Why is my boyfriend always on his phone?
Often because nothing about the evening puts the phones away. Half of partnered adults say their partner is distracted by their phone when they try to talk (Pew Research Center, 2020, surveyed in 2019). Agree on a set time together and put both phones under one block. With CoPact, ending a Strict block early takes both of you.
It tends to look like this. The film is on and you are both on the sofa. Twenty minutes in, his face is lit from below, his thumb is moving, and you are watching the film with someone who is somewhere else.
Nobody decided that. A buzz, a glance, one reply, and the next thing on the screen is a feed. Ask and you get “two minutes”. Ask again and you are the one being difficult. So most people stop asking, and the evening quietly becomes two people on two phones in the same room.
The same goes for girlfriends, husbands and wives. The evening looks the same from either side of the sofa.
Why don’t the basket and the passcode work?
Couples who notice this usually try one of two fixes. Both make sense, and both give out in the same place.
The basket. Phones go in a bowl by the door when you get home. It works for a night. Then one of you is waiting on a message, takes theirs out to check, and the bowl becomes the place phones go when nobody needs them. It also takes the useful phone away with the distracting one: the maps, the alarm, the call you are waiting for. So the rule bends on day two and is gone by the weekend.
Holding the passcode. One of you sets a Screen Time passcode on the other’s phone, or you swap. It holds until they ask for it back. At 10 PM, with a show they want to finish, you are now the person who decides whether they get Instagram. Say no and you are policing your partner. Say yes and the passcode was decoration.
Both fail for one reason. One person ends up holding the line for two, and that person is also the one who wanted the evening. A fix that puts one of you in charge of the other turns a shared evening into a negotiation.
What holds is an agreement you both make, for a set time, that neither of you has to police.
How to get your partner off their phone
Make it about the evening you want back, and make the terms before anyone is holding a phone.
- Bring it up away from the moment. Over breakfast or on a walk, when nobody is mid scroll. Name a specific evening you miss, like Friday’s film, and ask whether they would want it back too.
- Pick the hours together. A window with a start and an end is easier to keep than a rule with neither. Friday from 7 to 11 PM are the hours CoPact plans for date night, and Saturday from 8 to 10:30 PM for movie night. Change them to yours.
- Put both phones under one block. In CoPact, one of you starts a crew for the two of you and plans the block, and the other says they are in from their own iPhone. Each of you keeps your own Always Allowed apps, so the call you are waiting for still comes through. Neither of you sees the other’s apps.
- Decide how hard it holds. Flexible gives each of you a break of up to 20 minutes, and the block relocks itself after it. Under Strict there is no break, and ending early takes both of your votes, so neither of you can fold the evening alone. If something real comes up, the Emergency Pass opens everything for one hour, once a week.
Then the evening runs on what you agreed at breakfast. When a phone buzzes at 9 PM, there is nothing to ask and nothing to refuse. The block ends at 11 PM whether anyone remembers or not.
Does phone use hurt a relationship?
The research points one way. In a study that tracked phone use directly, people used their phone during 27% of the time they spent with their partner (McDaniel et al., Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 2025). A review of 52 studies links a partner’s phone use to lower relationship satisfaction (Ni et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2025).
A phone in a hand is a small thing on any one evening. Over a year of evenings it adds up, and the person on the other side of the sofa notices.
What the studies describe is time together spent apart. A set time with both phones blocked gives that part back.
What if my partner doesn’t want to?
Then their phone stays as it is. Nobody can block apps on someone else’s phone without them. Each of you joins the block on your own iPhone, and nothing locks a phone that has not joined.
That is on purpose. An agreement one person imposes is the passcode again with an app in the middle, and it breaks the same way. If the answer is no, ask for one evening. One film, one dinner, a few hours with a start and an end. It is easier to agree to a Friday than to a new way of living.
And if you are the one reaching for your phone during the film, the same block holds you too. Neither of you is asking the other to do something you are not doing.
Pick one evening this week and say the hours out loud. Here is how CoPact works for couples, and how to plan a date night with both phones away.
