Friday, April 22, 2016

How Social Media Creates Paranoia in Relationships

THE GREAT SIDE

The social media is an amazing tool bringing lots of great things for this world.

When my wife and I were dating, when I lived 2,000 miles away from her, I looked forward to Sundays when I talked to here one time a week on a pay phone for 45 minutes.

Today, when a couple live 2,000 miles apart, they can Skype, FaceTime, call every day, and share time together so much more than when I was dating. These are amazing and wonderful advances in technology and social life.

The advances in social media are wonderful, but social media brings a dark side to the good side.

THE GRAY SIDE

First of all, before I get into the dark side, I will talk about the gray side - the side that is okay, but not the best. When couples from different states and countries meat online, it creates a difficulty in the relationship, in that, the couple has a hard time meeting face to face and maintaining a good relationship.

THE DARK SIDE

When couples finally commit to each other, there are other pursuers online who will always be there for each individual in the relationship.

When I was dating, I could leave one relationship and move on to another without knowing much of my past fling.  Also, if I have an interest in other people outside of the one I am moving on to, I was limited to people I could see face to face. Today, if I move from one person to another, I can look into the internet and find a bunch of interested pursuers, The temptation is far beyond what I had when I was dating. This issues surfaces even more when I get married, settle down, and get into fights with my marriage partner.

There is another dark side issue in social media. If I start dating or marry someone, I can now search for who they are talking to on the internet, thus creating new challenges and jealousies. This creates within me a paranoia which hurts my relationship with my spouse or person I am dating.

When I got married, my wife worked at a company that I had no ties to. I didn't know if there were men in her company who were hitting on her, and I would never know.

Today, if I was young and my wife was working, I could look into the social media and find the people who had crushes on her, or who worked with her, or had contact with her. And I could search out who might like her, for after all, she is a very good looking woman. And there would be people who liked her, and who hit on her, and who would make me jealous.

In this case, social media, which was designed to make life better, created a monster of jealousy and paranoia within me.