Or my thoughts on modern dating and the importance of digital distance.
Opinion by Ivy Nina Valentina xx
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Romance in the classical sense is all but dead. Grandiose gestures, sweet hand written notes, dancing in the soft lamplit rain – all of that is out of the window. But why?
My hypothesis: there is no longer distance to make the heart grow fonder. The cause: the internet, social media and the almost voyeuristic 24 hour access this gives us to the lives of one another.
I’m spying on you and you’re probably spying on me. We are all seeing too much of each other, and I think this is nothing but detrimental when it comes to dating. Let’s say I hypothetically have started having a little crush on a guy named Dom. Dom’s the new guy at work (typical) and in the few times I’ve seen him around the office, I’ve felt pretty giddy. The crazy fact is, if I wanted to, I could pull up a report of his entire life in a matter of seconds and follow the goings on of Dom’s life down to the finest detail. What he’s having for breakfast, where he’s going for knock offs after work, that holiday he went on to Bali when he was a teenager, the football team he played for when he was five…
Aside from the fact that this is obviously creepy and a huge invasion of privacy, particularly with the pieces of our lives that are involuntarily offered up to the online sphere, it also means that I can make a judgement on who this guy is before I speak even a single word to him. Based on Dom’s digital identity, I might decide he’s actually quite pretentious, or boring, or nerdy, or something inconsequential like a lover of liquorice (not inconsequential because what is even that but I’m sure you follow) because there was a liquorice store in the background of one of his Instagram posts. These assumptions are based on the information that I have available to me; stats, text and photographs that I have strewn together into a FrankenDom. It’s more than likely that FrankenDom doesn’t even begin to compare to real life Dom – his online persona could never encompass the complexity of his human life and emotions.
So now Dom’s a pretentious, liquorice-eating nerd. And I hate both liquorice and nerds (I don’t, HAHA, that’s so mean, but for argument’s sake). So my feelings for him fade and I swim back out to sea to search for my next fish. An extreme example of course, but in this instance I haven’t even given Dom a chance. Instead, I have created a digital collage of him and now I’ve got this idea that I know him because real life Dom must be exactly like FrankenDom. In reality, I know nothing about him! And really, that’s the beauty of getting to know someone. That they begin as a complete mystery to you and you get to discover day by day the intricate details of who they truly are and to be known in that way in turn.
We see too much of each other and it’s shooting us in the foot. But it’s also quite exhausting and in some instances, desensitising. Let me elaborate. If you’ve overcome your FrankenDom you might actually strike up a conversation and get to talking. But you still have 24 hour access to him, and this extends into your chats. It will not be long before you move over to texting, calling or FaceTiming and whilst this can be lovely and nice, these are not the same as real life interactions. What I’m saying is, we have an invasive level of access to each other and we talk online too much.
With these conversations that occur online, we once again have the problem of the disconnected persona. This issue is most pronounced in the realm of text conversations. When talking over text, you are not truly getting to know me. You are getting to know the version of me that has time to buffer. The me that sees your message and responds hours later only when I have thought of something witty or interesting to say. I am shaping and crafting my identity to shine in its best light, whether consciously or unconsciously. It’s not not me answering, but it’s an idealised version and it’s not real. In real life conversation I’m thinking and stuttering and laughing LOUD sometimes at the wrong moments and sometimes at the right ones. There’s a disingenuousness from the outset of an interaction happening over text.
Then there’s the issue of the unlimited access we have to each other. I think my opinion may be slightly controversial, but I hope that the next guy I see doesn’t feel the need to update me on everything he does at all hours of the day. Of course these are the little things I want to know about him, but I think there is so much more beauty in the emotional empathy and connection you develop with one another by sharing these anecdotes and experiences in person. You can relate to one another, whack each other on the arm while you laugh about that dumb thing someone said, sigh and share thoughts on things you find upsetting. You lose all of that when you have already said it all on FaceTime or sent one thousand photos of the cafe you went to and the food you ate.
I think there is a flow on effect of this constant talking in that it gives us a false sense of connection that can lure us into a loss of effort and romance in the real world. This could also be specific to the laid back and easygoing culture of Australia bleeding into our dating scene (vom, I want love letters written on paper aeroplanes thrown at my window, c’mon). But my thought is, when we talk all of the time online, hear every little detail of our potential partner’s life, there is a sense of connection fostered and whilst it is not completely fraudulent, it may cause the neglect of putting effort into real life dates and experiences. My 24 hour access to Dom’s thoughts and mind may lead me to view dates with him as trivial – just another interaction in a sea of interactions I’m having with him multiple times a day. It’s only natural that this happens! I’m comfortable! But I think this access is making us comfortable too quickly and has almost desensitised us to the novelty of starting to get to know someone new. We are growing indifferent to the specialness of courtship and dating and it’s at the loss of excitement! GIDDYNESS! YEARNING! Spending time away from the person you’re interested in and getting to just ponder wistfully about them, romanticise them.
This distance was common before the prevalence of the internet and social media. The time between seeing a person and talking to them made room for that excitement to brew. You’re thinking about your person, recalling the things that they’ve said and in your anticipation you start to consider the little things. Maybe to your next date you’ll bring the flowers that she mentioned, or you’ll watch a live concert recording of that metal band he said he liked so that you can talk about it with him. This distance allows for a kind of thrill and romanticisation which I believe leads to a keenness and sense of effort shown to your date the next time you see them. It lets me bake that surprise cake Dom said he hasn’t had since he was a boy, unafraid of coming off as too much because I’m not seeing and talking to him all of the time and I want to have cool, fun and genuine connections with him when I do. Distance creates excitement, excitement creates effort, effort creates romance.
My angle: digital distance makes the heart grow fonder! It couldn’t be more true than it is right here and right now. Of course I want the guy I’m interested in to want to talk to me all of the time, but I think we should be trying to see each other in person as much as possible when we do. We should be getting to know each other in real life and we need that time between seeing and talking to one another to think, to yearn, to burn and pine and perish and care and LOVE! For heaven’s sake, Love! Capital L!
Anyway, I want romance, romance, romance. But I can’t act like I’m not complicit. I hop on and off dating apps and have entered quite willingly into meandering and lengthy talking stages. So what’s the fix? Trade in my iPhone for a flip phone? Hope I find a romantic guy who is just as fed up with the state of things as I am? With the way that technology is advancing at such an exponential rate, me writing this article might just be another shout into the void. There are already people marrying AI chatbots (Lord, help us).
In addition, I’m probably being a little hyperbolic. Online dating and texting are definitely not the end of the world, and there has certainly been some good to come from the intersection between dating and the digital realm. Quite a few of the couples in my life began their relationships on dating apps or in online spaces and they are thriving. Maybe I’ve just got that classic case of anemoia – a nostalgia for a time one did not live through. Maybe I’m just single, 23 and frazzled.
At the end of the day, it is always Love and it is always People. Maybe this is my call to action. My plea. My contribution to rejecting our modern notion of romance. To be brave despite the dissonance and love with excitement and intrigue and wonder for all the beautiful people it is possible to meet in our big, small, strange world.
If you read this to the end, I love you <3 !!!!!
Image sources:
Rained on Roses by Ivy Nina Valentina (2025)
Sony headphones photograph sourced via tris ☆, SOURCE
Commuting couple photograph sourced via Laura Zòccali, SOURCE
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