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A digital detox or a &quot;phone-free&quot; time can be incredibly good for the brain.Even just a full day without refreshing apps and staring at a screen can help us feel more connected to the physical world, grounded in our feelings, and less fidgety and paranoid.But because we live in a culture used to constant availability, it can be hard to take much space away from the phones and screens without leaving loved ones on read, or worse yet, worrying them.Ideally, setting a clear boundary and warning those close to us ahead of time would help curb any freak-outs during a digital detox, but this doesn&#39;t always work perfectly.<h2>In a popular <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/10jsjty/aita_for_missing_an_actual_emergency_because_i/" target="_blank">post on the AITA subreddit</a>, a man asked if he was wrong for ignoring a real emergency after his wife kept trying to contact him during a &quot;phone-free&quot; trip.</h2>He wrote:<blockquote> AITA for missing an actual emergency because I turned off my phone to avoid my wife&#39;s unnecessary contact attempts during my tech-free weekend? </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> My best friend (31m) and I (27m) have a tradition of taking a yearly weekend trip together that&#39;s phone-free. We&#39;ve been doing this for a decade now. </blockquote><blockquote> These weekend trips consist of us staying in a suite and exploring the city, not traversing the wilderness so it&#39;s not like we&#39;re completely disconnected. </blockquote><blockquote> Still, we liked to keep one on hand for navigation and emergency purposes, and it would usually be Friend&#39;s phone that we brought along. Friend and I left for our trip this year two Fridays ago to make use of the long weekend. </blockquote><blockquote> This was the first time I&#39;ve gone one on of these trips since my wife and I moved in together, got engaged, or got married. However, we were dating for the last two years worth of trips (2021 and 2022), and she seemed fine during that time. </blockquote><blockquote> I would just tell her I was going to be busy for the weekend and she&#39;d leave me alone. I understand that there are different expectations once you get married, but I didn&#39;t expect the 180 in behavior. </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> My wife all but demanded I take my phone as well in case she needed to get ahold of me despite her having Friend&#39;s number. I let her know I had arrived and immediately after that she was texting me and asking me how things were. </blockquote><blockquote> Then again, asking me another question when I didn&#39;t respond to the first one. I eventually muted our text conversation because I was sick of the phone buzzing. She called me a few hours later and asked why I wasn&#39;t responding to her texts. </blockquote><blockquote> I reiterated that this was supposed to be a no-phone weekend and kept the call short despite her trying to drag out the conversation. She called me once more after this. </blockquote><blockquote> When I answered and found out it wasn&#39;t an emergency, I simply turned off my phone. The calls then started coming in for my friend and he followed suit. We spent the rest of the weekend with our phones off until the drive back on Monday. </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> I called my wife and informed her when we were about 30 minutes away from my place and she was furious. </blockquote><blockquote> She said that there ended up being an emergency (her sister got into a car accident that won&#39;t affect her long-term, but still resulted in broken bones) and that I had just ignored her the entire time when she &#39;needed me.&#39; </blockquote><blockquote> I told her that I was very sorry to hear about her sister, but it wasn&#39;t my fault she had essentially forced my hand into cutting off means of communication. </blockquote><blockquote> She went to stay with a friend before I arrived home that night and has since come home, but she&#39;s still fuming. AITA? </blockquote>The generous people of the internet offered up their two cents.<a data-testid="comment_author_link" href="https://www.reddit.com/user/eleanor-rigby-/">eleanor-rigby-</a> wrote:<blockquote> NTA her sister getting into what sounds like a relatively minor car accident is not an emergency. This is beyond ridiculous. How is it different from you being in another country and having no service or something? </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> People are allowed to still live their lives despite being married, you&rsquo;re not tethered to your spouse. </blockquote><a data-testid="comment_author_link" href="https://www.reddit.com/user/TallButShort9/">TallButShort9</a> wrote: <blockquote> OP in his comments about his relationship with his friend: &quot;Some people might not think it was purely platonic, but I wouldn&#39;t say anything explicitly sexual happened.&quot; </blockquote><blockquote> People are allowed to still live their lives despite being married but having these &quot;non-negotiable&quot; trips with your not purely platonic friend is a different story. </blockquote><blockquote> YTA OP. Your wife clearly has a reason to be insecure in your marriage. </blockquote><a data-testid="comment_author_link" href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ParsimoniousSalad/">ParsimoniousSalad</a> wrote:<blockquote> NTA. I have the odd feeling that she almost wanted there to be an actual emergency so she could feel justified in bothering, and might have created one if it didn&#39;t occur naturally. She desperately doesn&#39;t want you away from her. </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> You&#39;ll need to have a serious conversation about that. EDIT: apparently OP buried some key details in comments too, so it sounds like his wife needs to have a serious conversation with HIM as well. </blockquote><a data-testid="comment_author_link" href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MistressLiliana/">MistressLiliana</a> wrote:<blockquote> NTA. A