This Is How Technology Killed Romance

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So many people meet online, through friends on Facebook, or through the many networking and dating sites we now have available.  We can just click our phones a few times, and download a plethora of apps that can connect us with anyone. You can download some for soulmate, some for a bit of fun, specialist apps for gay relationships, BDSM relationships, and pretty much everything else you could look for.

With this, we lose the personal touches in getting to know someone, meeting them face to face. You can spend entire days sending photos and texts, calls and Skype conversations, without having ANY human contact. Or even knowing if you can hold a conversation in real life. You can flirt and text and say things you’d never be able to say face to face,  We can create an entire new persona that is not true to ourselves. Can you honestly get to know someone through typing endless messages and emojis? I don’t think so to be honest.

And then there’s the stigma about not seeming too needy. We always need to seem the less interested party in a relationship. So we try not to text so quickly, not call someone the day after you met, act nonchalant. How does this make any sense – surely text messages are meant to make communication easier – why are you complicating it further?

And even in established relationships, technology somehow gets in the way. We lose the art of a real conversation, because you can just text someone now, it’s easier. Even a goodnight phone call seems to be too hard, we can just send a quick text. We lose the spontaneity of just turning up on someones front door with a bunch of flowers, and saying, ‘come on, I’m taking you out!’ A relationship should have romance, and I’m really sure that you cannot measure romance on how many words per minute you can type!

 If you’re texting 24/7, you’ll just run out of things to talk about. As well as gain the needless aggravation of your partner being pissed of at you because you take ages to text back or your phone died.

Besides, even when a couple does finally spend some time together, it’s never just those two people. Phones are always right next to them, texting everyone, checking their notifications, updating twitter or whatever else you’re doing.  You can be out having a nice romantic dinner date, and then out of nowhere, someones phone goes, and they’re no longer paying attention to their partner. I don’t think any couples really spend any time entirely by themselves.  

And why is it a relationship only seems to be real once you’ve made it ‘facebook official?’ – A boyfriend actually told me he only felt we were really dating once we’d put it on Facebook. How does that make any sense?  If you are a couple, that’s it. We don’t need to have the validity of social networks to have a real relationship.

So, is this just the way that modern dating has to be now? Changing with the times and all of that. I hope not. Even if it’s just a quiet night in, people really need to take a break from their phones and spend some quality time with people they care about. I mean, you can even apply this to your friends and family, every relationship you have with people. Just remember that your social networking doesn’t count as real socializing.

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