Has Technology Screwed Us Over In Terms Of Dating?

As I sat across one of my closest friends and listened to her pining over her latest love interest that had suddenly fizzled into nothingness, I was amazed at the amount of times we’ve sat down at this very same table, had these drinks and gone over the same facts we go over every time this happens.

As girls, we tend to overanalyze anything and everything that our love interest does, add to that the ridiculously overwhelming connectedness we all have, we can literally watch what you do every single second of the day.

And, just for your own information, everything plays a role in our firm analysis of whether you’re interested or not, dating someone, single, serious, looking for something casual or any other option except the one that would lead us to conclude that you were simply updating your Facebook status because you felt like it.

You see this friend of mine is the smartest and most hardworking friend I have. Having immigrated to the west at the age of thirteen, she had to learn a completely different language without prior background knowledge and get accustomed to this new city she would be living in. This is definitely not something many of us would want to be doing during our awkward teenage years.

While she proved herself in every aspect of life and now boasts a very successful career in the medical field, when it comes to the love field, she turns into mush. She looks into every detail possible to try and figure out what he can potentially be trying to say to her. This is when I step in and try to convince her that there are no signs, there are no bells and whistles and essentially no hidden meanings to his actions.

She, my very successful and very smart friend, proceeded to go into every nitty gritty detail of what he said and whether he used a semi-colon or a period or a comma at the end of his sentences when texting her. If he used a smiley face, this meant he wanted to keep talking, the lack of emoticons meant he wasn’t really paying attention to her because he wasn’t putting the effort into using every tool he has available to him to show said interest.

We even went over how long it took him to reply, if he answers within a certain timeframe this meant he was interested, a minute longer and this was a case to mourn over. Listening to this made my head spin, I’m a simple kind of girl, I don’t understand hidden meanings nor do I search for them. I attempted to calm her down but then she proceeded to analyze the tone he used when speaking to her.

This very interesting observation made me ask two questions: the first being what did our grandparents do when they wanted to show their interest to someone without the ten thousand communication channels we now have that supposedly make our lives easier. The other question is: are you serious? We live in a time where we want answers to questions we are going to ask tomorrow yesterday.

We want to look into every single possible option and detail because we are given a vast array of options and details to choose from. In the past, we would wait by the phone all weekend so we could catch the phone call in time but now, we wait for a text message and we even consider the tone with which the text message was written and God forbid he ever updates his Facebook status and fails to respond to your text or call you back, he must not be interested.

We, as women of the twenty first century, are becoming so detail oriented that it may well end up burning us out. And although I know you’re doing what my smart friend is doing, which is simply trying to look for any sign that he may be interested, I would suggest you keep things simple.

Essentially, I see guys roaming the earth, living their lives with a chirps of a bird in the background. They don’t pay attention to such details and if they’re interested, trust me they’ll let you know. Have no fear, most of the time they’re pretty old fashioned about this.

Ladies, put down your iPhones and blackberries, quit checking what time was the last time he logged onto Facebook, whatsApp, twitter and LinkedIn and just live in the moment. Half the theories you will come up with based on his online activities will not lead to any substantial conclusion so it would be more beneficial for you to enjoy yourself now rather than pine over this.

These are the things that make me wish I was born in an earlier century, life was simple and it made sense. There were no assumptions to be made and no pondering to be done, the world was less connected, but there was more human interaction. We were less distracted and more knowledgeable. The days were productive and less frustrating. We’re connected, we have technological advances that they could only dream of but in the end, they were happier than we are and actually lived in the moment instead of thinking of checking it into Facebook.

Yasmine Hassan | Elite.

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