This modern love…

Posted by Brigitte Noel on Jun 28, 2011 in Life | 0 comments

TORONTO, CANADA 

Despite the arguable “charms” of sexting, the topic of love in the electronic age generally warrants laments such as “where are we headed?” sprinkled with generous head shaking and nostalgic anecdotes. It’s easy to deplore the impersonal ways of Facebook and smart phone affections. It’s even easier to long for the days when love was “authentic” and not so intimately linked to technology.

But perhaps those pristine days of yore are easier to revere because we didn’t live them. It’s kind of like lusting for a hot man from afar: he’s most appealing when you don’t yet know his faults. Getting past the mystery often leads to disappointment.

Stay with me.

While I have little more than a decade of romantic history to contribute, I can attest that my relationships have always been tied to some form of electronic gadgetry.

My first boyfriend coincided with my first computer, the latter used almost exclusively to feed an addiction to the instant-messaging dinosaur ICQ. The program’s ubiquitous “uh-oh” sound is now nostalgic to those who came of age with the screeching sound of dial-up Internet, and for that sliver of a generation, this chime – and the whole ICQ experience – was a huge, pre-and-then-fully pubescent deal.

My boyfriend and I would chat daily until the wee hours of morning, and when our little hearts decided it was time to express our deepest feelings to one another, we even shared those three words on ICQ. I clearly remember this declaration, written in a pink font on a purple background. I then saved this chat on another outmoded piece of tech, the floppy disk. Needless to say, both ICQ and the disk proved only slightly more eternal than our young, naive love.

Beyond this particularly adorable example, the evolution and demise of all my subsequent relationships were catalogued via extensive email and Facebook trails. And if text messages weren’t so ephemeral, I’d have a pretty interesting reference there as well.

So has my love been less authentic than that of my predecessors? I called my mother to ask.

{mosimage}She says all her relationships took place in person, with the exception of one dude who wrote her letters in decorated envelopes. My father did not write, nor was he big on phone calls. But he was there.

She describes dances and dates, preaching the importance of non-verbal communication. But doesn’t technology merely supplement that contact, I ask. I almost hear her shrug over the phone. Maybe, she concedes.

I check in on my grandmother with the same questions. She tells me about her courtship with my grandfather, Arthur, during the early days of the telephone. Laughing, she describes a single phone line shared by all the homes in the neighbourhood. To fool frequent eavesdroppers, my grandfather would call and make up nonsensical stories “to get the neighbours talking.”

Gossip aside, phone calls were short and impersonal, used only to make plans. Mostly, Arthur would just drive over to see her.

When she went away to school, my grandfather sent her a weekly love letter. Inside each envelope, he included a new stamp for her reply, knowing she could not afford to write back otherwise.

The way our generation functions seem strange, she says. She feels like “young people” no longer have privacy, that we talk too much. I admit to texting or emailing my boyfriend an average of seven times a day. She is baffled.

“Don’t you run out of things to say? Don’t you have other things to do?”

Probably. Maybe that’s why we fight, why we stray? I tell her the tale of poor little Anthony Weiner. “Oh mon doux,” she exclaims, a demure French curse word that translates as “oh my soft.” In our days, there weren’t opportunities for stuff like that, she says.

In her days, things really did seem better…

But we’re not necessarily screwed, yet. While it is best to avoid romanticizing the past, we should return to it, if only to learn from it. Modern love is not necessarily losing its authenticity; like everything, love is merely changing with the times. Feelings, like any aspect of our lives, are unavoidably influenced by the way the world develops. Plus ça change…

How we use these technologies is completely in our hands (ha!) and in many ways, we are lucky to have access to more resources. If you start with a solid base, Facebook and smart phones can bolster relationships, enhancing existing face-to-face contact and making long-distance love a bit more bearable. Increased communications can allow relationships to build up to a higher intensity. However, these tools can also be used for “evil,” and it’s when we let paranoia and temptation get the best of us that things begin to fall apart.

So handle with care, and know your limits. After all, it’s all on you – technology’s role is, well, in the thumb of the cellphone holder.

 

Brigitte Noël (@Brige_Noel) is a freelance journalist based in Toronto. Hailing from the bustling metropolis of Sturgeon Falls in Northern Ontario, she is an expert in poutine eating, folk music listening, and really loud whistling. Read her blog.