I don’t get why it’s so hard

@ViciDraco Great response.
But I wonder when we became so emotionally fragile that we won't risk anything. Life is just as much pain and hurt as it is pleasure. Do you think social media is having an affect?

@Magenta P.S. Or do we think and expect love to be just a feeling? Because that defo is a recipe for failure.

@Magenta I think social media is a factor but not purely to blame. There is a whole host of reasons, some are very valid and important to have and others just kind of suck that they exist.

There's the very real fact that social expectations have changed. It used to be that not being married as an adult was kind of a point of shame. Marriage happened early and young. Divorce was difficult and scandalous. Our social circles were small, the judgement of our neighbors meant a lot more to us. The legal challenge of divorce was more difficult than working out the differences. And so the social pressure to get married and stay with that person, happy or not, created an illusion that almost everyone was happily bonded to someone. As social circles widened, having to impress the neighbor meant less and we became more free to split and divorce. We began delaying marriage and dating longer. We began discovering incompatibility through the longer dating and thus split even easier because there wasn't a legal battle.

As you hear about more other couples splitting up, it puts that seed of fear in yourself that it could happen to you, which causes some barriers to go up. And that kind of creates a feedback loop. Then you have the economy. I don't really care which gender does what, but at one point one person managed most of the income and the other person managed the home. At the end of the day you came together. Nowadays both people work and then scramble to also manage the home. When it's time to come together the shared thread is exhaustion. And if you have different schedules, good luck even getting that far.

The work required to keep a bond strong, which you allude to by asking what I think love is, still remains. The social pressure, the time and energy, the trust that the other person is in it for the long haul and the effort is worth putting in - all of those factors have eroded so much that the number of people who are unwilling to put the work in has increased. But they don't want be alone either, so they aren't going to advertise that they are unwilling to put the work in. And that again increases the risks for a person who is willing to put the work in. It's a bad feedback loop.

Social media takes all of that and just turns it up even more.

@ViciDraco Thank you for your well thought out response. Defo some truth in there. 🙂

I'm from an older generation and my parents were from the previous generation. And the mindset was oh so different. My parents had a 60+ year marriage, raised a large family and lost two sons, etc.. But they weren't fragile. There was a strength there that I don't see now. I know it's a different world, and indeed social media exaggerates everything, plus has created an environment that is just too easy to discard, ghost and so on, when the going gets a little harder or should I say real. It's too easy to walk away. And that has contributed to the fear for sure.

When I was dating I didn't even have the thoughts of "oh no what if he leaves me or hurts me". But as I said, it's whole different world now, sadly.

@ViciDraco social media also takes away from the “intimacy” of face to face connection. Plus offers too many distractions. Let’s be real here. It’s NOT normal; but normalized; to see half naked girls in bikinis and at the gym with their ass our first thing in the morning while your partners still asleep or making breakfast. It’s not normal; but it’s seen okay. Or even chucked out to be insecurity on the parters behalf if they get upset with it. But it’s not okay; it causes one to lose ability to find their partner “the one” and stay focused when there’s so many other “options”

@londonbr1dg3 Very valid points. There are explicit distractions everywhere. Some men follow thousands of women on IG. You reminded me of this...

@Magenta bingo

@Magenta I don't know if I'd say we're more emotionally fragile as much as we are reacting to less emotional stability in others. People broadly have the same emotional strength, but more people than ever are emotionally lazy. Which means the people struggling are doing so not out of their own weakness but on account of putting in the work for two by themselves.

@londonbr1dg3 I'm not entirely convinced that women in bikinis being normalized is the problem. Men have long been problematic even with very modest dress styles. Calling back, for example, to the construction workers catcalling women on the street. If a man loses love for his partner because he sees another woman in skimpy clothes, he's just a shitty guy. That blame doesn't go to what women wear, in my mind. But I do believe the easy access to other dating options does play a role.

@ViciDraco oh absolutely I agree it isn’t the only contribution. But it is in fact not normal; least not good to have access like that it’s not normal, and it’s more harmful than many this day and age want to admit.
Men are absolutely wired to look at women. That’s just a scientific fact. And I will agree it’s been a “problem” for generations. But the human brain make and female is not ment to be stimulated as much as we are. We’re supposed to be bored. So we can become creative and/or be forced to make real connections. Or self reflect a lot more than we allow

@londonbr1dg3 I mean, define normal though. As a species we are not born with clothing. At some point, wearing clothing was not normal. That's so long ago that we don't really know what the social dynamics were then, but there had to be some dynamic. We did not invent clothing for modesty because we didn't really have that concept. Clothing quite literally began as armor - against the cold, against the rain, and so on. Our natural state is to be fully nude, so that means the stimulation we experience from nudity today is somewhat artifically created. What stimulates eventually adjusts to new cultural norms over time.

And after writing this all I think I realize you meant stimulated by social media. A constant distraction that pulls at our attention. To that I do agree. Too many threads at once 😅

@ViciDraco lol it’s okay!
Yes I ment over stimulated with social media. There’s always a new trend. A hotter guy/girl, a new party, new music, a new photo, new etc…it’s not good for us to be constantly stimulated is what I meant

Yes we are one of the few that started wearing clothes which I agree. But I mean not normal for us in the sense of just having the constant access as easily as we do..: