This Is How You Know You’re Talking On The Phone With Your Partner Way Too Much

Talking on the phone has taken a bit of a backseat to texting in most relationships today, but some couples still manage to talk on the phone for hours at a time. When you're in a relationship, it makes sense that you may find yourself wanting to talk to and be with bae as much as possible on a day-to-day basis. But, is talking on the phone too much a bad sign? It could be, if your phone calls keep you or your partner from fulfilling your obligations.

"I think it can be a bad sign if the phone calls are getting in the way of things that you need or want to get done," Pricilla Martinez, an online life coach at Blush, tells Elite Daily. "Setting up any sort of routine that is going to be unsustainable can be detrimental to any relationship. Once the routine changes, you or your partner are left wondering what happened. If you set unreasonable expectations, then it may make your partner wonder [why] you went from speaking six hours a day to one hour."

On the other hand, when you begin to feel like talking on the phone for hours at a time is a chore, it may be a sign that you and bae are doing it too much. "It feels like a way to keep track of you, there are long drawn out moments of silence because you're trying to find things to talk about, you're feeling like you need some time to yourself," Martinez says.

If your partner doesn't feel like you two talk on the phone too much, it could be an indicator that your phone calls means more to them than it seems on the surface. "Your partner may require more time than you are able to give in the long run," Martinez explains. "Do the phone calls provide them with a sense of security? Does it allow them to feel like they know what you are doing? You have to question whether there may be an underlying reason other than their enjoyment."

"If the relationship is a long-distance relationship, then talking on the phone may be the best way to connect," Nicole Richardson, licensed marriage and family therapist, tells Elite Daily. But when you and bae live in the same city and find yourselves talking on the phone more than actually being with each other, that could mean trouble for your relationship, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Grant H. Brenner says. "It's a bad sign when they can be together but aren't meeting up," he tells Elite Daily. "If they live close enough to get together, and they aren't, and instead, are substituting [it with] telephone time, that suggests that they are choosing to be apart."

You may find yourself in a situation where you want to go out and do life, but you feel like you can't because you and your partner have your regularly scheduled four-hour phone calls every night after work. If this begins to feel overwhelming and you feel stuck, the first thing you should ask yourself is how you got to this place to begin with. "Are you avoiding something else by engaging this way?" asks Richardson. "Or are you feeling that the relationship is on shaky ground and the only way to protect it is to be in constant contact?" Once you've figured out what has changed, you can approach your partner about the subject with a better understanding of where you're coming from.

Sit down with bae in person and talk about how you're feeling. It may "allow your partner to understand your needs without feeling like they did something wrong," Martinez says. "You don't want your partner to perceive fewer or shorter phone calls as a sign that something is wrong." The changes the two of you agree on should be gradual. Instead of going from four hours on the phone one day to 30 minutes the next, try cutting it down an hour or thirty minutes each day. "Make the changes gradual, and it will help ease the transition," she advises. Don't worry: You've got this.

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