It’s the twenty-first century and we’re only seventeen years into it with technology advancing by the day. What’s not advancing is our respect for intimacy. The internet and technology have made it possible for dating apps to exists on our not-so-brick touch screen phones. While this is mostly a common activity for millennials, people of almost all ages are joining in as well. Instead of going out into the real world and meeting people at social gatherings, a lot of people look to their bright screen set at about fifty percent from behind closed doors, isolated in their rooms away from society.
The use of these dating apps is of simple gestures of swiping left or right on stranger’s best-looking self-portraits (aka “selfie”) until a match is made in which both parties favor one another and begin the process of instant messaging. But this isn’t the issue here. The issue is that through all of this, the action of intimacy gets darkly manipulated into what was once beautiful, to something that’s become quite the norm. Intimacy can be a close romantic friendship or the act of intercourse. In other words, this could be categorized as romantic love and lust. The romantic friendship part of this intimacy gets lost through dating apps and favors the acts of sexual activity. This takes us to the definition of lust which is a strong desire for sex. Lustful relationships can lead to meaningless intimacy and result in sexual addiction and personal danger such as body and mental damage.
It’s a bit ironic that we call these dating apps as is because they’re pretty much just used to help people hookup (aka one-night stands) with one another and make it seem like it’s okay to do so. There isn’t actually much dating going on besides maybe the literal part of it; scheduling dates into a calendar of when these interactions will happen. We know that these apps exist, and we know why they are being used. So, why continue to sign up and use them? Is it because some of us hope to actually find someone to fall in love with? Or is it because most of us actually just want a one-time-thing with a complete stranger? Maybe it’s a bit of both. You don’t really know until you begin chatting with your matched person and find out what their intentions are. There’s no easier way because their ‘about me” section is probably just a bunch of lies. Anything can happen when it comes to online dating/hookups, you can sometimes expect yourself to be in a one-way relationship where your partner is only in it for selfish reasons, or risk yourself catching something bad by being with someone who hasn’t been practicing safe sex.
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We can’t name the enemy that is only in it for themselves because the truth is that both men and women do it. It wouldn’t be fair to put the blame on guys based on the stereotype that all guys just want to have sex. Of course, the ratio does favor women according to statistics but point here is that although women might not have sex in their first encounter as much as men do, it still happens. The concept of online dating apps doesn’t summarize it all to just hookups, there are about sixty-four percent of people that say they use it to find someone they have something in common with. And then there are those at about forty-nine percent that are in it to look for physical characteristics that they’re attracted to. So, let’s focus a bit on that forty-nine percent group of people that make up about twenty out of forty million Americans that use online dating for personal pleasure and get back to the corruption of intimacy.
Real relationships are not being made almost half of the time because there are almost as much online dating users that are only looking to get self-pleasure than there are those that want a close romantic relationship. The user that is only in it for self-pleasure does not consider what the other users might want to get out of dating apps. This is where intimacy gets distorted to just one aspect of it; meaningless sex. Some people don’t see that there is more to a relationship than just sex. But what could you possibly gain by just the act of sex with no romantic closeness with your partner? Temporary fine sensation? Temporary satisfaction? Or is it temporary relief? What you can expect to get is something that’s temporary to either you, your partner, or both. And that won’t end well. The need to be loved is considered one of our most basic and fundamental needs. Sooner or later one might want to move on and consider their desire for something more, to be touched and loved in a healthy relationship.
The risk of matching with a user that isn’t interested in a romantic relationship isn’t the only thing you want to look out for. There is also running the risk of matching with a user who does more than exaggerate in their profile by assuming a false identity. Yes, the potential for human trafficking exists. As if falling for the wrong person wasn’t already hard enough, there are those who are not always who they say they are. Access to strangers’ pictures is so easily accessible through social media platforms that anyone can pretend to be someone or someone else to lure you into thinking you’re talking to the partner of your dreams. And if they’re not lying about their identity then how about their personal lifestyle? Like, if they typically tend to not practice safe sex with their partners. That’s something you want to worry about if a hookup is something you’re considering for the hell of it.
But what else could make someone want to linger away from the chance of finding a romantic relationship where real intimacy exists? Where you can feel a close bond with your partner and have meaningful intimacy where both partners favor its pleasure. Do they choose not to respond or are they left with no choice? It turns out that some people can look to sex as a coping mechanism to get through issues that they are dealing with, just like how some people look towards drugs and alcohol. This eventually leads to addiction if not realized quick enough. Easy access to hookups through online dating makes this addiction easy to get to and free. This goes beyond having sex for self-pleasure and rolls over to peace of temporary mind. The difference between having sex for pleasure and having sex to make you feel better about yourself can be differentiated by body and mind. With body, you want the sensation that comes from the act and with mind, you want a way to relieve your pain.
Intimacy is probably a lot more complicated than it was before technology like now existed. We still got that sixty percent of people that believe in the romantic love part of intimacy so we’re not totally doomed to fall in the outskirts of the corrupted parts of it of having meaningless sex. Every year there is always a new popular dating app that most people fall for. And each app will build its reputation depending on how people use it and how it gets advertised. But one thing to consider is that it’s okay to explore your options. You won’t be judged for signing up for an account, and you definitely won’t look desperate if you do so. Anyone has the power to control what outcome of intimacy they get, and it just comes down to what your priorities are and if you want to take romantic love seriously. But please do choose your app wisely because that could determine what kind of people you will encounter.
