It's 2014 and gone are the days of courting and romantic letter writing. Now whatsapping, social media stalking and snapchat are the introduction to any potential love interest. If you haven't liked their photo on Facebook, tweeted them or found them on a dating website then it seems you cannot expect true love!
I myself have been trying out a few dating websites over the past few years as have many people I know. In fact internet dating popularity spans various ages and experiences; divorcees looking for new love, youngsters looking for fun or even women searching for 'the one' they are all there.
The days of meeting somebody on a night out are old hat, they are usually fuelled by alcohol and the relationship rarely leads to anything more serious as the promised text of the next day almost never arrives. What about meeting someone through a friend or at work? That can happen but now our lives are so rushed and crammed full, that trying to squeeze in another person takes time and effort and sometimes more change to your daily routine than you expected.
For some reason internet dating seems more appealing, it's less committal, you check your page at the end of the night and reply to a few messages. There's an instant ego boost - somebody out there finds me attractive - whether you like them or not is irrelevant you can now go to bed slightly more fulfilled than you were when you woke up. A pattern is now formed and that repeats but you don't seem to notice.
You may go on a few dates from these websites, but in my experience you rarely get to date number 2. Each app's own feature where you can scroll left or right over each face is addictive and creates brand new boxes that each prospect needs to tick. You become paranoid that you are fussy when you don't find somebody attractive, as you insist that you want compatibility and chemistry, but then beat yourself up when a guy who seemed interested suddenly stops replying.
It's instant gratification at its best. Instant communication; instant ego boost, instant flirtation, instant feeling and therefore instant disappointment and instant heartache. Everything is at the swipe of your keypad and the click of your camera. More often than not you are invested in a person before even actually meeting them!
The immediate feature of everything the internet has to offer is actually the cause of more stress and upset than help in the dating game. Before mobile phones you made a date and stuck to it and didn't really speak in between. Now there are days of texting involved and hours of waiting as you see that they last read your text 4 hours before! Facebook says they are online and they are ignoring you, they tweeted an hour ago but didn't reply to yours, its brain ache!
Drew Barrymore's line from the film He's just not that into you makes this exact point,
"I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work, and so I called him at home, and he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It's exhausting."
Now 5 years on instead of learning from this, the problem is even worse. A new website Hetexted.com is a relationship advice platform where women can upload pictures of text conversations they had with men and seek advice on why they haven't responded or what their text actually means. The value of a single text is now likened to that of an actual date it requires so much analysing afterwards! Internet dating is fashionable and social media is the norm and both become so easy and accessible you forget what your main focus was at the start of it all - to find someone who wants a relationship and hopefully fall in love.
In our attempt to search for this we have made it more complex and ultimately more stressful. It's easy to say don't look for it and it will find you, but unfortunately that is not the case anymore. Everyone is looking for it and it seems what they are finding is instant and exciting but not altogether that incredible or everlasting.
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