Once upon a time, a friend of mine shared this obnoxious Thought Catalog article to Facebook. I privately wrote a response to it and shared it with a few trusted friends. Now I’ve revamped my thoughts for Belle Brita.
Like basically everything else on Thought Catalog, “This is How We Date Now” is full of generalizations while advocating zero responsibility for your own life choices.
We don’t commit now. We don’t see the point. They’ve always said there are so many fish in the sea, but never before has that sea of fish been right at our fingertips on OkCupid, Tinder, Grindr, Dattch, take your pick. We can order up a human being in the same way we can order up pad thai on Seamless. We think intimacy lies in a perfectly-executed string of emoji. We think effort is a “good morning” text. We say romance is dead, because maybe it is, but maybe we just need to reinvent it. Maybe romance in our modern age is putting the phone down long enough to look in each other’s eyes at dinner. Maybe romance is deleting Tinder off your phone after an incredible first date with someone. Maybe romance is still there, we just don’t know what it looks like now.
Bullshit.
Dan and I met on OKCupid. I moved to New York a few weeks later, where I had every intention of dating women via OKCupid, but I chose to see what would happen with Dan instead.
And what if I had decided to keep dating casually in New York? I wouldn’t have made that choice based on my need to order up the perfect human being, but rather my need to explore my attraction to women and become more comfortable with my emerging sexuality.
Dan asked me to be his girlfriend over email.
I accepted over text.
This worked for us.
Then we had the next month to wait in agony to see each other in person to say, “I love you,” since we didn’t want to say it for the first time over skype.
My gmail archives are filled with romantic emails and silly chat conversations.
I’ve written more than one sappy blog post about how much I love my husband.
Romance isn’t dead. We have reinvented it, just like it gets reinvented every time the world changes. That’s life.
Open up Instagram and see the lives of others, the life we could have. See the places we’re not traveling to. See the lives we’re not living. See the people we’re not dating. We bombard ourselves with stimuli, input, input, input, and we wonder why we’re miserable. We wonder why we’re dissatisfied. We wonder why nothing lasts and everything feels a little hopeless. Because, we have no idea how to see our lives for what they are, instead of what they aren’t.
I spend a lot of time on Instagram, and I think it shows. I’ve put together a pretty and pink feed.
While my pictures are quite pretty, the captions are often raw and real. Just like on my blog, I write about my grief for my mother and my struggles with Crohn’s Disease.
I follow a lot of people on Instagram. I take pleasure in their pretty feeds. But my happiness doesn’t depend on social media. Nor does my sadness stem from comparing my full life to the curated lives of other people.
Related: Thankful Thursday: Technology and Social Media
Instagram is not the problem. Stimuli is not the problem. Other people’s happiness is not the problem. Aside from being clinically depressed (or constantly sad because your mom died), which is TOTALLY DIFFERENT from general unhappiness or sadness, then your happiness is up to you. I’m not saying you need to be a ray of sunshine every single day, but your misery is your own problem, and your own choice.
And, even if we find it. Say we find that person we love who loves us. Commitment. Intimacy. “I love you.” We do it. We find it. Then, quickly, we live it for others. We tell people we’re in a relationship on Facebook. We throw our pictures up on Instagram. We become a “we.” We make it seem shiny and perfect because what we choose to share is the highlight reel. We don’t share the 3am fights, the reddened eyes, the tear-stained bedsheets. We don’t write status updates about how their love for us shines a light on where we don’t love ourselves. We don’t tweet 140 characters of sadness when we’re having the kinds of conversations that can make or break the future of our love. This is not what we share. Shiny picture. Happy couple. Love is perfect.
Actually, a shit ton of people share the 3am fights and tear-stained bedsheets, and then another Thought Catalog article will include them in their round-up of “Most Annoying Behaviors on Facebook.” I mean, most people call that TMI or overshare.
And sorry, but you’re an idiot if you think the happy portrayal of a couple on social media is the equivalent of a perfect relationship. Dan and I rarely fight. That is the honest-to-goodness truth. But we have to work through small issues and big issues, just like any other couples.
I’m just pretty sure no one is interested in hearing a summary of how I convinced Dan to eat carrots twice a week, or how we divide up housework. And frankly, I only share marital conflicts that both Dan and I are comfortable revealing.
We realize that this more we want is a lie. We want phone calls. We want to see a face we love absent of the blue dim of a phone screen. We want slowness. We want simplicity. We want a life that does not need the validation of likes, favorites, comments, upvotes. We may not know yet that we want this, but we do. We want connection, true connection. We want a love that builds, not a love that gets discarded for the next hit. We want to come home to people. We want to lay down our heads at the end of our lives and know we lived well, we lived the fuck out of our lives. This is what we want even if we don’t know it yet.
Actually, I don’t like talking on the phone all that much. I enjoy it with some people, but it’s usually not my thing.
