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Is technology ruining your relationship? Nicole Kidman has a remedy

Technology hasn't always seemed to help loving communication. The famous actor and her husband have a fascinating suggestion.
Written by Chris Matyszczyk, Contributing Writer

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When love starts going astray, I don't generally look to actors for advice.

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No texting for Nicole Kidman: "We just do voice to voice or skin to skin." (Image: Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Too often, their relationships appear to have all the sanity of a meal involving the chef's special carpetbagger steak.

Almost as often, though, I hear tales of technology not enhancing relationships, but sabotaging them.

Lovers break into their lovers' phones and discover sweet messages to, well, lovers other than them.

Then there's Facebook, a repository of current and impending heartbreak even greater than some governments.

    Read also: OMG! Texting is 25 years old (CNET)

    Yet here's famed screen star Nicole Kidman and her husband, equally famed musician Keith Urban, with a technological tip that has apparently made their relationship stronger.

    "We've never texted," Kidman told Parade magazine.

    Perhaps, you might think, they've texted other people. However, she insists their rule is not to text each other.

    "The reason it started at the beginning was because I didn't know how to text [laughs] and it just kind of worked for us. So now we don't. We just do voice to voice or skin to skin, as we always say," she said.

    This is exciting. I'm not sure I've ever asked anyone for a skin-to-skin conversation. What might this entail? And how did this texting ban come about?

    "We talk all the time and we FaceTime, but we just don't text because I feel like texting can be misrepresentative at times," Kidman expounded. "And I've had the thing where I re-read texts and I'm like, 'What does that mean?' and then read it to somebody and go 'Can you interpret that?' I don't want that between my lover and I."

    So, she does, at least, know how to receive a text. Still, it's an approach that bears thought.

    Technology has forced us to confront the written word in a way that humans haven't done before.

    The words are instantly written and instantly received. It's very similar to speech, save for the fact that you can't see the other person's smiling eyes, flared nostrils, or gritted teeth.

    Instead, you have to guess.

    Texting can be especially problematic because it keeps coming at you, as the mutual (lack of) interpretation heads south and continues on beyond the Antarctic Circle.

    Social media cannot be trusted without these features

    Certain people just aren't good at expressing themselves accurately -- or even humanly -- in writing. Some nerdy people are able to express themselves very clearly, but what emerges is cold, factual, and sometimes painful.

    Worse, when it comes to texting, there are many who now merely use emoji.

    Wait, is that an angry emoji or a very angry emoji?

    Perhaps, then, Kidman's advice might save some potentially doomed relationships. Even though I confess that, to me, talking on the phone seems plainly quaint.

    Read also: How to send text messages from your desktop (TechRepublic)

    Should you be only moved by data, the actor says she's been happily married for 12 years, which is at least 24 in old lovers currency.

    I was ready to recommend this radical plan to friends who are struggling in the love areas, but then I saw this headline from the BBC: "Will we stop speaking and just text?"

    It's official. Love is doomed.

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