Husbands phone on silent

[Couldntthinkofausername24]

As the title says basically. His phone is always on silent. Every God damn day. Can never get hold of him and it pisses me off so much.

He just leaves it laying about on. In his pocket, on the settee, in the baby bag, on the fireplace always on silent. Nobody can get hold of him ever. They ring me or text me. He could be out in the garden for a few hours and dosent check when he comes back in.

It's not password protected and he leaves it in plain sight so there is no issue with trust etc it just pisses me off. I can ever get hold of him. He could be at work and just never comes back to me in a reasonable time in an emergency.

Can anyone relate

I think the point about the garden is that when other people are trying to get hold of him, they ring her instead. Is she meant to interrupt what she is doing just to act as his answering service?

OP you should refuse to do this. Let the people who are trying to contact him feel the annoyance themselves instead of taking it on yourself. Don't answer your own phone if you think it's for him. Tell people "I'm not his secretary/answering service, please don't ring me unless it's an emergency." Otherwise you're just facilitating him and he has no incentive to change.

This is me. Phone is always on silent and if I am at home, I often couldn't even tell you where it is. At work, I don't even take it out of my bag. Yes, it's annoying for other people if they can't get hold of me but at the end of the day, my mobile phone is for my convenience, not theirs.

My phone has been on silent since 2007. I check it when I feel like it, which could be 20 times a day or none. It's for my convenience, not anyone else's. No, you can't rely on me to snap to your attention and be there when you want. To all intents and purposes I'm not reliably contactable immediately. (You can try emailing or messaging me on social media - I am a reasonably online person so there's a strong chance I'll see one of the many forms of communication we have at our disposal - but no, you can't guarantee I'll see it.) That's the point, that's how I like it and that's what everyone in my life accepts.

Even if my phone wasn't on silent you couldn't guarantee you'd get hold of me. I might be in the Tube. I might be out of signal. I might be in a different country. I might just be BUSY with the million things I do in my life that aren't to do with you.

I don't think about emergencies because they're rare and unlikely by their very nature. I've received one emergency call in my life (DP collapsed at work) and I didn't get it... not because I had my phone on silent but because I was in fact in the Tube. By the time I got out and called back he was in the hospital being seen to (and the scariest reason had been ruled out so actually it saved me the worst bit of panicking). That's the kind of call we think of as an emergency but actually, the fact that I didn't get it for an hour... nothing bad happened. I wasn't needed for anything practical. There was no real difference getting it an hour later.

The vast majority of emergency calls will be like that.

You should never, ever expect that anyone will be able to take your call and respond to you with any immediacy.

Could you offer to do it for him? You shouldn't have to but it might be worth it?

This would annoy me too - it got to the point with my mum's mobile that I had had to go and deal with my granny in an emergency because she hadn't picked up the phone.

We have pretty much got it sorted now, but that was because they gave up their landline so accepted they had to change their attitude to mobile phones.

Does he work in an office? If he does, his teams might have a direct dial VOIP number which might be worth a go as well?

Why are they so annoying! I'm glad you relate. He could be sat next to his phone but slightly out of eye and someone is ringing and ringing and ringing and he dosent look.

Yeah the group messages drive me mad. We are both in various family group messages and he has mentioned this in the past. But it's an easy problem to solve. Just mute the actual groups.

I think we have all become way to use to being contactable 24/7 and expect others to be as well. Stepping away from phones is a good thing.

I have started purposely leaving mine upstairs in an evening to stop me just mindlessly using it.

I’m old so it doesn’t seem so odd to me to be uncontactable.

As he doesn’t have privacy issues, could you put him on Find my Friends? At least then you would know where he is?

Secondly, I would stop passing on messages for him. I suspect that will be quite effective eventually.

One of my GEN Z DC keeps their phone on silent. I think there is a backlash against being available all the time.

Yes I will definitely take a look thank you.

Never answers text messages either. Just radio silence. I could literally be ringing him to ask him to pick some milk up on way home or do we need anything from the shops or come quick your 11 month old has been rushed to hospital due to pneumonia complications....nothing

Naturally I am first port of contact for our children at nursery as I honestly do not trust he will answer.

I know where he is and his phone most of the time. During the week he's at work and during the weekend he's at home nowhere near his phone 🤣 so I don't think find my phone would be useful in this case

Sometimes I always wish something semi serious would happen where I just don't contact him so when he finds out and asks why I then tell him.

If you have an iPhone you can set your phone to override the silent setting for certain people. If my husband or daughter call me my phone will ring. I'm sure other phones must have this setting.

If it’s an iPhone trigger ‘find my iPhone’ always works for me with DH 😂

I still feel like that with the 9pm watershed!

Both Samsung but there is a 'do not disturb' feature that I use when we are away from our kids. You can choose who can contact you. This has got me mad because this is another step I do that he dosent bother. He just hops in to bed not a care in the world.

I can see in a genuine emergency this would be annoying, even scary. But this is how we used to live our lives. No constant ringing of partners (or children or parents or friends) for every little thing. We were self-sufficient between waving each other off in the morning and getting home in the evening. Then wait your turn for the landline and hope no-one was using the embryonic internet via dial-up. Or walk to the nearest phonebox.

So, how often do you call him, and what for? Is it excessive? Talk to him. Find out if he's lazy and clueless, or if it's his communication style, or a defence strategy against constant trivial contact. Could you agree a compromise, you only call/message when it's absolutely necessary, but he then takes your calls?

What happens if it is urgent?

My phone is permanently on silent unless I’m on standby at work. Otherwise, silent always. Drives my husband nuts. Very occasionally I’ll be looking at something on my phone when he calls so obviously I see then. Otherwise it’s tough 😂.

My phone is always on silent. I get fed up of being constantly available so now I’m not. I do check it though

Its not excessive no. Some days I don't contact him for days. Other days it might just be a case of getting some milk on his way home from work or if I'm out shopping asking if we need anything. Sounds very trivial I know but when it's all day every day and he's missing calls and messages from others it becomes very annoying. He's been like this for 15 years every day. Its relentless

This is no problem at all if you have your phone on 24/7 but he barely checks it. If I'm at work and go to the loo or to the canteen, I leave my phone on my desk but come back and just double tap my phone to see if I've missed anything. I know you can't check your phone every second of every day but I could message him in a morning and he's still not opened It until we are putting thr kids to bed. 10+ hours have elapsed at this point

If there’s one thing I detest, it’s other people believing they have a right to police my phone use. It is for my convenience, not yours.

Mine is on silent all the time. That’s my choice. If I don’t want to be contactable, I won’t be.

If he's been like this for 15 years you kind of need to accept that this is how he is, this is how he chooses to manage his phone (and he's neither unusual nor unreasonable) and he's not going to change.

What happens if it's urgent and the person you're trying to contact is asleep, or in the Tube, or on a flight?

No one is actually available 24/7 and nor should they be. Nothing is actually so urgent that it can't wait an hour or two (or even more).

Is there a reason you need to contact him immediately at regular intervals?
Very young children with medical complications?
Unreliable childcare?
Or does he get irate with you when you're not immediately contactable?

If not, a phone is a tool not a summons.
We seemed to manage to stay in contact with the people we live with 20 years ago before phones, so I don't think it's fair to expect him to be at the beck and call of it when he doesn't need to.

You have said that if someone awful happened and you hadn't told him, he would be really hurt. That is really unreasonable of him if he refuses to answer/respond to calls and messages.

What if you were uncontactable for entirely valid reasons and nursery needed to contact him urgently but couldn't? How on earth can he not see that this is dreadful parenting on his part?

I would be really angry. Not about switching his phone to silent but about never checking and phoning back.