Throw Her Phone Away

You'd like more intimacy, but getting your wife out of her own head is easier said than done.

*This is part of an ongoing series on marriage. Installments are irregular.

You come to bed. Your wife is reclining on her side, facing away from you. She’s scrolling Tiktok on her phone. You lean over and see some hyper-attractive influencer is bouncing through a massive kitchen in skin-tight athleisure, ostensibly showing off the new organization system in her cabinets, but the camera is getting a great view of her shapely rear end.

You greet your wife with, “Hey, honey,” and brush her shoulder. It’s like petting a rock. Her mind is somewhere else, in that high-end marble kitchen, and simultaneously in her own, which has a sink full of sippy cups and dirty milk bottles. It’s also fixated on this influencer’s body, and with every passing second disassociating from her own body. She’s thinking she could probably have that butt, if she tried harder. Probably. She’s a failure. She wishes she was more attractive.

You try a few further initiation tactics. Your standard routine. She finally shrugs and grumbles, “I’m so tired. Not tonight.” You roll over and give up, irritated and resentful.

Women, particularly young mothers or those who work stressful jobs, have an endless number of ways to trap themselves in their own head. The phone is just the most potent way to do it, and of phone uses, scrolling social media is the worst, because it has a direct negative effect on her self-image. Your pursuit of intimacy now faces the extra obstacle of lowered self esteem an a preoccupation with the flaws of her own body. Any man who’s been in a relationship knows a woman in her own head cannot be aroused, and even if she submits to your advances, it’s not nearly so fun as it should be. You can tell she’s somewhere else. She might submit to you, but she can’t submit to the moment. The whole affair falls flat.

Even if she doesn’t bring a phone to bed (a small minority), and she has no such body image concerns in the moment, she can easily spin out on her mental task list. Did she remember to pack the medicine? Has she scheduled piano lessons for the year? Was that email to the COO taken the way she’d hoped? Why didn’t she work out today? That was a bad decision. Is her friend blowing her off on that invite? Maybe it was that one conversation that got too political. On and on it goes. Welcome to female neuroticism.

Your job as the husband is to lead your wife out of her own head. Particularly during stressful phases of life, she is unlikely to resurface on her own. (Yes, wives, you should have better phone habits. You shouldn’t scroll before bed. You should probably delete that app entirely. There are other things you can do to feel more present and embodied, but we will get to that in a separate essay.) You cannot lead your wife out of her head by reasoning with her, or pleading, or reminding her how long it’s been since the last time. You’re fighting fire with fire, and it will just lead to guilt or resentment on her side and certainly resentment on yours. Neither is great for your intimate life.

No. The only way to pull a woman back into her body and the present moment, to remind her that she is not just an operating system managing tasks or an discontented inhabitant of a flawed body, is physicality. Touch, breath, pressure. A few syllables, maybe, but words are cheap unless you really know what you’re doing. Not only should you be more persistent in your seduction,* but you shouldn’t wait until you want sex that very moment to do it.

_{[*Here we pause for the land acknowledgement that no means no, and you know when the no is no.]}

A time will likely come in your marriage where a certain set of cues prompts the generation of a list of expectations in your wife, and the expectations generate anxiety because she thinks she cannot meet them. She isn’t in the headspace to meet them—it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you are the prophetic loser.

Your mission is to break that paradigm and make sensuality seem fun again, to make your wife feel alive again. In short, eroticism for its own sake, not as a mere stepping stone to intercourse. There are many ideas in the Red Pill space I strongly disagree with, but this post from Rian Stone about decoupling foreplay from sex (as in, periodically engaging in foreplay only, and in unexpected circumstances) strikes me as a keen application of this principle: bring your wife back into her body again. Short-circuit the “mental load.” Take or leave the specifics, but apply the principle.

Some men just like to slap their wives’ butts while she’s cooking dinner. A classic, but maybe not enough. You can also sweep her up and kiss her passionately, and don’t let go until she melts. I’m not going to brainstorm for you, though—why should I do your job for you? You can figure this out. In any case, get creative—discreetly, because you probably have kids around.

A mutually satisfying intimate life is more than regular sex. It’s about keeping the passion alive. Sensuality is the only way to pull a wife out of her own head and back into her body.

Yet, some very nice, well-socialized men are going to read this and think, but Georgi, I respect my wife as a whole person. I love her mind. She’s not just a [insert crude term]. She’s not a toy. She’s my wife! Should I be so aggressive in my pursuit?

Dear friend, I know you mean well. But what do you think sex is? What is sensuality? Is it two computers connecting via a USB cable? Are you downloading data to each other’s RAMs? Whisper sweet nothings, but it will only get you so far. It is the physical, the physiological, that pulls two lovers into that feeling of intimacy. If you want your wife to be in her body, you need to focus on stimulating a response from the body. You might use words toward that end, but it’s not out of an appreciation for her beautiful mind, okay?

In your youth, you may have been sternly warned off objectifying women, because women are people. Sadly, what this warning has generally carried the implication that women are almost exclusively made of the mind, and their bodies are like strange alien flowers that only bloom under exactly the right conditions—a full moon, a temperature between 70-75 degrees and a soil PH of 7.1—and you must patiently wait for those conditions to arrive so as not to be boorish.

You aren’t a boor, you’re a husband, and she knows you love her. We females are not mere minds; our bodies are not fickle flowers. We were given these bodies to enjoy and be enjoyed, and if you aren’t trying to appreciate your wife’s body as much as possible, that’s a crime against love, and on the whole your marriage will suffer. She needs to be seduced, she needs to blush and be caught off guard by your charm and your desire for her. She must be reminded that sex is not an operating procedure that asks her to be more than she is, that it is fun and affirming and makes her feel close to you. She needs you to lead.

So, if you’ve done well with your reminders, if you think you’ve short-circuited her neuroses, come to bed and throw her phone away, playfully. Pluck it straight from her hands and toss it across the floor. She may not know it in the instant, but she wants you to.

If you like thought-provoking scifi suspense that has pretty much nothing to do with this subject matter, Liminal Wake, Book One of the Loop Duology, is available free here on Substack and on Amazon in all formats.