modern day version of The Boy That Cried Wolf. If she respected you in the first place you would have been reachable. </blockquote><a data-testid="comment_author_link" href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Little_Entrepreneur/">Little_Entrepreneur</a> wrote: <blockquote> Edit: now that OP has confirmed him and the friend have hooked up, I&rsquo;m gonna have to go with YTA. Ehhhh, ESH while simultaneously being NAH. </blockquote><blockquote> She&rsquo;s definitely in the wrong for blowing up your phone and it&rsquo;s just a weekend. If she was okay with it in the past, seems kind of odd she would be so upset over it. But why does your trip need to be phone-free? </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> Not judging but there&rsquo;s no real reason in the post to justify. </blockquote><blockquote> If you carry a phone for emergencies and navigation, it&rsquo;s not phone-free anyway, you&rsquo;re just not using your phone constantly, which I would assume is a given for most people when they&rsquo;re travelling. </blockquote><blockquote> You shouldn&rsquo;t be expected to drop everything and inconvenience your friend and the trip, but I don&rsquo;t understand what harm comes from being available? Like you even mentioned in the post, it&rsquo;s not a wilderness retreat, you&rsquo;re in a city. </blockquote><blockquote> I wouldn&rsquo;t be okay with not being able to reach my husband for a whole weekend either if he was just out at bars, etc with friends. This is a hard one, I&rsquo;m curious to see what other commenters think. </blockquote><a data-testid="comment_author_link" href="https://www.reddit.com/user/olympus1217/">olympus1217</a> wrote:<div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> INFO-Is your friend single? Is he gay? Your comment that &ldquo;nothing explicitly sexual&rdquo; happened when you lived together is clearly being missed by 90% of the NTA comments here. </blockquote><blockquote> Sounds like your wife is insecure about your friendship, and your post/responses don&rsquo;t seem to show any empathy for those insecurities despite identifying a pretty major red flag in your above response. </blockquote><a data-testid="comment_author_link" href="https://www.reddit.com/user/cryssylee90/">cryssylee90</a> wrote:<blockquote> I was all ready to say N T A until I read the comments where you and your friend were much more &ldquo;involved&rdquo; with one another than a regular friendship or roommate situation. </blockquote><blockquote> OF COURSE your WIFE is feeling insecure about this. Are you saying if she decided that she and an ex were &ldquo;platonic&rdquo; now and she wanted to go off galavanting with them for a weekend without contacting you that you&rsquo;d be cool with it? </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> Either your answer is yes or you&rsquo;re a total hypocrite here. You&rsquo;re off on a weekend getaway with an old flame that you have had not platonic but &ldquo;not explicitly sexual&rdquo; relations with, shutting off your phone so your wife can&rsquo;t contact you. </blockquote><blockquote> Hell, I&rsquo;m surprised she married you when you went on these prior trips, hopefully, she&rsquo;ll be smart enough that she won&rsquo;t be married to you before your next one. YTA for your very obvious affair at this point. </blockquote><a data-testid="comment_author_link" href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ParisThroughWindows/">ParisThroughWindows</a> wrote:<blockquote> My guy. You buried the lede on this for FOUR HOURS. You shared an apartment AND A BED with your male &ldquo;friend&rdquo; for FIVE years. Coincidentally that year began immediately after the first of these annual trips. </blockquote><blockquote> I&rsquo;m assuming this is real but the Brokeback analogies are strong and the coyness raises my spidey sense. </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> If this had been a platonic relationship / roommate thing you would have had bunks a la Stepbrothers (leaving the garage available for karate) or one of you would have converted the living room into a makeshift bedroom. </blockquote><blockquote> An 18 and 22-year-old dude pair would want space to bring home a partner, even a hook-up, unless their partner was at home. This was an unquestionably intimate (albeit not necessarily sexual) relationship that you&rsquo;ve maintained for a decade. </blockquote><blockquote> To top it off, you take a special vacation every year. </blockquote><blockquote> Whether you admit it or not, I&rsquo;m sure you show not-so-subtle preference for your &ldquo;friend&rdquo; in a thousand ways, including your willingness to take phone calls at inappropriate times and your insistence on taking a &ldquo;phone-free&rdquo; getaway. </blockquote><blockquote> You claim your wife wouldn&rsquo;t want these things but it&rsquo;s unlikely you ever asked. You implied that you went from casual dating to married and living together in the space between the 2022 trip and 2023 trip. </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> That&rsquo;s a lot of relationship steps in 365 days. I can only imagine that there was an ultimatum of sorts from either your wife or parents - or some other threat that your world would be upended. </blockquote><blockquote> Be honest with yourself and your wife. Even if you don&rsquo;t love your friend in a romantic way, you don&rsquo;t value your marriage. Unless it isn&rsquo;t abundantly clear - YTA. </blockquote><blockquote> Edit. I originally read that they were &ldquo;poor college kids&rdquo; and roomies for a year. FIVE YEARS. They shared a bed for FIVE YEARS. I&rsquo;ve updated above and double down on my assessment. </blockquote><blockquote> OP YTA. Massive A and willfully ignorant of the active harm you&rsquo;re causing your wife. </blockquote>Clearly, OP was not telling the whole story in his original post, but attentive commenters were able to get more clarity and pinpoint that he is in fact TA.<div className="ad-splitter"></div>

Man infuriates wife by missing emergency during 'phone free' weekend with guy friend.

