Couples today spend a good many hours together and meet each other less and less. Both home, both free, both on their phones. The time counts as shared, and nothing like closeness is left over afterward. What exactly the screen takes from two people was explained by Peruquois, a top World Music performer in Australia, musician, composer, author and facilitator of self-development trainings for women.
What was actually taken from you
Peruquois names the loss item by item: that little screen took his eyes away from you, his admiration of you, his delight in simply being with you and talking to you.
This is about the look, the attention, the response that the whole thing started for. It is not taken all at once, which is why it goes unnoticed. At some point he simply looks at you less often than at the screen, and you stop expecting him to look.
Neither of you is present
It is a mistake to think only he is distracted. Peruquois describes the whole picture.
The mind does two things at once, constantly. You wash dishes and check messages. He talks and scrolls the news feed at the same time.
And you move through each other's space without presence.
That is the key word. Two people are in one apartment, crossing paths in the kitchen, saying ordinary domestic things, and neither of them is actually here.
Why love is always in the present tense
Love lives only in the moment of meeting. Meeting is when you can be with each other, listen, look into each other's eyes, touch. Make dinner together. Drive somewhere and talk. Honestly go over what the day threw at you and how one of you can help the other.
With no moment of meeting, love does not wake up. What stays is the memory of it, and the words I love him turn into a mantra.
«I love him» becomes a kind of mantra instead of being the quality of how the moment is lived. The quality dulls and fades, as if instead of good wine at dinner you were served the powdered kind from a box.
Airplane mode, and nothing less
Peruquois's solution is specific, and one detail in it matters.
«First of all, turn the phone off, put it on airplane mode,» she says. And she is precise about why: «under no circumstances put it on silent, turn it off, so the field of that phone is not humming into your relationship.»
Silent mode leaves the phone on, and with it the waiting. Part of the attention stays on duty by the screen even when it is lying face down. Airplane mode closes that door completely.
She names meals separately. When you eat together, always put the phone on airplane mode or turn it off. A shared meal is the short stretch of time most couples actually have, and it is worth defending from intrusion.
The ritual that holds the space
A ban alone is not enough, so Peruquois suggests inventing a shared ritual that you both attach the switched-off phone to.
«For instance, it could be tea,» she says. And she explains why not alcohol: you want the mind clear and the feelings clear.
Tea works here as a frame. It has an obvious beginning and an obvious end, it occupies the hands and requires no conversation, and it is easy to come back to tomorrow. Closeness is assembled out of frames like that, and it cannot be assembled out of good intentions.
Guarding your own love
Peruquois speaks about this as a woman's responsibility.
Remember, beloved, you are the defender of your love, you are the guardian of your love. There is never a shortage of things wanting into that space: the phone, work, urgent matters, other people's demands.
A couple that does not defend it loses more than an evening or a weekend. They lose the state that resets pain and disappointment and a great deal else, the state two people find each other for in the first place.
A screen takes the most valuable thing closeness has, and it does it invisibly, a minute at a time. A phone that is off gives a couple back the look, the attention and the live response, and day by day those are what add up to what we call love.
And if you want to understand what is actually happening between you and where it leads, take Peruquois's course Calling True Love to Your Life, you will find it on the website under Courses.
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