At home, over dinner, you want to catch up with your husband, but he’s busy checking his emails on his iPad. He says ‘Yes’ every so often but, again, his attention is obviously elsewhere.Part of you wonders who is messaging him so often. You feel a pang of mistrust; maybe you don’t even kiss him goodnight.Then it occurs to you that you put an ‘X’ at the end of your text messages to each other more often than you kiss in real life.For many of us, this behaviour is slowly becoming the new normal. But it shouldn’t: because technology is destroying real intimacy in our relationships.I have been studying the digital world as a senior researcher at the University of Brighton since 1990, but it was six years ago when I started to notice myself spending too long on my smartphone: hours online at night and constantly responding to it in the day, even when surrounded by friends.I realised I was beginning to get addicted — and I wasn’t the only one. So, I began studying the effects of our virtual lives on our physical relationships, and have since spoken to hundreds of couples whose partnerships have been threatened by their addiction to technology.For some, the cause is what I call ‘wretched contentment’: spending evenings watching TV, all the while constantly checking phones without talking. It’s pleasant, but it’s not fulfilling.As the quality of our physical connections gets diluted over time, we adjust, expecting less. We forget what real romance is. And we forget that sending kisses by email can’t replace actual intimacy.Studies the world over have proven the same. Researchers at the University of Missouri interviewed hundreds of Facebook users aged between 18 and 82, who believed their partner’s Facebook use increased conflict in their relationship.As the use of the site increased, the study found, so did their jealousy, leading to break-ups, cheating and divorce.The evidence is everywhere: the more we resort to digital intimacy, the less fluent our actual intimacy becomes.One couple’s relationship suffered when they were both promoted, and spent every evening answering emails from work, even at 11pm.‘At first, we were answering emails from the bedroom,’ says Anne. ‘Which meant our sex life suffered. Then, my husband started working from the study next door instead. When he started texting me goodnight, instead of walking to the bedroom, I knew I was no longer a priority.’(dailymail.co.uk)Bakudaily.Az