Most people enjoy using social media to connect with others. With your busy schedule, liking, poking or commenting might be your way of maintaining connections with your friends.
But if you and your spouse are both active on your social media accounts, you might feel like your marriage is suffering as a result. Whether checking for status updates is the first thing your significant other does in the morning or their phone gets more attention than you during a dinner date, your spouse might have an addiction to social media. But could your marriage be at risk?
How can social media affect your relationship?
You see it all the time: People make sideways comments about their spouse, for all the world to see. Rather than edifying each other, some couples use social media as a public dumping ground.
On top of that, social media can make it extremely easy to reconnect with the one you thought got away (but is now single!), compare your life to others (their spouse is way hotter/nicer/more successful) and create unrealistic dreams of what your relationship “should be” based on others’ posts, in their publicized moments of bliss. But rather than allowing social media to harm your marriage, you and your spouse can commit to certain principles if you are truly committed to each other.
Help your marriage (offline)
If you and your spouse agree that making some changes to your social media habits would be in the best interest of your relationship, you might want to agree to:
- Invest in your time together as a couple
- Talk to each other about your challenges, rather than airing them out online
- Be transparent; don’t post things your spouse wouldn’t approve of
- Praise each other – both in private and on your accounts
Maintaining a good marriage requires consistent, dedicated effort. And although altering your social media habits may be a small part of the puzzle a healthy relationship requires, changing your online habits could help rekindle your romance as you shift your focus back to each other again.