Phubbing

Phubbing is the habit of snubbing a physically present person in favor your cell phone. We had some interesting yet healthy confessions during this segment. Also, Jack hates portmanteaus...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you've had a romantic partner, you've most likely had
the maddening experience of realizing that, well you were talking
about something or another they were focused on their phone.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Nah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Now, as relationship transgressions go fubbing, which is a portmanteau,
which is combination, but it makes you sound fancy. It's
a portmanteau of phone and snubbing.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
I hate. I didn't know that term portmanteau. I hate
porkmantoo's so benefer is a portmanteau. We okay, staycations. That's
a portmanteau. We I need to get this printed on
my hand or something that's my least favorite thing portmantou's.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Wow. Anyway. Fubbing is on the surface, fairly benign, yet
research increasingly shows it can be insidious. A recent study
linked higher levels of fubbing to marital dissatisfaction, and a
twenty twenty two study found it can lead to feelings
of distrust an ostracism. One study found that those who
fub a lot are more likely to be fubbed themselves,

(01:05):
creating a kind of ripple effect. And I quote. Fubbing
can be a range of different behaviors from glancing at
your phone in the middle of a conversation to checking
your phone when the conversation stalls out a little bit,
or keeping your phone close by. It's a funny word,
but it can really have an impact. But it's fairly
easy to fix it, says this, what is a board

(01:26):
certified couple of family psychologists. You just have to talk
about it to summarize. It can cause a lot of
hurt and resentment if you don't say, hey, this is
kind of a thing these days, people looking at their
phone and not paying paying attention to each other. And
I don't think we ought to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
I would like to see an age breakdown on this.
Is this an issue for people that are twenty one?
Do they even care if the person they're talking to
is looking at their phone? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
I don't know either, suspect the answer is not much.
In a related story, they're not forming relationships, they're not
even dating, never mind falling in love, getting married, having kids,
anything like that.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Excellent point.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
How do you fall in love with somebody you're not
paying attention to?

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Ask the person you've been dating for six months what
color your eyes are and see if they know.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
That is.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yeah, that's a tough one. I've had my feelings hurt
really bad in all kinds of different situations with people
doing that, and I always my internal thinking is always,
am I overreacting this? Am I too sensitive? Or it
would been I would have been unheard of pre cell phones,
pre smartphones. Like if you're having a conversation and it
doesn't have to be I don't know why they pick

(02:53):
marriages or whatever, because it can happen in any relationship
of any kind with two people if there are two
years to you there.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
But if a person had like you're talking to them
about something, you know, the important, your job, you're married,
your kids, whatever, and they get out of magazine and
start thumbing through it in nineteen eighty five, would not
have been crazy.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
That would have been insane.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
You would have thought.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
You would have said, what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (03:17):
They just pull Yeah, look at Prince Charles Man, he
looks old. We were having a conversation.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Yes, Michael, I got a bad habit of doing that.
I've gotten in trouble for doing this where my wife
talks to me and I will start looking at the
phone and I just.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
No, no, it's good, you confessed it, and the confession
is good for the soul. My response is always be
more interesting, Oh wow, be more compelling.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
How about I slapped the phone out of your hand.
That's compelling.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
No, it's it is. It is a habit. There's no
doubt about checking phones or watches. I do with my
watch all the time. Now, it is a habit. I
don't like it I do with my kids. I hate
that I do that with my kids. I won't let
them do it to me when I do it to them,
which is obviously.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Oh no, another horrible confession. But it's good for the soul.
You know, what I have constantly got to remind myself
of is being not being an endorphin crack monkey, the
endorphins of seeing a new new email, new alert, interesting

(04:22):
news story. There's it's not healthy for human beings to
need just a little hit over and over and over
and over and over again all day long. It's not
good for my brain. And I know it.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
No, it's not.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
And I try to convince my kids of that although
their brains may just that might be the world they
live in, and maybe their brains need to have that
rubbery ability to deal with it. There's that thing that
we've discussed a lot. And then there's also the I
guess you'd call it multitasking, which I've had arguments with
people about this before. I don't actually believe multitasking is

(04:58):
a thing. I believe the the idea that what you're
doing is you're doing multiple things not as well. I
really believe that.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
I think that's a pretty settled science.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
And be my experience, I was told that's because you're
a man. Women can do it, all right.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
That's cute, but oh that, oh, don't ever say anything
like that to a woman.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
But like, I'll do it a lot. I did this
yesterday where I'll be sitting in the living room and
the kids were like, we're watching something on TV or
something like that, and I'm doing work. I'm not just
scrolling through looking for the endorphin hit, but I'm doing
some stuff. I was doing some paperwork. I was filling
out some school paperwork or whatever on my phone. But
in the old days, I would either have been sitting
at a desk doing paperwork or engaged with them. I

(05:44):
wouldn't have been like bringing them all together, doing a
bad job of the paperwork and not paying attention to them.
And of course, to them, it doesn't make any difference
whether I'm doing something actually needs to be done, like
filling out school paperwork, or I'm looking to see what
Taylor Swift's new boyfriend looks like. It doesn't really make
any difference.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Cute, I'm guessing

Speaker 3 (06:04):
You would assume