Social Networking vs Relationships - Round One...

I know I haven’t blogged in a while, but sitting on the sofa, still quite hungover from a drunken night in with the best friend, suddenly I felt the urge.

Today, I want to touch upon two points: one is if an honest relationship can still be maintained in this modern age of social networking and internet dating and two is slightly tangential to the first – relationships established on the Internet, be it via Twitter, Facebook or the myriad amount of dating sites there are on the internet nowadays.

My best friend (who shall remain nameless, to respect her privacy) recently split up with her boyfriend after finding numerous incriminating messages between him & another woman on his Facebook. A two and a half year relationship completely destroyed by this boy’s lack of integrity & respect. This brings in our first issue – can an honest and open relationship still be maintained in this modern age where Facebook and Twitter is our main method of communication? My answer? Yes, I believe it can. This devastating turn of events was not brought on by the fact that he was messaging someone else on Facebook, but by this man’s total lack of morality. Of course, Facebook didn’t make it any better, but I strongly believe that if it hadn’t been Facebook, if Facebook wasn’t as globally popular as it is or, better yet, didn’t exist altogether, he still would’ve found a way to betray my friend.

Then we can look at celebrity scandals – one that jumps to mind is the comedian Jason Manford. I will say this now - I don’t know the ins and outs of these scandals and this is not an attempt to defame him -  this is just my opinion. Jason Manford is married with children. Yet twice he has been found to be exchanging “flirty” private messages with women via Twitter. In 2010, they were sent to a 22-year old fan, who claimed that he’d asked her to send him racy pictures of herself and sent her messages that she described as being “sexually explicit”. This year, it was revealed that he’d been messaging another woman. Again, these messages were described as being sexually explicit and allegedly date back to late 2011. He laughed this off, describing it as playful banter.

This could be seen as the perils of fame – we will never know if these two women returned fire, whether they initiated it or if they ever tried to stop it. However, we can deduce something about Manford’s personality – that he is devious and immensely arrogant. To betray someone who loves you is abhorrent. And he has done this twice – by sending the first set of messages, he has taken advantage of the fact that he has someone at home who loves him. By sending the second set, he has taken advantage of the fact that she forgave him the first time.

My friend was in a very similar situation – there have been a number of occasions where her ex-boyfriend had basically betrayed her – sending messages to other girls, sleeping with a friend of a friend and other various dalliances. When my friend first found out, she was understandably devastated. He then lied his way out of these situations and my friend forgave him. This, I think, set off the green light in his head – made him think “She’s forgiven me for these situations, now I can go and screw anything that moves”.

To sum up, yes, I think an honest relationship can be maintained in the modern age – it just depends on the morals of the people in the relationship.

Now, to go off on a tangent, I want to explore my second point – relationships that are established via the Internet, be it social networking or a dating site and if they can work. This bit is going to be long and rambling, so I apologise in advance. But stick with me, there will be a point somewhere in these words. It is no secret that I am a member of match.com and have been, on and off, for the last three years and it’s basically been an unmitigated disaster – I’ve only ever met two people from Match, both with the same name incidentally. I started talking to Man One in July 2010 – we met up in the August of 2010, and up until that point had been IM-ing and texting each other every day. I am not ashamed to say that I fell for him straight away – as someone who hadn’t had a relationship at all, I was caught up in his pet names and his charm and his beautiful blue eyes. After we met, we talked even more up until September when we had a big falling out over me trying to define what we were. We then started talking again in December of the same year – he was, to put it delicately, my first. We had a couple of illicit rendezvous’ and then stopped talking. I then stepped away from Match until January of last year when I, hobbling and bruised, threw myself back into the fray. I started talking to Man Two pretty much straight away and we met after about four weeks. I knew as soon as I met him that we weren’t meant to be – he was a gentleman, extremely nice – but we just didn’t click. After that, I left again, not wanting to be disappointed anymore. I stayed away until the October of last year, and I’ve been on ever since. And honestly? It’s been a series of disappointments. I’ll start talking to someone who seems nice and then they just…stop talking. I won’t tar them all with the same brush though – one of them did actually say to me that he was so busy with working & studying at the same time, he barely had any spare time to talk and that he didn’t want to do just stop talking to me. He was the nicest out of everyone I’ve spoken to on there – honest, friendly and geeky (also, the only person out of my friends and family that I’ve given the link to this blog to – if, by any tiny chance you’re reading this, hi – I miss talking to you, so drop me a message sometime J). 

But then I look at the success stories – and one in particular. Another one of my best friends met her boyfriend of over a year via Twitter – they’d known each other for ages, but only got together in the February of last year, after she’d broken up with her long-term boyfriend. As soon as I saw them together, I knew it was meant to be – they just fit. They are both absolutely gorgeous but don’t know it, they are both quirky & geeky and they are absolutely bloody adorable together.

I think this is where social networking actually wins – with dating sites, you go on them with the sole objective of getting into a relationship. On social networking sites, like Twitter or Facebook, you can start talking to someone, with no intention of trying to go out with them. You can be talking for months and months, with no ulterior motive and a relationship can just develop slowly. It’s lovely and it’s honest.

People say that it’s a shame that couples don’t just get together in the traditional way anymore – that they don’t meet in a pub or in a park or on the street, go on dates and establish a relationship. I think it’s entirely the opposite – I think it’s a bit beautiful. I love that we’re developing a whole new way of getting to know a person, that we’re challenging the existing rules of relationships and changing them into something that is modernised but still works.  We’ve proved that these relationships can, and do, work – long may it continue.