Sex and the Sixties Girl: Has Facebook Ruined Dating?

When it comes to dating, there’s a lot we have to contend with that Helen Gurley Brown never did.

Take, say, Facebook.

But Facebook is great for dating! I can hear you cry. It puts people you otherwise would never meet right in front of your face!

I hear your cries. I know people who’ve dated people they’ve met on Facebook. I’ve dated people I’ve met on Facebook. Still, when it comes to the quest for romance/love/relationships/marriage/family, I say our beloved Internet site does us more harm than good.

How many people do you know who have talked about how they had to stop going to someone’s Facebook page because it tore them up so much? How many Facebook pages have you had to stop visiting for that same reason? How many potentially inappropriate liaisons occur because two people felt so connected by the site and had access to instant messenger?

It’s not like married people escape this. On the contrary, at times it seems Facebook was created for bored married people to go and look up unrequited high school or college crushes “just to see how you’re doing.” I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard about marriages or relationships breaking up or running into trouble because, at least initially, of Facebook.

Even those who aren’t acting out or obsessing over someone aren’t immune from the dangers of the site. It is, as a friend of mine says, “Compare-and-despair Central”: basically a place where people brag about their achievements (sometimes with self-effacing humor, which is almost worse), rave about how in love they are with their spouse (maybe or maybe not to earn brownie points), and post photos of their progeny complete with adorable anecdotes explaining every gurgle. Look at me! Many seem to be screaming. Aren’t I amazing?

Look, I’m as guilty as the next person. But I’m also guilty of going to the site and comparing what I don’t have to what others are writing that they do. And status updates, not to mention tweets, hardly represent the whole of someone’s life; most of us are putting the best versions of ourselves out there, not mentioning our pain unless it’s in the form of amusing complaints. And yet: despite knowing this, I still experience bouts of inferiority in the face of certain updates.

So what does this have to do with modern-day dating? Everything! Or almost everything. Combine the impact of Facebook with the impact of Internet dating sites and it can seem like there are millions of possibilities out there. A never-ending array of possibilities. So many possibilities, in fact, that the number of options stymies many of us. Why settle on this girl, a friend of mine who recently started Internet dating asked me rhetorically, when I can go out with different ones like her every night? Before the era of Match, he says, he would have happily stayed put with girl number one.

Exacerbating all of this, of course, is the fact that we are all now essentially reach-able at all times. Gone are the days of “I called but no one picked up,” “Got a busy signal” or “Couldn’t reach him/her.” The majority of us are walking around with devices that allow us to be contacted, in any number of ways, at all times. Thus, if we call someone and they don’t pick up or return the call in a timely manner, we make up all sorts of reasons. How many times has a friend asked you to analyze a text or email for hidden messages? How many times have you asked the same of a friend? The fact that we’re all available at all times inarguably contributes to the way people today obsess over their romantic prospects, and there’s no way obsessiveness helps any of us.

I’m not saying that things were so much better back in Helen’s day. Obviously, in many ways, things were far worse. But male and female roles were clearer, dating was less confusing and obsessive, and most of the comparing and despairing was limited, I would imagine, to when your parents called to tell you how well the people you grew up with were doing.

Look, I’ve met wonderful people on Facebook and it has deepened my relationships with others. And you’re not going to catch me sending one of those “I’m cancelling my Facebook account so please reach me at this email address” type of messages any time soon. But I think the more we can keep our relationships off of Facebook, the more we can remember that a great connection is a rare thing—whether we can attempt to do it again the next night with someone else or not—and the less we obsess over whether or not someone texted us back, the happier we’re all ultimately going to be.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a status to go update.