Sexual awakening in your youth shortly leads to identifying what qualities or traits you might like to see in a future partner.
Around this time I used to revel losing myself fantasising about the man who I would share my life with. I found one of the most exciting and intriguing scenarios to play out in my wild and at the time, innocent mind, was the moment where you meet your life partner.
Albeit idyllic and far-fetched, it was almost euphoric to entertain the idea of meeting the special someone in a sickly sweet situation and you both realising that you were born to be together. I blame Meg Ryan & Jennifer Aniston films for the bar being set so very high.
It was only 10 years ago that meeting, or dating- was so much more organic than what it is now. I remember having that instant sparkle with someone, and he became my partner for the next 6 years. Coming out of that relationship and all of a sudden the way we met new people and love interests had changed with social media exploding, and the introduction of applications like Grindr, Brenda, Tinder etc. I think we can safely say that the blind date is well and truly extinct. Gone is mystery and magic and welcomed is a world of over exposure and bearing all. It all feels and seems so unnecessarily lazy. The other day I was doing some snooping on a guy’s facebook to see what his interests were and found myself making assumptions on him, which is wrong. It’s foolish of me to make an assumption without truly getting to know the person (or even before meeting them), but it’s also foolish to assume that someone’s profile is an accurate reflection of who that person really is.
We can paint whatever picture we like with our ability to edit what’s presented on screen. We are more likely to try and convey the person we would like to or aspire to be, rather than who we are today.
Even in bars and clubs we resort to our handy applications to see who is around, what “tribe” they belong to? (WTF). On the plus side, this does offer the opportunity to someone that lacks confidence to reach out to someone that they may have not approached at all without this at their fingertips. Rejection used to more often take its form in awkward shimmying away on the dance floor, or in that moment where you’re just about to present your pearly white smile and their eyes disengage and look somewhere else- these scenarios could have then transformed into a comical story shared amongst your friends, perhaps. Now you know you’ve been rejected when their profile no longer shows up on your app- no one wants to know about that. Yawn.
Grindr was launched 5 years ago in March 2009. I came across an online forum where people had first discovered the app and were writing posts about their intrigue but also fear over whether the app was safe, based on its geographical social nature. So, where do we go from here? Because there will be another level, there always is. I wonder if it may look something like us all walking around with Google Glass, and instead of us having to consciously / physically send a message to someone- Google Glass will do the match making recognising face and body types we like (and also blocking where necessary), initiate conversations, and before we know it Google has booked us a table on Friday at a restaurant that we’ve both liked and visited before, AND put a reminder in our calendar for us.
The technological trends unfolding in front of us are relentless, and constantly changing our “normality”. I fear for a future where the only connection we know of, experience, and care about, may be our wi-fi.
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