A digital detox or a &quot;phone-free&quot; time can be incredibly good for the brain.Even just a full day without refreshing apps and staring at a screen can help us feel more connected to the physical world, grounded in our feelings, and less fidgety and paranoid.But because we live in a culture used to constant availability, it can be hard to take much space away from the phones and screens without leaving loved ones on read, or worse yet, worrying them.Ideally, setting a clear boundary and warning those close to us ahead of time would help curb any freak-outs during a digital detox, but this doesn&#39;t always work perfectly.In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a man asked if he was wrong for ignoring a real emergency after his wife kept trying to contact him during a &quot;phone-free&quot; trip.He wrote: AITA for missing an actual emergency because I turned off my phone to avoid my wife&#39;s unnecessary contact attempts during my tech-free weekend?  My best friend (31m) and I (27m) have a tradition of taking a yearly weekend trip together that&#39;s phone-free. We&#39;ve been doing this for a decade now.  These weekend trips consist of us staying in a suite and exploring the city, not traversing the wilderness so it&#39;s not like we&#39;re completely disconnected.  Still, we liked to keep one on hand for navigation and emergency purposes, and it would usually be Friend&#39;s phone that we brought along. Friend and I left for our trip this year two Fridays ago to make use of the long weekend.  This was the first time I&#39;ve gone one on of these trips since my wife and I moved in together, got engaged, or got married. However, we were dating for the last two years worth of trips (2021 and 2022), and she seemed fine during that time.  I would just tell her I was going to be busy for the weekend and she&#39;d leave me alone. I understand that there are different expectations once you get married, but I didn&#39;t expect the 180 in behavior.  My wife all but demanded I take my phone as well in case she needed to get ahold of me despite her having Friend&#39;s number. I let her know I had arrived and immediately after that she was texting me and asking me how things were.  Then again, asking me another question when I didn&#39;t respond to the first one. I eventually muted our text conversation because I was sick of the phone buzzing. She called me a few hours later and asked why I wasn&#39;t responding to her texts.  I reiterated that this was supposed to be a no-phone weekend and kept the call short despite her trying to drag out the conversation. She called me once more after this.  When I answered and found out it wasn&#39;t an emergency, I simply turned off my phone. The calls then started coming in for my friend and he followed suit. We spent the rest of the weekend with our phones off until the drive back on Monday.  I called my wife and informed her when we were about 30 minutes away from my place and she was furious.  She said that there ended up being an emergency (her sister got into a car accident that won&#39;t affect her long-term, but still resulted in broken bones) and that I had just ignored her the entire time when she &#39;needed me.&#39;  I told her that I was very sorry to hear about her sister, but it wasn&#39;t my fault she had essentially forced my hand into cutting off means of communication.  She went to stay with a friend before I arrived home that night and has since come home, but she&#39;s still fuming. AITA? The generous people of the internet offered up their two cents.eleanor-rigby- wrote: NTA her sister getting into what sounds like a relatively minor car accident is not an emergency. This is beyond ridiculous. How is it different from you being in another country and having no service or something?  People are allowed to still live their lives despite being married, you&rsquo;re not tethered to your spouse. TallButShort9 wrote:  OP in his comments about his relationship with his friend: &quot;Some people might not think it was purely platonic, but I wouldn&#39;t say anything explicitly sexual happened.&quot;  People are allowed to still live their lives despite being married but having these &quot;non-negotiable&quot; trips with your not purely platonic friend is a different story.  YTA OP. Your wife clearly has a reason to be insecure in your marriage. ParsimoniousSalad wrote: NTA. I have the odd feeling that she almost wanted there to be an actual emergency so she could feel justified in bothering, and might have created one if it didn&#39;t occur naturally. She desperately doesn&#39;t want you away from her.  You&#39;ll need to have a serious conversation about that. EDIT: apparently OP buried some key details in comments too, so it sounds like his wife needs to have a serious conversation with HIM as well. MistressLiliana wrote: NTA. A modern day version of The Boy That Cried Wolf. If she respected you in the first place you would have been reachable. Little_Entrepreneur wrote:  Edit: now that OP has confirmed him and the friend have hooked up, I&rsquo;m gonna have to go with YTA. Ehhhh, ESH while simultaneously being NAH.  