You can’t hide it any longer.
You’re obsessed. You’re consumed. From morning until bedtime, it feels like you think of nothing else.
Your wistful and glazed expression during dinner gives you away. Your absent-mindedness while giving our child a bath has betrayed you.
You pull into the driveway and sit for 15 minutes, not willing to walk into your “real life” yet. I divert the toddler away from the window so I don’t have to endure two broken hearts at once. You just can’t pull yourself away.
You’re distracted all the time—thinking about the next time you’ll be able to steal away 15 minutes here, a half-hour there, I’m sure. Even during our Saturday morning ritual of coffee and Game Day, you’re checked out and distracted.
Our conversations might as well be between me and the cat, because you give about as much feedback as you do. He probably remembers the same amount, too.
I can deal with it. I don’t like it, but I’ll deal. The majority of my worry comes for our toddler. Is the disregard and distraction going to have long-term effects. Will our child feel second—or worse, not even in the lineup? What events, stories, and milestones are you missing because you choose to be “there” and not here, in the present? How many times have feelings of confusion, desertion, or flat-out nonexistence filled the space where adoration and warm attention should be?
Can we at least set some boundaries? Don’t bring it into the bed, our bed, our space. Keep it out of your child’s life. Be present and accountable in these formative years. Try to disconnect for a while every night so we can function as a family unit—one that isn’t put on hold to answer a group text, whose outings aren’t interrupted by SportsCenter highlights, and whose play time you can enjoy without saying, “hold on a sec!” 15 times.
Because, God help me, I will run over your iPhone and replace it with a Jitterbug flip phone if you can’t get it together.
Love you but hate your phone addiction,
Your wife
