The Essential Relationship Anxiety of Our Time, Attentional Infidelity: Will You Notice Me?

Saturday, October 4, 2025.

Once upon a time, the great terror of love was adultery. Would he run off with his secretary? Would she fall for the man next door?

Those fears, at least, had clear villains—flesh-and-blood humans with flaws you could name.

Today’s anxiety is quieter, but somehow sharper:
Will you look at me—or will the glowing screen in your hand win again?

This is what I call attentional infidelity. It’s the affair without a lover.

When Love Meets Distraction

Your partner hasn’t left you. They’re right there on the couch. But you feel alone.

You share something important, and they nod absently, eyes still on email.
You make a joke, and they miss it because TikTok got there first.
You sit across from each other at dinner while one of you checks the news—and the silence grows.

It’s not cruelty. It’s not even intentional. But it lands like betrayal. Psychologists call it technoference—the small, everyday interruptions that technology makes in our relationships (McDaniel & Coyne, 2016). In therapy rooms, clients describe it in words usually reserved for cheating: “I feel invisible,” “I don’t matter,” “There’s someone else between us.”

Why Inattention Hurts More Than Lust

Here’s the twist: many people would forgive a fling before they’d forgive constant distraction. Lust, at least, is recognizable. Inattention feels annihilating.

Attention is the oxygen of intimacy. Without it, love suffocates.

John Gottman’s decades of research showed that relationships thrive or collapse on how couples respond to tiny “bids for connection”—a glance, a joke, a question (Gottman & Silver, 1999).

When those bids are ignored, even for a notification, the body registers rejection. Over time, those small rejections pile up into despair.

So the real anxiety of our age isn’t “Will you leave me?” It’s “Will you notice me?”

Q&A for Couples

Q: What is attentional infidelity?
A: It’s when one partner consistently gives more attention to their screens, apps, or feeds than to the person sitting beside them. It feels like an affair because it erodes trust and intimacy.

Q: Why does this cause so much anxiety?
A: Because we need to feel seen. Simone de Beauvoir once wrote that we exist through the gaze of the other. When your partner’s gaze keeps sliding to their phone, it awakens a deep fear of invisibility.

Q: What can we do about it?
A: You don’t have to throw your phones in the ocean (though it’s tempting). What helps are small but consistent rituals:

• Screen-Free Meals. Even once a day.

• Daily Check-Ins. Twenty minutes of eye contact and conversation with no interruptions.

• Simple Noticing. Turning toward your partner when they speak—even briefly—changes everything.

Research shows that what matters most isn’t grand romantic gestures, but perceived partner responsiveness: the steady sense that “you see me, you value me” (Reis et al., 2018).

The New Vow

Every generation had its vow. For our grandparents, it was duty. For our parents, it was not walking away.

For us, it’s different. The vow is attentional fidelity.

I will put down the world in my pocket, and pick up the world in your eyes.

That is the essential relationship anxiety of our time—and the promise that can calm it.

An Invitation

If any of this feels familiar—if you’ve ever sat across from someone you love and wondered why you felt invisible—you’re not alone. This is the story of countless couples right now.

Therapy can help you find your way back to each other, to rebuild not just closeness but the simple habit of noticing. Because being seen—really seen—may be the rarest and most radical act of love we have left. I can help with that.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (1999). The seven principles for making marriage work. New York: Crown.

McDaniel, B. T., & Coyne, S. M. (2016). “Technoference”: The interference of technology in couple relationships and implications for women’s personal and relational well-being. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 5(1), 85–98. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000065

Reis, H. T., Clark, M. S., & Holmes, J. G. (2018). Perceived partner responsiveness as an organizing construct in the study of intimacy and closeness. Handbook of Closeness and Intimacy, 201–225.

Stern, D. N. (1985). The interpersonal world of the infant: A view from psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. New York: Basic Books.

Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. New York: PublicAffairs.