She&rsquo;s definitely in the wrong for blowing up your phone and it&rsquo;s just a weekend. If she was okay with it in the past, seems kind of odd she would be so upset over it. But why does your trip need to be phone-free?  Not judging but there&rsquo;s no real reason in the post to justify.  If you carry a phone for emergencies and navigation, it&rsquo;s not phone-free anyway, you&rsquo;re just not using your phone constantly, which I would assume is a given for most people when they&rsquo;re travelling.  You shouldn&rsquo;t be expected to drop everything and inconvenience your friend and the trip, but I don&rsquo;t understand what harm comes from being available? Like you even mentioned in the post, it&rsquo;s not a wilderness retreat, you&rsquo;re in a city.  I wouldn&rsquo;t be okay with not being able to reach my husband for a whole weekend either if he was just out at bars, etc with friends. This is a hard one, I&rsquo;m curious to see what other commenters think. olympus1217 wrote: INFO-Is your friend single? Is he gay? Your comment that &ldquo;nothing explicitly sexual&rdquo; happened when you lived together is clearly being missed by 90% of the NTA comments here.  Sounds like your wife is insecure about your friendship, and your post/responses don&rsquo;t seem to show any empathy for those insecurities despite identifying a pretty major red flag in your above response. cryssylee90 wrote: I was all ready to say N T A until I read the comments where you and your friend were much more &ldquo;involved&rdquo; with one another than a regular friendship or roommate situation.  OF COURSE your WIFE is feeling insecure about this. Are you saying if she decided that she and an ex were &ldquo;platonic&rdquo; now and she wanted to go off galavanting with them for a weekend without contacting you that you&rsquo;d be cool with it?  Either your answer is yes or you&rsquo;re a total hypocrite here. You&rsquo;re off on a weekend getaway with an old flame that you have had not platonic but &ldquo;not explicitly sexual&rdquo; relations with, shutting off your phone so your wife can&rsquo;t contact you.  Hell, I&rsquo;m surprised she married you when you went on these prior trips, hopefully, she&rsquo;ll be smart enough that she won&rsquo;t be married to you before your next one. YTA for your very obvious affair at this point. ParisThroughWindows wrote: My guy. You buried the lede on this for FOUR HOURS. You shared an apartment AND A BED with your male &ldquo;friend&rdquo; for FIVE years. Coincidentally that year began immediately after the first of these annual trips.  I&rsquo;m assuming this is real but the Brokeback analogies are strong and the coyness raises my spidey sense.  If this had been a platonic relationship / roommate thing you would have had bunks a la Stepbrothers (leaving the garage available for karate) or one of you would have converted the living room into a makeshift bedroom.  An 18 and 22-year-old dude pair would want space to bring home a partner, even a hook-up, unless their partner was at home. This was an unquestionably intimate (albeit not necessarily sexual) relationship that you&rsquo;ve maintained for a decade.  To top it off, you take a special vacation every year.  Whether you admit it or not, I&rsquo;m sure you show not-so-subtle preference for your &ldquo;friend&rdquo; in a thousand ways, including your willingness to take phone calls at inappropriate times and your insistence on taking a &ldquo;phone-free&rdquo; getaway.  You claim your wife wouldn&rsquo;t want these things but it&rsquo;s unlikely you ever asked. You implied that you went from casual dating to married and living together in the space between the 2022 trip and 2023 trip.  That&rsquo;s a lot of relationship steps in 365 days. I can only imagine that there was an ultimatum of sorts from either your wife or parents - or some other threat that your world would be upended.  Be honest with yourself and your wife. Even if you don&rsquo;t love your friend in a romantic way, you don&rsquo;t value your marriage. Unless it isn&rsquo;t abundantly clear - YTA.  Edit. I originally read that they were &ldquo;poor college kids&rdquo; and roomies for a year. FIVE YEARS. They shared a bed for FIVE YEARS. I&rsquo;ve updated above and double down on my assessment.  OP YTA. Massive A and willfully ignorant of the active harm you&rsquo;re causing your wife. Clearly, OP was not telling the whole story in his original post, but attentive commenters were able to get more clarity and pinpoint that he is in fact TA.

A digital detox or a &quot;phone-free&quot; time can be incredibly good for the brain.  Even just a full day without refreshing apps and staring at a screen can help us feel more connected to the physical world, grounded in our feelings,...