Building Love in the Digital Media Age

How often have you heard people talk about looking for love and finding love? Those terms make it sound as if love is something you stumble over, full blown like a rose and ready to take home. In reality, love is not quite so simple. It is not something you find hidden in a corner or tucked away in your purse like a surprise five dollar bill. Rather, it is something you build, brick by brick and gesture by gesture.

If that makes love sound like hard work, you’re right – but it’s also joyous work. And it is no different now in the digital media age than it was in the days when your best chance at finding someone to love was asking your sister’s best friend to hook you up with her cousin. You still find someone to love by making connections, and you still build love one interaction at a time.

The biggest difference between love BC (before computers) and love today is that the range for finding a person with whom you can connect is much broader. The Internet has opened whole new worlds, and not just for ecommerce. Your own backyard now extends around the world, and you can easily “meet” someone who lives not just in a different time zone but in an entirely different day than you do. Social media has brought the whole world closer together – but it hasn’t made it any easier to connect with that special someone, nor to build a life and a lasting love with that person once you’ve connected.

So what exactly does it take to build a lasting love in a world where the next relationship is just an IM away, and ending a relationship is as easy as changing your Facebook status and blocking a screen name on your IM?

It takes the same things it has always taken, the same things that turned arranged marriages into solid, lasting, lifelong relationships: respect, trust, faith and honesty. It takes living each day together and working with your partner to create the life the two of you want to live. It means opening yourself up to intimacy and sharing your dreams, hopes and fears with that one special person. It means allowing that one special person into your life to collaborate with you, listening to their dreams and hopes and fears, and allowing them to influence and shape your dreams.

Are you still hoping to stumble across your true love and live happily ever after? As long as you expect to just find love, it will continue to elude you. If you truly want love that lasts a lifetime, you’ll need to change the way you think about relationships and prepare yourself to build a solid and lasting partnership based on trust, faith, honesty and respect.

Love in the Age of Social Media

Can true love flourish in the age of social media? It’s an interesting question to consider. Social media and digital media have produced rapid and profound changes on the ways that people interact with one another – but have they changed human nature itself? Not likely.

As little as ten years ago, the idea of finding love on the Internet was a punch line to a late-night comedian’s joke. Online relationships and meeting people through only services was rare, and if the media spoke of it at all, it was to warn people against it. Today, according to one study, one in five couples started their relationships online. In fact, online dating sites are among the biggest advertisers on social media, and many are among the largest ecommerce sites online. These online dating sites have taken the place of the matchmaker, but is there something missing when you turn the beginning of a relationship into a commercial transaction?

The rise of digital media and social media affect love and relationships in more ways than that, though. The ease of interacting with others from a distance gives rise to many behaviors that most people would never engage in if they were face to face. Couples who might otherwise spend time talking with each other might choose instead to insulate themselves from the relationship and its intimacy by immersing themselves in online communications or watching movies and videos online.

And yet, many couples who met online have gone on to fall in love and have rich, healthy relationships. Is there something special about these couples or people that overcomes the distance and impersonality of the online environment and allows love to flourish?

In fact, the very same factors that make healthy face to face relationships characterize healthy online relationships and can lead to deeper feelings and eventually falling in love. Those factors have everything to do with the integrity of the people involved in the relationship. They include honesty and openness, being trustworthy and being respectful of others and their feelings.

It’s important to recognize that social media is just another medium for communication, and to evaluate your interactions with others in the realm of the digital world by the same criteria you use to evaluate your interactions with those you see face to face. Avoid those who are disrespectful, or who abuse your trust by sharing intimate information with others. Be honest about yourself and expect honesty from others.

The digital world has opened many new opportunities, both personal and professional. Digital television offers the chance to tailor your entertainment to your own preferences. Pay per view events and movies allow you to support the artists and speakers you most trust. And social media is yet another avenue for meeting people and possibly finding love.