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Romance is Dying a Slow Death – Is Technology to Blame?

Technology is a great accessory, especially for long-distance relationships. But it can also ruin your romance, without you even realizing it.

romance is dying

It’s true. Guys no longer have to physically pick up the phone and ask a girl out, or drive over to your house to get your parents’ permission to take you to a movie. With technology, guys really don’t have to put forth much effort when it comes to wooing you or getting your attention or asking you out on a date.

We live in a world where, if someone on Facebook pokes you, or someone happens to swipe right instead of left, it means they might like you, or they’re interested in you.

Yes, that is correct, a guy can swipe right or left on an app to let you know he’s interested. It’s like turning your stove on and off and on again to determine if you are hot or cold. [Read: 14 crucial dos and don’ts of online dating]

I’m all for technology and meeting people and social networking. I mean, I met my now fiancé on a dating website, so I would be pretty hypocritical if I were to bash all things World Wide Web when it comes to matters of the heart.

But what I do know is that, as great as technology is for networking and connecting, it’s also an impairment when it comes to actually dating someone and having romance in your life.

Just because a guy sends you an emoji that’s a bouquet of roses, does NOT mean that he actually sent you flowers! If you honestly think these two are the same, then you are a big reason why technology continues to ruin romance in relationships, and also why you can’t have nice things.

How is technology ruining romance?

Below are the top 7 biggest pitfalls of technology when it comes to romantic relationships.

#1 No effort. Technology has allowed us the ability to get things instantly: instant results, instant contact, instant gratification. When it comes to romance, dating, and anything involving relationships, technology has allowed us to easily network with others.

However, it has made everything so easy that you don’t have to do a lot of leg work to get to where you want to go, or to find what you might be looking for. No longer do people have to go to the library and look up a book, find the code and section it’s in, and search the endless rows, until reaching the desired tome. Instead we can simply do a Google search and find an immediate answer.

Just as easy as this is, it’s just as easy for a guy to see a pretty girl on the internet, poke her, or send a private message to let her know his interest. Really, it takes less than 5 seconds for a guy to let you know he’s into you, which also means he’s probably done the same thing to a handful of other girls, just in case you don’t poke back, or reply to his witty little online one-liner.

#2 Focus is elsewhere. We all love options. When it comes to technology and romance, the good news is that there is an abundance at your fingertips, and the bad news is, there is an abundance at your fingertips.

It doesn’t matter if a guy is actually seeking more than one female or twenty, it’s a fact that if he’s browsing Instagram, he’s going to come across girls trying to break the internet, half-naked, doing duck faces, and he’s going to look. It’s a fact.

Sure, you might be just as gorgeous as a Victoria Secret model, and you might have the greatest guy in the world who adores you, but if a half naked girl pops up in his newsfeed, he’s got no control over that, and he will end up looking at it, whether he wanted to or not. Technology has brought out the inner ADD child in all of us, and our attention spans are all over the place.

#3 Too much too soon. I know how many friends I have on social media who overshare things: what their kids ate or didn’t eat for dinner, what happened at work, how they are at the ER, or anything else they decide to make super dramatic for their entire social network to see. Technology has allowed us to put out information and divulge things about ourselves that we probably otherwise wouldn’t.

Consider the fact that people don’t keep diaries and journals, but they have no problem basically writing one on Facebook, and ask yourself why that is. It’s not because they don’t own pen and paper, but it’s because they enjoy the attention, and they love knowing that others know what they are doing.

Instead of asking your date what he’s into, what music he likes, if he has any pets or siblings, all you need to do is check out his Instagram or Facebook or Twitter profile, and you’ve got all the info you need. What good is the getting-to-know-you phase when the guy you like has basically put all the information you want to know on social media? [Read: 16 signs you’re dealing with an attention whore]

#4 Pretending to be someone you’re not. It’s definitely a fact that people can be whomever they want to be while sitting behind a computer screen. When you were younger, did you ever go into a chat room and type something like a/s/l and let the chat room know you were a 17-year-old female when in reality you were only 13? Sure you have. But these days, you can even invent an entire life, all from the comfort of your PC.

Now we have filters that make our photos look better, and we can make ourselves look the way we imagine we’d look on the cover of Cosmopolitan. But what happens when you meet a guy in person, and he doesn’t even recognize you? Technology has ruined the reality of who we really are, because we have the ability to recreate ourselves and showcase only the best sides of who we are.

#5 Privacy isn’t so private. Have you ever received a friend request from someone that you had one friend in common with, or found a friend through a friend of a friend? Odds are yes. And with technology, there are so many different settings you have to enable, or disable, to either privatize yourself more, or make yourself more known. Depending on what you want, your privacy is still not actually private, unless you take the steps required to make it so.

Anything and everything you post and upload onto the Internet is there forever, even if you delete it. Thanks to technology, it’s very possible that the yearbook photo you hate from 7th grade might be uploaded by your friend Susie Q as a “throwback Thursday” picture, and there’s really nothing you can do about it.

And what happens when that hot rocker guy you’re crushing on suddenly sees tagged videos of you from a couple of days ago, dancing to the beat of the campiest EDM tunes? Say goodbye to any budding romance there! [Read: 14 dos and don’ts of adding your date on Facebook]

#6 Easily accessible.  Dating and asking a girl on a date used to require a guy to actually pick up the phone, talk to you and say something along the lines of “Would you like to go see a movie on Friday?” Thanks to technology, no one actually has to speak to one another to make plans or communicate.

First we had email, but then came texting and FB messaging and Twitter and Instagram and “likes” and “follows” and whatever else there is out there in the virtual realm. Now a guy can literally “like” a photo and it will let a girl know he’s into her, or he can text her broken English like “wut u doing 2nite” and she’ll respond eagerly wanting to hang out. This is where I must remind you that nothing worth having comes easy. Seriously.

#7 Communication doesn’t actually involve communicating.  As you’re reading this, I want you to think about how many telephone numbers you know by memory, and I’m going to go ahead and say you might know one, but you probably know less than 3.

People don’t have to remember personal telephone numbers anymore, because thanks to technology, we spend more time texting and messaging and following each other on social media than we do actually communicating.

You know, communicating the way when one person actually talks out loud to another, you can hear the different tones and accents they might have in their voice, which let you know more about them, and their personality. No? Didn’t think so. Thanks, technology! [Read: 36 flirty questions to send your crush online]

Though technology has made life more convenient, it can be said that technology has made life a little too convenient. Don’t be one of those people who rely on your social media accounts and your smart phones for everything! Go out there and let romance bloom the old-fashioned way!

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Charley Reid
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