'Phubbing' your partner is ruining more relationships than people think

Phubbing could be seriously damaging your relationship and you may not even be aware you’re doing it.

In fact, you may not even be aware of what phubbing is, but I’ll bet that at some point you’ve been guilty of it.

OK, so picture the scene - you’re on a date, you’re keen and you’re cautiously optimistic that they’re just as keen because you’re getting all the right signals.

But as you reach over the table to tentatively touch their hand, your phone goes off and it’s the group chat, where it’s all going off.

You don’t want to miss out on whatever is going on so you spend a bit of time responding to some messages. Well, that my friend is phubbing.

The word, which has made its way into the Cambridge Dictionary, is a portmanteau of ‘phone’ and ‘snubbing’.

So it basically refers to those moments when you forgo the human company in front of you for your trusty phone and all its distractions. Rude.

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As you can imagine, phubbing someone isn’t exactly polite etiquette and one study found that it has a particularly damaging effect on romantic relationships.

The study’s authors explained: “The phenomenon of phubbing, which hits individuals’ social interactions, is an important risk factor for romantic relationships.

“In other words, partners’ being too busy with their smartphones during their romantic relationships harms relationship satisfaction and perceived romantic relationship quality.”

The study aimed to find how those who had been phubbed felt about their life and relationship satisfaction and quality comparative to how much they were phubbed.

It probably comes as little surprise that those who had been phubbed by their partner on a regular basis had lower levels of satisfaction with their romantic relationship and they also saw their relationship as of lower quality.

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Not only that, but the researchers also discovered a link between romantic relationship satisfaction and life satisfaction - meaning that by phubbing your partner you could end up making them more miserable over all. Ouch.

The paper explained: “The results… indicate that partner phubbing had a significant indirect effect on life satisfaction through perceived romantic relationship quality and relationship satisfaction.

“These results reveal that relationship satisfaction and perceived romantic relationship quality decrease in individuals who are exposed to partner phubbing behaviors, and that decreased relationship satisfaction and romantic relationship quality harm life satisfaction.”