Courting is one of those old fashioned words that no longer fits comfortably into today’s vocabulary. It invokes images of couples holding hands in an age of sex-free innocence. But, then, as in now, it is still about the search for “That Special Someone”. And, today, there may be no need for such physical contact as ‘hand holding’, as falling in love with your significant other can be done over the Internet.
Of course, looks and personality remain high on our priority when we are on the lookout for that special someone, but we judge potential partners on the content of their text messages rather than conversation skills.
At the start of online dating in the 1990s, most people approached it with some apprehension, which is to be expected. And it had a bit of a social stigma attached to it (and arguably this still remains). The preconception to enroll in an online dating site was tantamount to admitting that one is not having any luck in the ”real world”. This has really changed over time.
And, it’s not just the changing nature of technology that has dictated how we meet partners; it is also the changing nature of work and how busy our lives have become. Online dating is a symptom of a time-poor, work-focused modern society. In the past we were limited to more formalised places to meet partners – churches, organised social events, weddings, regular parties, nightclubs/discos. The Internet has just opened up the space to meet and get to know potential partners!
Today’s lovers sometimes get to know one another better by stalking a Facebook page. Once a relationship has been established, the next step is maintaining it, something technology has aided. If there is a lot of physical distance, whether you use Skype, Facebook, or Twitter or text, these things make you feel connected to the person you are away from. But these same technologies that keep the relationship going can also be the agent for undoing. Couples who initiate through social media might enjoy witty banter online but struggle for fluent conversation face-to-face.
An aspect of living a relationship online is the break-up. Ideally, this should be done in person. Now some people take the easy option and do it by text, or simply by changing their relationship status on Facebook. People feel protected behind a screen; they are immune to the other person’s feelings.
Questions about Virtual Relationships.
Here are a few things to consider as you embark on love via the Internet:
Given the many and varied social media platforms we can and do engage with:
- Are you certain of who you are falling in love with? The platforms for interaction on the Internet allows for multiple personalities and identities.
- Are you sure the Facebook profile, or blogging voice, our Twitter persona or dating profile – or the person you go on a date with on Skype, etc., etc. is real? The ability to construct an idealised version of the self to be displayed to the world is a powerful manipulative tool.
In ‘physical’ relationships, you can spray the perfume when it is given to you, and if you eventually part ways, there is the ceremonious “return of the stuff” – CDs, photos, jewelry, clothes left at your place. There is no constant reminder of the texts, Instant Messages, Tweets, Facebook pictures and Instagram posts. And that’s a lot harder to get rid of than your clothes from his/her place. Love might die, but its digital counterpart never does. There’s just no way to completely erase your digital self from a relationship in 2015, no quick way to sever digital ties once they’ve been formed and no easy way to tell your social media networks that you’re no longer together. Of course you can untag, but for those who’ve shared a lot, the digital impression of your days together remains very much alive.
Our social networking| trails are an exceptionally intimate digital diary that individuals allow just about anybody to click through. So it not surprising that for many people dating is becoming performance art, and both our closest friends and our most casual acquaintances given a vantage position. This is particularly true for digital natives who have grown up with the idea of having an audience of friends and supporters and expecting instant and constant feedback regardless of the source of supply of such feedback. It is therefore not difficult to ponder whether that craving for approval coming from all those wide-ranging friends is beginning to change the way we bond and interact with the people we love.
We have all grown familiar with seeing others chronicle their personal milestones like birthdays, engagements, marriage and babies. What would have been a private moment years back is now a public achievement as well. And the rewards are tangible: Facebook is engineered to provoke an emotional high, however the constant comparisons make us sadder, less satisfied and much more sensitized to the lives of others. “Fear of getting left behind” has progressed into an unconscious concern over the life stage we think we ought have reached based on what our secondary school and college friends are sharing on Facebook.
It really is within this virtual realm of competition that we create a second, vibrant form of ourselves online:
- We cultivate the image of a happy couple or simply a very happy person with a lot of friends.
- Daily we declare who we are using a simple retweet or post.
- Every day we curate our digital personas. Nevertheless, incomplete.
- No one captures their tiffs or disagreements and boasts about them on social websites. We keep those skeletons within our virtual closets.
- We become “Facebook official” as evidence of couple-hood, nevertheless, the mere act of adjusting that status can feel so painful: a public declaration of something that no longer exists.
- Even though the public|-facing relationship, documented every single day may have looked perfect, a breakup forces us to reconcile our public selves with the private heartbreak.
- All the Tweeting and posting communication stops and the performance meets reality.
- Every one of the supportive likes and comments about how you look so good together start to feel empty. The ego-boosting affirmation that came with them turns to uniquely public type of embarrassment.
In reality, some of the moments we regret most on Facebook involve the emotive content associated with dating and relationships. A great deal of life is too complicated and messy and complex to be portrayed publicly, and relationships certainly belong to that category. It could be the very best decision of your life to hold on to your privacy.
In the book, Closer Together, Further Apart, the authors posited that:
- For digital natives (younger individuals who’ve never known life without computers and the Internet), the line between virtual reality and actual reality is increasingly blurry. For them, digital life and real-world life are merely two sides of the same coin, each to be enjoyed, nurtured, and cherished, with neither side more real, more important, or more meaningful than the other.
- To the digital natives, digital romantic relationships is every bit as heartfelt and meaningful to them as one undertaken with the girl next door.
Are Virtual Relationships Healthy?
For a lot of people, especially older people, the concept of virtual relationships can be rather worrying. The older generation struggle to understand the depth of feeling young people develop for a person they have only related with online. But for young digital natives, it would feel perfectly normal. For younger people digital interactions can and often do feel every bit as real and meaningful as meeting someone in-person. And who’s to say digital natives are wrong to feel what they feel? The fact that most digital immigrants (older generation) don’t understand this doesn’t make it any less true.
Therefore, what defines a “relationship” in today’s tech-driven world may well depend on one’s age and comfort-level with technology.
This may make one to ponder about the future of humanity – If we’re all running around being sexual and romantic in the virtual, not much actual procreation to sustain the human race will take place. That, of course, is a rather extreme viewpoint. And, we should definitely not forget that today, thanks to technological advances, people are able to meet and to develop relationships in new and exciting ways, which actually makes real-world romances more rather than less likely.
No matter how real technology becomes, most emotionally healthy people will eventually find digital relationships unfulfilling. There will always be a longing for the pairing of emotional intimacy with physical intimacy that (as of now) can only be found in the real world with real people.
Photo-Credit: https://www.dirtyandthirty.com