We live in a world of people in simultaneous relationships, hoping that one will last a little longer. And with a cell phone handy in case it doesn't.
In the age of express encounters it seems stale to want to enjoy the slowness of the love encounter. Even more so in the times of the hard-working polyamory that Vasallo likes to talk about so much: what advantages can there be to putting all one's energy into slowly building an intimate relationship?
I don't know if it's just that I'm getting too old or too tired, but what I find exhausting at this point in my life is meeting people fleetingly all the time. Getting to know someone takes time, even if it seems old or conservative.
Simultaneous relationships and on top of that with the cell phone in between would seem to me a divine punishment. The funny thing is that some people can't even imagine that things could be different.
To me, however, it seems to me that the cell phone and its various applications are a growing obstacle for intimate relationships: its use favors and generates a cruising speed that is difficult to escape and that ends up taking an emotional toll, even if we are not aware of it.
My young friend is 22 years old and lives in London. She tells me that some of her friends already think that it is impossible to find a date without using a specific application.
They also don't trust that they can find a partner without using the net: it is the filter through which they usually look for practically everything they like and consume, and they have been using dating or casual sex apps in their lives for so long that they are convinced that if they don't use them they won't meet anyone attractive to start an intimate relationship with. In addition, the starting point is to simultaneously have relationships in the hope that one of them will at least last for a long time.
He tells me that it has also been a long time since he has watched an entire movie without interruption. In fact, in his apartment, which he shares with other friends, when they have been watching a movie for a while they interrupt it for a few minutes so that everyone can check their phones and answer some of the incessant messages that come in on WhatsApp. Watching a whole movie or reading a book on paper is something that several of their peers haven't done for months or years now: and these are people who used to list both among their main hobbies.
On the other hand, their friends travel all over the world and change countries with some frequency. They are young people of the world who in many cases have become adults flirting with the cell phone and simultaneously physical or virtual relationships and enjoying casual sex.
NOMOPHOBIA: SLAVES TO NOTIFICATIONS
I think of them when I learn that in Brazil they have already opened an institute to treat nomophobia: the word that designates the fear of being without a cell phone and miss what happens on the network that reflects the new addictions to cell phones and the Internet. Among other things, they train you to watch a movie without looking at your cell phone or to go out and walk around leaving your phone at home. Also to meet new people and interact without using apps or googling the person as soon as you meet them.
The institute has the meaningful name of "Delete". Yes, curiously enough, that's what my young friend also tells me about, how some of her peers are already deciding to delete their profiles on the net for good, to unsubscribe from the cell phone, to trust again in the opportune and unexpected encounter. To feel free to interact or even move around the city... And not to feel so persecuted or controlled at all times, which in turn generates conflicts with their partners.
It seems that we are going to find it hard to find the middle ground between the abuse and dependence on new technologies to communicate and the renunciation of them. Probably because we have been so little time in this new digital era and the transformation of our way of relating to each other is so radical, it's hard for me to imagine what it will be like to flirt in the not too distant future.
Will trusting in the surprises that life gives you be considered something obsolete and old-fashioned? Or, on the contrary, after this boom of digital and networks, will the fashion of chatting with strangers on the street, in the subway or in train stations as we did in the past come back?
Will we again be able to let ourselves be guided by our intuition or our sense of smell to find love? Will there be any place left for slow-burning relationships, like good stews, or will the almost instantaneous flirting based on what a digital server tells us that has previously analyzed our behavior on the network to extract an algorithm that makes it easier for us to find the ideal partner?
When I Google "slow flirt" and the like what I find are more mobile applications that have the peculiarity of not letting you decide in two minutes if you like someone or not. The mistake is probably already in the beginning, in googling. I quit.
I prefer to think that there is still time for the daily encounter, to look at people in the street, in the library or on the bus, to get to know each other and meet quietly, to go forward listening to the body and the sense of smell, and meet again by surprise. As wise as intuition is and how magical life is!