Wedding Woes

4 men in the world-ish

Dear Prudence,

My partner is very into apps, social media, and the internet. I have Facebook so I can occasionally message people who live back home and that’s it, but my boyfriend cannot get off his phone. That might not bother me, but he’s constantly showing me pictures from Snapchat or Facebook of people I don’t know, reading listicles to me, or sending me endless memes and “funny” things from an aggregate site all day (around 10 an hour if we’re apart). I’m trying my best to feign interest but I’m awful at that at the best of times and after almost a year of being with him, I’m now trying to politely shrug it off and tell him I’m not that into any of it but it won’t stop! When is it acceptable to just say “Jesus Christ, I don’t even have Snapchat for my own friends, stop showing me the dumb things your friends are doing!”?

—Luddite

Re: 4 men in the world-ish

  • I show H shit that I find online all the time.  If I do too many in a row, he'll tell me, "OK, I'm done now."  And I stop. It's. Not. That. Hard.

    If he continues to push the issue after she says she's done, then it's a problem. 
  • Oh no. Spouse wants to communicate things during the day. :|

    I do the same as @mrsconn23  and send M a bunch of stuff during the day - he says 'ok enough' or something like that and I stop {sometimes it's a "oh wait one more!" first ;)!}
  • I would let him know that I like to stay in the present, and his phone addiction is working my last nerve.
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  • I'm with @southernbelle0915, I would find the b/f's behavior incredibly annoying.  I would hate getting endless, unimportant minutia sent to my e-mail/phone.  An occasional "extra good" meme/funny article a few times a day would be okay.  But 10/hour is a hell no.  Between that and his face always stuck in his phone, this guy would have been a dealbreaker for me after Date #1 or #2.  But to each their own.

    It sounds like she hasn't said anything about this until recently.  She needs to keep retraining him.  Yes, have a little give and take.  That's part of a relationship.  Listen/look sometimes at his snapchats/reading listicles.  But then tell him when you've had enough and be firm.  If he starts again, say, "I told you I don't want to look at your Snapchat right now or please stop, I can't listen to any more articles/jokes."

    Tell him to stop with all the memes or you're going to block him from your phone.  I'm serious, lol.  I would do that.

    As an aside, I like listicles.  But can rarely suffer through them.  They're almost always God awful, ad-baiting nightmares.  Do not make me click to another page for Every-Damn-Sentence., FFS.

    Wedding Countdown Ticker
  • H is a luddite (which the irony of him working for a tech company is constantly hilarious) and for the most part couldn't care less about the internets. I show him things I think he'd be interested interested in, but I don't push it. He doesn't understand why I like the internet but he (usually) doesn't give me a hard time about it. 

    Basic respect and compromise people. 
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