I’d love to see the faces of people I love not on my computer. Except that requires the money to fly to France, to Australia, to Canada, to Vietnam. Dan getting enough vacation days for us to visit Ohio regularly is difficult enough. Skype and Facetime mean I can see my loved ones in real time, no matter our distance.
I don’t want slowness. My life is balanced. Some weekends are relaxed and slow and leisurely. Others are busy and fast-paced.
I want both.
If your life requires validation on social media, that is your problem. Don’t blame the existence of social media.
True connections can happen online. I fell in love with Dan over text messages, emails, gchats, and skype. And now we’ve been married over two years!
I’ve taken Internet friendships and turned them into real-world friendships. I’ve met several bloggers IRL, and I hope to meet many more.
The Internet is not a replacement for in-person relationships, but it’s a wonderful way to enhance them.
If you’re unhappy, if you’re lonely, if you’re unsatisfied with your life, I am truly sorry.
But technology is not to blame.
Yes, yes, yes! Technology like everything has its pros and cons but it’s up to us to live our lives and make the decisions we want made. Using technology or anything else as an excuse for poor choices or a life gone wrong is silly. Take control of your own life!
Like, it’s legitimate to worry about the health effects of too much screen time, especially with children. Or media consumption as a form of addiction. But blaming the Internet for making bad decisions? Nope nope nope. People have always made bad decisions and then blamed someone else for them. coughAdamandEvecough We are in charge of our own destiny!
I agree with you! BUT I do think personally that the internet has made dating harder. Maybe I’m biased because I live in China and have had a hell of a time dating (I should really write a blog post about it…) ha.
I mean… I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that being an expat in China is why dating is hard for you, not the Internet. Both Couchsurfing and OKCupid were how I met people during my second year living in France, including sort of dating a few guys. I honestly would have missed out on so many opportunities to connect with both locals and internationals without the Internet.
Why do you think the Internet itself has made dating harder?
I think people just don’t take dating as seriously. What I mean is, it’s SO easy on Tinder to just go completely off of appearances and swipe right or left without even considering that there is a real person behind the internet. I’ve been ghosted, been sexually harassed, had comments made about my body all because people think they can say what they want behind the computer screen. It could be just my experience in China, but it’s left me feeling very disheartened.
Now, I’m not saying the internet is bad… I love it! It’s made my job as a teacher better because I have more resources. It’s given me a platform (my blog) to share my heart and story. It’s introduced to many amazing people. But with dating, I’ve had no luck.
Sure, but before Tinder, people went to bars to pick up hot people for one-night-stands. Which I assume still happens.
And unfortunately, I was in high school, before even Facebook was a thing, when guys started sexually harassing me and making explicit comments about my body. The Internet might make it easier for men to avoid repercussions for being misogynistic assholes, but frankly, not a single guy who sexually harassed me or sexually assaulted me ever faced any repercussions for their actions either. All of which were done to me, in person, not online.
Aaaaamen, I can’t stand when people bash others for what they put online if it’s happy or uplifting. You make your own happiness. get off the internet and take a walk if you need to!
Absolutely! Besides, I feel happy and excited for the people I love when they’re sharing their happiness or success. And they’re happy for me! The Internet makes it easier to keep in touch with friends worldwide. 🙂
People can do bad things or good things with the internet. I completely see it as a tool–and especially with an international lifestyle and people I love all over the world–it’s a tool that I’m glad exists.
Exactly! People made bad decisions long before the Internet. 😉 It’s just another tool that can be used well or not. And I’m so glad it lets me get to know people halfway across the world like you!
Yes! Technology is not the problem! I love how you said that people get yelled at for not posting their 3 am arguments and when people do post that stuff, they get yelled at for oversharing. You’ll never please everybody. Technology is simply a tool and can be used for good or bad. We have to take the things we see with a grain of salt and we have to be careful that we’re not neglecting our loved ones, but those issues are not technology’s fault. They may be facilitated by technology but if you truly have a problem with it, then the problem is deeper than technology and you would still have problems if technology didn’t exist. There is so much good in technology and social media. It can be used for so much good. And I hate when people bash it! Thanks for writing this!
We can’t win, amirite? 😉
Blaming technology is just a surface-level response. Like if you and your SO only watch Netflix and never do anything else, that’s not because of Netflix, but because y’all aren’t committing to a balance of quality time. (And you know I love Netflix, but moderation is key!)
Agree so much! I see a ton of generalized statements about technology or millenials. It makes me so frustrated. I love my IRL friends but I also love my friends I met over blogging too. Just because I’m having a group google hangout at home doesn’t mean I’m not connecting with people because it’s not in person. I think we should have and be able to balance both.
Yes, absolutely! I’m so over the generalizations, obviously. Plus I’m so grateful that technology helps me establish and maintain relationships. We’re so lucky to live at a time when we have opportunities to move around and to travel, while still staying close to people at home!