Modern Day ‘Love’
Technology and social media influence relationships. Photo courtesy of “Rawpixels.com”
I am a straight female who prefers a traditional style type of love, with just two adults who are exclusive each other.
Because of this, modern relationships are a confusing bag of mixed emotions, outrageous drama, and complex relationship statuses. There are variations of open relationships that have conditions in the fine lines, there are people who emotionally cheat on their partner while not physically cheating, there are times where both partners have multiple partners (open or otherwise). All these complications seem like a recipe for an unstable future.
Dating apps like Tinder are not exclusive to only singles. In fact, The Guardian reported that Tinder found in 2017 that “42% of people using dating app Tinder already have a partner” (30 percent of Tinder users are married, while another 12 percent are in a relationship).
All my personal experiences with Tinder have been negative and happened during a committed relationship.
Three times he got busted on Tinder – all via different ways – and three times he came up with excuses for why he was fooling around on the app.
When confronted the first time, he told me the reason why was it gave him a boost of confidence. The second and third times our relationship status was uncertain, and so he jumped right back into the mix. It was a heart-shattering moment seeing my boyfriend’s profile picture, name, and age below a cute bio showcasing how great he is.
Every fight we had led to him running to Tinder, which makes it so easy to cheat nowadays. He didn’t even have to leave his bedroom; he could just surf for matches online and see what happened.
On Facebook, there are 11 types of relationship status one can define with, like “single,” “in a relationship,” “in an open relationship,” and “it’s complicated.” Even with all these options, not all of them completely describe someone’s relationship in the modern day.
That makes me lose faith in love.
Relationships are exposed on social media and sometimes photos, videos, and captions are not authentic. Holding love to a higher expectation has brainwashed society into thinking that is real love is impossible expectations. Couples gift luxury cars, dozens of roses, and new designer shoes to each other. If not, people’s conclusions are now, he/she “must not love me.”
Old-school type of love is for me, with an open mind, the world is changing and there are new norms. Maybe different types of relationships are okay for other people, as long as it makes them happy.