The Digital Relationship: How It Became Easier To Create The Perfect Love In Your Mind

You meet on a dating app; you exchange numbers and you friend each other on Facebook. You follow each other on Instagram, Twitter and begin Snapchatting on a daily basis. You’re in constant digital contact, and yet, you’ve never even met this person.

Insane? Not really.

This is the reality of the dating scape in 2014. We build people up in our minds and think we know everything about them when we actually don’t know the first damn thing. Dating sure is fun nowadays.

In April, I met a girl named Jen on the dating app, Hinge. To be honest, it was nothing remarkable. We messaged back and forth for a while and then I gave her my number to text me, which has happened countless times with countless faces before.

Something was a little different with Jen, though. We actually, somehow, continued to keep up with each other, when generally, these things fizzle very quickly.

She told me when she got a new job, I told her when I was going back to Indiana for a week and so on. Through a series of Snapchats and texts, we were almost constantly in contact for months.

This complete stranger had more of an idea of what was going on in my life than most of my good friends. It became a running joke when we kept pushing dates back.

One time it would be my fault (I was exhausted and going straight home to sleep), the next time it was all her (she ended up having a girls' night) and this was just how we operated for months.

Finally in early July, the stars had aligned and we were able to meet. The sparks were definitely there; we were instantly attracted to each other and were all over each other, much to the chagrin of the other bar goers. We hung out again two days later and then retired back to her place.

However, on the third date, a few days later, I met with her and something changed. I realized this girl was kind of awful. I mean, she wasn’t a bad person per se, but just the vapid sh*t that spewed out of her mouth was alarming to me.

How had I missed this on our first two dates? I had somehow blocked out all of her terrible qualities over months and months of online correspondence. This girl wasn’t even a real girl anymore; she was just some placeholder of a person.

She was someone who would respond to each and every text and Snapchat that I sent. She was the person who would feign interest in all of my daily bullsh*t, and that’s what I was to her, too.

We had, in a sense, become a challenge to one another. We had talked for so long that if we were to meet and hate each other, was it all just a waste? Ultimately, we failed; I walked away from her on the corner of Second and First Avenue knowing that I would never call this girl again.

In the increasingly digital world we now live in, this is absolutely a reality. We pretend that we’re still really good friends with people because we’re able to see their daily actions on social apps on our smartphones.

We pretend that we’re dating people we wouldn’t even begin to like in real life because of our deep-rooted insecurities and the fact that they throw attention to all of our trivial sh*t.

It may be 2014 and we may be meeting each other in new and utterly bizarre ways, but don’t let it get to a point where the person you’re talking to is half human and half your own creation. For Christ’s sake, at least try and meet within the first two weeks for the sake of yourself, your time and, in the end, your psyche.

Photo Courtesy: We Heart It