Married to Distraction: How to Restore Intimacy and Strengthen Your Partnership in an Age of Interruption

Married to Distraction: How to Restore Intimacy and Strengthen Your Partnership in an Age of Interruption

Are you more distant from your spouse than you’d like to be? Do you or your spouse waste time mindlessly viewing email or surfing the Web? Welcome to the club! Modern marriage is busy, distracted, and overloaded to extremes, with ever-increasing lists of things to do, superficial electronic connections, and interrupted moments. The good news is that there are straightforward and effective ways to restore communication and connection, resurrect happiness and romance, and strengthen—even save—a marriage.   • Observe the natural sequence of sustaining love: attention, time, connection, and play. • Develop and nurture empathy—the essential building block to healthy communication. • Carve out small moments of uninterrupted attention for each other. • Identify the pressures that our crazybusy lifestyles put on love and marriage, and fight back with tenderness and appreciation. Complete with scripts, tips, communication techniques, and a detailed 30-day reconnection plan, as well as inspiring real-life stories, Married to Distraction will set couples on a course of understanding, healing, and love. “I urge all people who yearn for more in their marriages to read this book—in particular, those hungry to move beyond conflict and condemnation to connection and understanding.”—Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness “Wise and compassionate . . . This is a unique, engaging, and profoundly helpful book. It can save a marriage or simply help people in happy marriages get closer and feel more fulfilled.”—Suzy Welch, author of 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea “This timely book could save your marriage.” —Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age   “Clear-sighted wisdom . . . Those in search of practical, concrete advice for creating and saving marriages will find what they need.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review) Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., was an instructor at Harvard Medical School for twenty years and is now the director of the Hallowell Centers in Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, and the Boston area. He is the co-author of Driven to Distraction, Delivered from Distraction, and Answers to Distraction, as well as the author of CrazyBusy, The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness, and Worry, among other titles. He also hosts a weekly podcast called Distraction that offers practical solutions on how to focus and regain control in today’s digital world.   Sue George Hallowell, LICSW, has been a practicing couples’ therapist for more than twenty-five years. The Hallowells are the parents of three teenage children. They live in Arlington, Massachusetts. Chapter One  The Anatomy of Modern Love      Praised be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise! --WALT WHITMAN     You've picked up this book for a reason. Your concern is love.    You've likely hit a snag, maybe a small one, maybe large. Human intimacy is so complex, so coiled and convoluted, that it's hard not to hit a snag. Most of us hit snags all the time in our dealings with others, especially those we are closest to. So, ifyou've hit a snag, just hang on. Keep up the effort. Anyone who tells you it's easy to stay together over the long haul has never done it. If you're still taking it seriously and working at it, your efforts will pay off as long as you have a plan that makessense. It's not enough just to take it seriously and work at it. Some people work at it their whole lives long and get nowhere. To help your efforts to keep your love alive and your marriage intact, we offer a plan based on what we know works best.   When a couple is in a good place, each partner feels secure and fulfilled. To feel secure and fulfilled in a relationship, both people need to feel:     * that the other person thinks highly of them. * that the other person cares deeply for them. *that the other person thinks they are proficient at something.   Beyond that, for love to become what we all want it to become, a smile should cross your face when you think of your mate. You ought to think of him or her as someone you have fun with, someone you look forward to seeing, someone who for an undefinablereason makes life feel special. You want to feel that he or she casts a glow into your life that makes you feel good, no matter what else might be going on.   When all goes right, a natural sequence of five steps leads to such happiness in love. Each step should usher in the next, but, as we will later describe, modern life tends to snag each one. The steps are:     1. Attention 2. Time 3. Empathy 4. Connection 5. Play     Love begins in attention. Love begins when you notice another person. Love starts with a catching of your eye. Be it on some enchanted evening across a crowded room, or via an ad on Match.com, some signal--somehow--draws your attention to one person andnot to another. No one ha