How a landline can keep your marriage from scrolling away

You are halfway through telling your partner about your day when a screen lights up. They glance down, type a reply, and ask you to repeat the last part. Later, you do the same thing to them.

Neither interruption has to be a major argument. Still, it can leave both people feeling that the conversation is competing with something else.

A landline can help with one practical obstacle to putting the screens away: you both want important calls to get through. A shared home handset gives those calls a place to arrive while your smartphones charge elsewhere. It can support a routine you agree on together. The attention you give each other remains the important part.

Start with the evening you want

It is easier to discuss a specific moment than to argue over who spends more time on a phone.

You might say: “I miss talking while we make dinner. Could we put our phones in the hallway until we’ve eaten?” Or: “Could we have twenty minutes together after the kids are asleep, with calls coming to the house phone?”

Decide together what matters and what exceptions you need. One person may be on call for work. Someone may be waiting for news from a relative. A phone may provide an accessibility function. The agreement should make room for those needs and apply fairly to both of you.

Choose where the phones will go, when you will check them again, and how someone can reach you in the meantime. Each person keeps control of their own device. There is no need to inspect a partner’s messages or turn screen-time reports into evidence against them.

The research is about feeling attended to

Researchers use the term partner phubbing for phone-related distraction or snubbing during time with a partner. In two surveys, Beukeboom and Pollmann found that greater reported partner phubbing was associated with lower relationship satisfaction, alongside feelings of exclusion and lower perceived responsiveness and intimacy. These were cross-sectional surveys, so they do not establish that phone use caused relationship problems. Read the 2021 study.

The findings also have nuance. A 2023 diary study found that perceiving a partner as phubbing was associated with lower relationship quality that day, but the association did not persist two months later. Partners’ reports of their own phubbing behavior were not associated with relationship quality. Carnelley and colleagues, 2023.

Neither study tested landlines as a relationship intervention. They give us a reason to talk about how phone use feels to the other person, rather than treating every minute on a screen as equivalent.

Give important calls a route into the room

A simple home handset can make a shared break from smartphones easier to arrange. Let the people who may need you know the household number, test that it rings, and put the handset somewhere you will hear it.

Be clear about what the setup covers. Messages sent to your mobiles will still be waiting there. Mobile calls will not automatically move to the house phone unless you have configured supported forwarding. If you need a particular mobile alert, keep an exception for it.

Once that is settled, you have a small, workable plan: the calls you have arranged for can reach you, and the feeds can wait until the time you chose.

Make room for useful screen time, too

Sometimes the phone belongs in the conversation. You are choosing a film, looking at a family photo, or answering a message about tomorrow’s pickup. Say what you are doing and include your partner when it makes sense: “Your sister sent the birthday pictures. Want to look?”

That is different from leaving someone to guess why you disappeared into the screen. You can also ask for a pause: “I need to finish this reply. Can you give me a minute, then tell me the rest?” Follow through when the minute is over.

Try the new routine for a week, then ask each other whether it helped. Did dinner feel less interrupted? Were the exceptions realistic? Would another time of day work better? Keep the parts you both found useful.

A handset cannot resolve an ongoing disagreement by itself. It can give an agreed boundary a physical place: smartphones charging in the hallway, a home phone ready to ring, and the two of you finishing the conversation.

For the practical setup, see A landline helps you put away your smartphone and unwind.