My Love, Sorry I Hurled You Out the Window!

Relationships, particularly marital interactions, often receive undue criticism and are blamed for a host of personal and societal ills. Stressful marriages are allegedly contributing to obesity, insomnia, depression, and now a new linkage has been identified: “Bad Marriages, Relationships Affect Heart Health.” Since nearly everyone is involved in a difficult relationship of one sort or another through marriage, dating, family, or work, the news that a stressful relationship may make you 34 percent more likely to develop heart disease seems rather alarming. However, there is always another side to every story, even one that quite literally threatens to break our hearts long before their time.

As is often the case, we look for stories in the media that tend to explain, provide context to, or refute other stories that are related topically. Such was the case Monday with two seemingly unrelated news reports. The first we have already noted above, containing distressing evidence that difficult relationships place us at greater risk for various forms of heart disease. The conducted study established that the term “You’re breaking my heart” is more literal than figurative.

Relationships, particularly bad marriages and family interactions, were identified as the primary culprits. Like all scientific studies, however, this one did not account for other variables that may have contributed more to the development of heart disease in the control group than marital strife. One variable not accounted for was identified in a separate and unrelated survey conducted for a computer software firm earlier this year.

At first glance, a consumer survey about personal computers would appear unrelated to a scientific research study linking relationships with heart disease. Yet that is why first glances often require a second, more careful examination, because the computer survey provided supplemental data that may help place the connection between heart disease and relationships in proper context.

If strained relationships have been conclusively determined to contribute to heart disease, then stop blaming your spouse, your family members, your oppressive boss, or anyone else with whom you interact negatively. They are not the culprits, since you spend less time with them than you do with the real cause of anxiety and stress in your life: your personal computer.

Lest you chuckle in amusement at the assigning of such blame to an electronic device, consider the following story from Fox News titled, “Survey: Many People Have Unhealthy Relationships with Computers”:

It's the relationship you spend more time on than any other. It has deepened even during the past few years.

When things go wrong, you become enraged and tearful and attack inanimate objects — but you're willing to spend hours making things right.

Obviously, we're talking about your relationship with your personal computer.

Consider this: In a survey earlier this year, 64 percent of Americans say they spend more time with their computer than with their significant other.

Meanwhile, 84 percent said they were more dependent on their computer than they were three years ago.

The survey was conducted for SupportSoft Inc., a company that produces help desk software. We all have utilized a help desk at one point or another, what SupportSoft discovered through the survey was that people experiencing computer problems need the same thing that people suffering relationship problems may require: therapy. In fact, the similarities were quite evident in the physical and verbal reactions displayed by those suffering psychological stress stemming from relationships and frustrated computer users who cannot solve their technical issues.

SupportSoft realized that customers were seeking “comfort and empathy” along with technical troubleshooting. Continuing from the Fox News story:

They were surprised, Rodio said, to find that computer problems could unleash such powerful emotions.

When confronted with a dead computer, 19 percent admitted to wanting to hurl it out the nearest window, 9 percent felt stranded and alone, 11 percent used language normally reserved for special occasions, 7 percent did so loudly, 3 percent did so tearfully and 3 percent additionally vented their wrath on inanimate objects. (They were not asked about animate targets — it was a survey, not a police blotter.)

On the other hand, a healthy 32 percent said that they basically shrugged.
The respondents (who were all over 18, owned a PC and enjoyed broadband Internet access) estimated they spent an average of 12 hours a month wrestling with computer problems.

Unsurprisingly, 48 percent said they would rather help a friend move than deal with a computer problem. Thirty percent said they currently felt more frustration with their computer than they felt three years ago.

Nineteen percent in the survey indicated that they just wanted to hurl the computer out of the window. If we continue down the road of full automation for all aspects of our lives, computers will start making our laws for us and this last resort will be removed as an available option for our personal expression. Regardless, that solution is never recommended for the other stressful, but more human, relationships in our lives.

If 64 percent of us spend more time with our computers than with our spouses or significant others, as the survey revealed, then this story certainly provides important context to the research findings linking struggling relationships with heart disease. In today’s automated world, perhaps we rely more on our electronic conveniences than we do on each other. This trend away from personal interaction contributes to feelings of isolation and often depression. As a result, we suggest relying on your spouse or significant other for more tasks and interactions that are currently performed by your computer.

For example, rather than paying your bills automatically online each month, leave stacks of unpaid bills, a checkbook, and a pile of envelopes and stamps on your spouse’s bedside table. That will cut down on the time you spend on the computer and allow your significant other to be a more active part of your relationship and finances.

Instead of hiding behind your computer and sending thousands of emails into cyberspace to communicate with everyone you know, you could provide your significant other with a notepad and a pen, along with the aforementioned pile of envelopes and stamps, and request dictation service. Not only will this get you out from behind that computer desk, it will give your spouse a glimpse into your inner-most thoughts as he or she puts them to paper.

The next time you need to create an important office presentation with detailed graphics, close your laptop and forget MS PowerPoint or Presentations. Instead, compliment your significant other’s artistic skills and ask him or her to create all your charts and graphs by hand, as it will be clear to your colleagues that a lot more time and personal effort was expended on them than if you had merely pointed and clicked your way to legible graphics. When was the last time you enjoyed a pie chart made from scratch?

Of course, these suggestions are in jest, but the sobering reality is that relying on electronic conveniences has resulted in 64 percent of us having closer relationships with our computers than with our spouses or family members. One can only shudder at how high that figure might be if cell phones, PDAs, or iPods were included in the survey.

We are not suggesting that heart disease should be taken lightly. On the contrary, stress is a known culprit in the development of all forms of heart disease, and bad relationships of all types, whether with spouses or computers, generate stress. The appearance of these two media stories on the same day, however, served as an important reminder that people are not always to blame when we experience stress or frustration.

We rely on computers much like we rely on significant others, to be there for us when we need help, to be available always when needed, functioning properly and holding all the answers to our problems. When a computer malfunctions or demands our attention to fix it, our reaction is no different than when a significant other comes to us with a personal problem at an inconvenient moment, like during a long-anticipated sporting event or late at night when we would rather sleep than start a lengthy emotional discussion. Yet most of us have spent many hours, even into the wee hours of the morning working feverishly to salvage our relationship with a troubled computer. Our significant others deserve similar or deeper attentiveness on our part.

After all, they chose to be with us didn't they? Unlike ordering a computer online, our spouses were not permitted to select each and every desirable trait and capability in us and leave out those they did not need or want. We came as pre-packaged bundles, full of hardware glitches and programming bugs. It is no wonder that there are now relationship and computer therapists. As the lines between our personal and virtual relationships have blurred, it has become difficult to distinguish where one begins and the other ends.

For the sake of our imperiled hearts and those of our loved ones, perhaps we should reboot and reevaluate which relationships in our lives are receiving the most serious attention from us. If our computers are winning, then our hearts are losing.

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