WHO BY SOCIALS HURTS...

"Because you see, honey, when two people love each other..."

"Who are these two people? Do I know them?"

(From the well-known book 'Misunderstandings of a Love Discourse')

Versione italiana al link Chi di social ferisce...

A few days ago someone said to me about man-woman dating, "As you find them (partners), so you leave them." The meaning was, if a man starts coming after you who doesn't have a clear love situation, I don't want to go so far as to say committed, it may be that he will do the same thing with you, starting to flirt with others or maintaining relationships with exes, maybe even just virtual ones, while he is dating you.

This is pretty easy and visible nowadays, in this society of apparent hyper-communication, which actually signals precisely the tragic absence of real contact and commitment in human relationships. It is very easy to have the illusion of a relationship, especially at the virtual level. It does not imply important decisions, it allows one to maintain distance both physically but especially emotionally, it allows one to maintain one's own comforts, rhythms and ‘weaknesses'.

In couple relationships, we see how the use of socials is nonetheless symptomatic of other dynamics. There is a wide range of nuances ranging from the shared, symbiotic profile with continuous declarations of eternal love, to the state of perfect strangers. In the latter case, you want to make the other person feel 'taken for granted' and you skimp or nullify interactions and appreciations, be it ever that someone takes us for 'fools in love' or that we publicly value or support the person we say we love.

Moreover, if the relationship is mostly virtual with rare flashes of physicality, even the telephone is not a good substitute. Every word spoken without eye-to-eye, and perhaps even hand-to-hand, can easily be misunderstood, and become an untenable boulder that undermines trust in each other's feelings. After all, if the relationship remains largely on such means, doubt arises legitimately and naturally. It takes very little to ruin what, with a glance, a hug or a caress, could become a moment of mutual revelation and strengthening of the relationship.

I conclude with a quote from the immense Massimo Rodolfi, from his book 'A Wall of Words': "We must as humans truly restore our sociality, with our ways and our times, and so also our places [...]. We humans must find ourselves together, doing things, having fun, telling each other stories, looking into each other's eyes, hugging each other, loving each other, and maybe even hating each other, but at least our ignorance and meanness be only human, true heritage of our own, of an imperfection that it is up to us, only to us, to try to perfect."