If you want you want your relationship to survive, you will need to put down your smart phone and talk to your partner in person, according to a new study.
"Reaction to disappointment and reality testing occurs more quickly face to face," Jonathan Sandberg said, study co-author. "There is a narrowness with texting and you don't get to see the breadth of a person that you need to see."
Brigham Young University researchers studied 276 young adults across the United States and found technology can create a "disconnect" in committed relationships. If you send text messages too often you could be damaging your relationship, according to a news release.
The findings were published in the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy:
For women: Using text messages to apologize, work out differences or make decisions is associated with lower relationship quality
For men: Too frequent texting is associated with lower relationship quality
For all: Expressing affection via text enhances the relationship
"Technology is more important to relationship formation than it was previously," said Lori Schade, the study's co-author who earned her Ph.D. from BYU in August. "The way couples text is having an effect on the relationship as well."
The study participants were a mix of partners who were casually dating to married couples. According to the BYU news release, "38 percent said they were in a serious relationship, 46 percent were engaged and 16 percent were married."
Researchers found 82 percent of the participants sent messages to their partner multiple times a day, but sometimes the partners were not on the same page about their converstations.
For men, constantly communicating isn't a sign of a great relationship and can lower how they feel about their partner. The study researchers' are looking into the correlation between the amount of texting and how men feel about their relationship.
"We're wondering if this means men disconnect and replace in-person conversations with more texting," Schade said. "Maybe as they exit the relationship, they text more frequently because that's a safer form of communication. We don't know why, that is just a conjecture."
