Juan and Susana, both independent professionals in their thirties, are sitting in my office again. They have been a couple for almost two years but their relationship has been going through numerous ups and downs that have already reached their limit…
Juan was away for work last week. Last Wednesday, at the hotel and after his daily nightly WhatsApp conversation, Juan couldn't get to sleep. Juan “casually” looks at WhatsApp and notices that Susana's last connection was at three thirty – several hours after they both spoke – and at that very moment, almost three in the morning, Susana was still online and Hector – Susana's former partner – was also online. Juan has already drawn his own conclusions – which don't have to be correct – which is accompanied by intense discomfort that causes Juan to send long WhatsApp messages to his still partner. The question is: Will WhatsApp break them up?
It’s the fault of… the “double check” syndrome
The “double check” is the system that WhatsApp uses to indicate to the sender that their message has been correctly received (first check) and that the recipient has read it (second check). Originally, this did not mean that the recipient had read it.
However, when WhatsApp was bought by the owners of Facebook, they made a decision whose consequences would be unpredictable for thousands of couples. It was about double blue check that appears when the recipient reads the message. What if I don't want to reply now? What if I can't reply now? What if I don't…? What can be done to avoid the feeling of control?
- Disable the double blue check.
- There is an application that allows you to hide information about the last time you logged into WhatsApp. When you activate it, the information that we see about our contacts also disappears. Most users do not use it “because curiosity to know what our contacts do is more important than taking precautions so that they do not know about us,” according to Fernando Azor, psychologist and tutor at the Camilo José Cela University in Madrid.
- Disable last connection time.
- Read notifications without opening the app. You may not be able to understand the full message.
- If you haven't seen it, I recommend the short film «Double Check» in which this situation is portrayed in a mix of realism and irony and within a relationship.
The “phantom vibration” syndrome
The WhatsApp addict's obsession with receiving notifications leads him to hear vibrations that, in reality, have never occurred. These are called “phantom vibrations” According to a study published by the British Psychological Society, they are generators of intense stress, directly proportional to the number of times we look at our mobile phone to make sure and reassure ourselves that the supposed message has arrived. According to this study, stress is highly harmful.
Do you think you're starting to become obsessed?
Does this situation sound familiar to you? You send a message and the nerves start to get on your nerves. The message has arrived… there is the double blue check… he has read it… why is it taking him so long to reply? why is he not answering me? who is he talking to? Stressful! My partner told me he is working and is online. Did he hear the notification? Could it be that my mobile phone is not working? Maybe the operator has gone down!
Have you ever said any of the above phrases? Is it accompanied by intense anxiety? If you answered yes to several or all of the above situations, it seems that you are using the tool obsessively.
All the information we can obtain from the other person (their last connection time, whether they are online or not, if there is any change in their profile photo or status) brings out our most controlling and insecure side.
Most of the time, we don't take into account that new technologies have transformed our lives so quickly that they even make us lose perspective. Let's think: Could it be that the recipient of our message is having a quiet conversation with a group of friends, at a party, without their mobile phone on them and that's why they don't answer? Could it be that they're engrossed in reading an exciting book and haven't even noticed the WhatsApp sound? Or could it be that they're working and can't answer?
In any case, it produces intense anxiety which is not motivated by the app itself but by our own insecurity which is what can cause anxiety.
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Anxiety and couples
If you get nervous waiting for your partner to contact you via WhatsApp and are disappointed when you see that the last time they were online was two hours after they said “good night” to you, or you get grumpy when you see that they are “online” but not talking to you, you are already noticing the destructive effects of WhatsApp obsession on your partners.
Thus, according to Fernando Azor – psychologist and tutor at the Camilo José Cela University in Madrid and Enrique García Huete – professor of Psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid – “This is a perfect channel to strengthen relationships in the first phase of falling in love, but it can later lead to problems if one of the spouses becomes obsessed with being in constant contact with their partner or controlling when they connect or disconnect.”
CWhen we know that our partner has received the message but has not answered us and we rush to “read their mind” it can generate a major conflict in the couple.
