The Game of Love
Are dating apps ruining your relationships?
IDATED IN THE early 1990s. This was the time when we’d just about got telephones in our homes. Our first telephone arrived after years of waiting for it to be allotted. I spent a week not daring to step out to visit the doctor even when dying of a fever, in the eventuality the telephone man would arrive, ring the doorbell and go away without installing the instrument. The telephone men swaggered into the home with all the authority being the bearers of new phones conferred upon them, and there it was, a spanking new push button instrument to connect me to the world.
This was about the time I met a dapper young man, and was dating him, as the phrase goes. Much of my time was spent draped around said push button telephonic instrument like a limpet, whispering at sub-aural levels into the mouthpiece, inconveniently located as it was in the living room. When I wasn’t whispering into it, I was staring at it with as much concentration as I imagine magician Uri Geller put into his spoons, willing it to ring again. Today, I dread the phone ringing and the need to have a
While WhatsApp and other apps have seemingly made dating much easier, they’ve also made it infinitely tougher
conversation. WhatsApp has done this, freed one up from having needless conversations that could be tackled by a quick message. WhatsApp has also, alas, changed how we date. And woo. And fall in love. And while it is all too convenient and instant, it isn’t all that good.
Dating in the time of apps
While WhatsApp and other apps have seemingly made dating much easier, they’ve also made it infinitely tougher. It’s on your phone, right there. There are conversations without voice, instant replies, and emojis to convey nuance. A plethora of choices a right swipe away. Whatsapp, Tinder or Grindr depending on what you prefer. Or Madison Ashley, with its rather horrific data leak which was appen-couraged adultery in your palm. There is everything you would ever want at your fingertips, and it brings with it the stress of too much. Navigating the complicated warrens of online dating comes with a new set of rules, of dos and don’ts, and more. And there is an entire gamut of terms, ghosting, benching, slow fade, DTR and of course, the holy grail of all online dating, FBO, or making it FB Official. I’ve been hearing about the travails of online dating from friends who have taken up permanent residency on these apps trying to find Mr Right, and getting stuck in a procession of Mr Right Nows. But then, the modern woman is a prosaic species, she knows that Mr Right is a mythic creature much like unicorns and dragons. So, she navigates this landscape of strangers on Tinder and men they know on WhatsApp, and hopes somewhere, sometime, something will click and move on from being a date, or a two date thing, and then hopefully to FBO.
Mind your manners
There are rules, they tell me. When someone messages you, you have to wait a while after receiving the message to open it. You can’t have the double tick go up immediately or it might seem like you were just waiting for them to text you. Of course you weren’t. Nope. Not telling them you were. Even if you were checking your phone every thirty seconds in the hope that a message snuck into your inbox without announcing itself. After you’ve checked the message, you just cannot reply immediately. The stream of thought when the reply doesn’t come in on demand can be rather relentless and panicky. This is because, scientists who research this kind of stuff tell us, that the ting of the notification can be like a dopamine shot to the brain—it gets you revved up and wanting more and once you’ve tasted dopamine, you’re going to do all it takes to keep those notifications pinging. This is why relationships escalate so quickly on WhatsApp. One day you will be comparing tastes in music, the next you’ll be picking out the colours for your living room curtains or the names of your children depending on your views on reproduction. Unless of course, the one you’re WhatsApping has a postgraduate degree in benching or ghosting in which case, you’ll be spending days wondering where he disappeared when you’d decided what the perfect colour for that curtain would be.
I’m glad I dated back in the days when the only technology that connected you was the ring of a telephone where you could hear a voice at the other end of the line, a laugh, a sigh, a pause, words whispered, heavy with emotion.