Fifty years ago, an article about finding time to love wouldn’t be necessary. Why would something that comes so naturally have to be scheduled? But things were a whole lot simpler back then. If you were lucky, you had a television AND radio in the house which served as entertainment on a given night. Couples stuck together out of love, but mostly because society influenced them to do so.
Divorce/breaking up just wasn’t as huge of an option as it is today. Complicating current times, technology has made putting love on the back-burner very convenient. Sure, the argument that it brings people together is a worthy one. With FaceTime, email and various messenger apps, you can literally reach out to someone that you haven’t seen or heard from in years, no matter where you may be physically. But it’s also desensitizing. People have become lazy. They’d rather communicate with someone via a gadget than actually form an authentic in-person connection. Take dating sites for example. You have thousands of eligible singles at your disposal. You sign up with an account, meet someone, talk, scratch that TEXT for three weeks and if it doesn’t work out? NEXT. It isn’t very different from dating when you’re not online except for the fact that you don’t have to wait to meet someone else. People are easily replaced with another potential mate, another fresh level of initial excitement and new company. This is problematic for a number of reasons. No, you’re not supposed to be sitting around moping over that failed relationship, but taking time to heal and not “replacing” someone as if they’re a ripped shirt keeps you alive. It forces you to recognize that you had a HUMAN connection with someone no matter how trivial it might have been. I’m not saying that people who date online are the only ones who do this. It’s just way easier to fall into the routine of shopping for a mate via POF than finding someone in a crowded coffee shop. This article isn’t meant to attack technology or online dating. By now, we’re all aware of, and dependent on to a certain degree, the benefits of the medium. But it is meant to call attention to how much it has subconsciously affected human connections. Click here to read the rest.
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