My thoughts on texting…

I hate texting.  I’m not sure when it took over as the primary form of communication between the sexes but it seems as if I awoke one day and found that it was all of sudden unnatural to pick up the phone to call someone of the opposite sex to say hello.  I can still remember the first text message that I got.  I remember my phone making a funny noise one day and when I picked it up, it told me that I had a new text message.  Of course, it was from a man that I had recently started seeing.  And hence began a pattern of him sending me these little messages to my cell phone to say “what’s up.”  Being a woman, I immediately sought to change this behavior by modeling the behavior that I desired.  Whenever I wanted to say “what’s up,” I would be sure to pick up the phone and call David[1] instead of sending a text message (I had no idea how to initiate a text message anyway since I am not the most adept at using new technology).  Also, when he would send me multiple messages trying to make conversation, I would end those by again, picking up the phone and calling him directly.  Needless to say, neither my attempt at behavior modification nor the relationship worked.  And now, I am inundated with text messages.

 

What perplexes me is that we are a generation that keeps in touch like never before.  We have cell phones, PDA’s, email, blogs, and facebook pages.  Yet, all of this technology I fear has created more connections but fewer true relationships.  How can one really get to know another virtually, by sharing quick electronic messages instead of spending time with one another?  Most of our communication is non-verbal, it’s in our body language, in our tone of voice, in our facial expressions.  When you reduce communication to electronic media, you remove all of the non-verbal and some of the verbal as well in our quest to shorten our words and phrases.  When getting to know someone, especially in a dating situation, I need to physically spend time with them to truly get to know them and to hear and to see all of what they are not saying verbally.  I also generally like being with people and think that nothing replaces face-to-face contact.  In addition to electronic communication making it difficult to form true relationships, I think it also facilitates something else that I’ve experienced quite often in dating.  Juggling multiple people becomes easier when you have multiple, impersonal ways to get in touch with someone.  And, because you don’t easily form deep relationships, you really feel no responsibility to the other person.  That makes it easier to jump from one person to the next, never really experiencing the kind of meaningful relationship that few appear to be looking for these days.

 

As I type this, I am wondering if the advent of electronic communication is a result of or has led to this kind of serial, non-committed dating that I’ve experienced over the last few years.  I tend to lean towards it being a result of the lifestyle that my generation tends to lead – work hard and play hard with a need to be gratified instantly.  With all of us being in constant touch (as I type this I am in a text conversation the person that I am currently dating) it does allow us to fit more into what appears to be a constantly shrinking amount of hours in the day.  Perhaps electronic communication allows us to interact with more people and hence forces a bit more quality into the system as we now can date more people before ultimately settling on the one.  Perhaps.  I do know that I still enjoy the time spent with those that I care about and think there is no substitute for that in any dating relationship.

~Happy CHICK

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[1] Names have been changed to protect the innocent…well, in certain cases, the not-so-innocent will be protected as well.  J