The same thing happens when sending a message when – supposedly – our partner is doing something that prevents him/her from answering you or being online with anyone, such as working or at the doctor’s – or even at the psychologist’s, who knows?
In any case, All this is followed by intense anguish. «When distrust arises due to untimely connections, the situation can degenerate into a lot of anxiety if one of the spouses becomes obsessed with knowing what their partner is doing, down to the minute, through that messaging channel.»according to Fernando Azor.
Everything gets worse after the breakup, as many people continue to monitor what their ex-partner does through WhatsApp – months after the end of the relationship – entering into a loop of anxiety, without hours, in which the important thing is to see the last thing the ex-partner has done and try to “guess” who it was with, becoming a permanent self-punishment with strong feelings of guilt.
In the future, relationships will depend on the use made of this tool – just like social networks – since, according to Enrique García, «If one uses them a lot and the other barely answers, everything can break down because the person who sends them thinks that the other person is ignoring the relationship.»
This mobile application that appeared as an instant messaging service, free and fast and It has ended up branching out its benefits widely so that many of them end up being confusedBut the truth is that WhatsApp generates a lot of anxiety. If the question is why? the answer is quite simple: do a little self-criticism.
The advantages of using WhatsApp correctly
- Good tool in the conquest phase of the couple, especially for shy people or those with communication difficulties.
- With a non-verbal message, the nervousness of having the person we are attracted to in front of us disappears, and we feel freer to express how we are.
- Great way to keep in touch with the loved one for those people who are very busy or have little time to see each other on a daily basis.
The drawbacks of misusing WhatsApp
- Bad tool to communicate our frustrations or maintain an argument because it will lead to misunderstandings and conflicts later.
- Nonverbal communication – typical of the application's written messages – are devoid of the volume or tone of verbal communication messages, through whose modulation feelings and emotions are communicated to us. However, when we read a message, we cannot make such an interpretation; they are just written words. One must be very careful with the words chosen.
- It can be used to control the partner. The only thing it will do is increase the jealousy that has led to control. WhatsApp does not generate jealousy. The only thing the app has done is multiply this jealousy and act as a facilitating vehicle to be able to control your partner.
Guidelines for non-anxious use of WhatsApp as a couple
We must bear in mind that, contrary to what we might think, the implementation of WhatsApp in our society is relatively recent, so there is no data yet about a specific pathology associated with its irrational use.
However, it is known that between 80-90% of the population connects to the Internet for leisure purposes and that the total number of users who make inappropriate use of WhatsApp can be found around 5-9%.
On the other hand, José Antonio Molina, a psychologist who participated in the study “Control of mobile deaths” assures that “Smartphones are so common in everyday life that getting someone to turn them off is (almost) an impossible mission.” According to the study, 55% of Spaniards eat with their mobile phone at their side, a third take it with them when they go to the bathroom and only 25% turn it off to have sex with their partner.
For all this, the Guidelines to follow for a more rational and responsible use of WhatsApp and, in turn, less anxious and possible generator of conflicts in couples, are:
- Read the message carefully and understand it. because otherwise, misunderstandings arise that affect the couple.
- Write the message correctly to avoid misunderstandings and arguments, since forgetting a comma or writing a question without the question mark turns it into a statement, totally changing the meaning of what you wanted to say to your partner. Both spelling and grammar mistakes and syntactical errors can change the meaning of what you want to express.
- Don't look at your partner's WhatsApp messages when they have left their phone on the table and gone away for a moment. They will have done it in confidence and you are looking at them out of jealousy and insecurity. Don't do it, base your relationship on trust, it is very important to build it.
- Don't control WhatsApp. Forget about keeping track of his/her last connection time. Don't stress because you sent a message and he/she hasn't answered you yet, there are surely a million reasons why he/she hasn't. With these worries you only end up affecting yourself and your relationship. If you trust him/her, you will feel more secure and you won't need to control.
- Never make a mistake in conversation. It is probably not serious if the climate of trust in the couple is high…