The Digital Media Era came to revolutionize the way we consume, behave, work, study, and even love. Screens took over the good old face to face flirtation at the corner of a bar, and it is not hard to find someone swiping right or left on a dating app, trying to find either a partner or just a casual fling. In whatever way, these means of communication can ease dating life, but does it propitiate people to create connections and build truthful, meaningful and healthy relationships?
First, a healthy relationship is a broad and subjective concept that has to consider the individuality of those living it. Overall, it consists in a connection based on trust, care, acknowledgment, respect and communication, built with time and commitment. When we consider meeting someone through an app, or even social media, we also have to commit and be thoughtful about these aspects.
The psychologist Beatriz Barbugli (@psibeatrizbarbugli) says that this can be more toilsome when it comes to digital media, since there are so many people available in just one platform that the offer becomes wide. “(Dating apps) are so dynamic that you can chat with multiple people in a very fast way. That can make building space to develop a bond more difficult,” she explains. Connecting and creating a bond with the other person is the base to develop the characteristics listed above while you are looking for a healthy relationship, and it’s hard to reach that with shallow and/or rapid chats.
This becomes as important as knowing what you are looking for when reaching digital media to get involved with someone else. People who are feeling lonely consider joining a dating app or turning to social media looking for company, but they do not always know what kind of relationship they are looking for.
“If you get in the app with a certain distrust or insecurity, it is very likely that you will carry that to the relationship. It is very important that you have your expectations aligned and a level of self-knowledge”, says the psychotherapist. That could result in personal insecurities, low self-esteem and image disruption, leading the person to believe they are not enough. But when you know your expectations it’s less likely that you’ll get frustrated by the other’s own expectations, and will be smoother to find your match.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYGmtRF1/
Henrique Constâncio, a former dating app user who met his current boyfriend in one of them, said that the conversation with his partner was one of the only deep ones he had there. “I believe that when you find ‘the one’ it will happen regardless of where it is. I could have met him in a cafè, in the subway station, but it was on this dating app. And it worked so well that we started officially dating two weeks after that and have been together for almost a year”.
Everything that happens in the digital world is a reflection of the real world we live in. So, if you meet someone face to face, if you don’t have your expectations aligned and don’t work together to build a strong connection, there’s a chance it couldn´t work, just like if you meet someone through dating apps. The key is self-knowledge, communication and, of course, caring.
For those who are still wondering, here’s a video you should see: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYGmc2G3/
The article above was edited by Camila Lutfi.
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