Why emails, texting and electronic communication isn’t

I wrote a book on internet dating- which of course is all about internet communication. I love social media, and facebook chat. my life is ruled by emails- if it’s not written down to me I often forget about it. I email myself to make sure things get done.

My life is run using written electronic communication.

But it’s not REAL.

Of course you can talk to people, email your thoughts, express yourself. But it’s a written, composed (even if it’s a vent, you’ll often have read through it one or twice to check if you can add in another barb or not) and it’s not got your body language, or your voice tone. One email can be read fifty different ways- whereas we can often solve even a huge communication breakdown with one meeting.

Recently I heard that I and four of my online frineds had fallen out. None of us actually knew we had- we were all pretty happy together. But because of some light hearted public ribbing in our 140 character tweets, the rumour had gone around we were all not on speaking terms. In fact those four people are people I meet more so in real life- we telephone, or have meetings in public, or spend time together socially. – and communicate face to face. We thought it was hilarious!

Someone told me yesterday I was overthinking a situation (I’m brilliant at overthinking in my own life- probably because I have to think myself into other people’s lives to give them advice all the time, – good for others, not so good when you get lost in your own introspection) And yes I was. But it was because we’ve moved to purely electronic forms of communication due to mutual work loads which is never ideal for a long period of time (handwritten letters are better as they tend to still express a person’s emotions – I’ve written before about the power of a letter.

It’s almost impossible not to start over thinking in a good or bad way, once communication becomes fully electronic. For all the time i spend on the computer to work, I really do not like friendships conducted by email and text. (it’s part of it- i love link wars, and lighthearted stuff, but it always completely sucks as a sole way to actually communicate.) Talking to both men and women it’s seen so differently too.

Women take a written communication completely to heart if they are interested in the person. Men tend to actually think of email and internet communication as their “playground” I’ve heard married man after  married man (or just men with girlfriends)  explain their fooling around on dating sites, twitter DM’s or facebook chat as “not real” When you talk to the women they’ve been talking to, the feeling of “realness” isn’t the same. Men and women have also both said to me that the cheating they did on their spouses was ok because the person they are meeting now is someone from the internet and therefore “doesn’t really count” Would everyone involved in that relationship feel the same way?

Earlier in the year I was dating a guy I actually quite liked. For all the guys I’ve met and dated, there are probably only a few I’ve thought “yep, awesome guy, someone I’d like to maybe be serious about” 

Anyway he was one of those. Unusually for most of those “internet dates” we actually found the rapport we had connecting on screen was equal in person- we just “clicked”  I haven’t found that’s a normal occurrence – so it stands out.

We kept in contact daily with email and text and were going to see each other again (well that was my perspective.- the emails were flirty, and fun and said as much) But actually, while he was emailing me he was dating someone else. His work busyness (where he’d said he was too busy for a few weeks to catch up, so let’s email until we had time) was actually him leading two lives- a flirty and fun online one with me, and the “real life” one with another girl he’d met just before our date. To say I was bummed was an understatement! 

I had spent eight months fully researching my book Eighty Eight Dates.- I’d had one date with a married man and had got really good at spotting them online after that. But this was the first time I’d felt burned by it all a bit myself, and it didn’t feel too good!

I know it did shake my trust in why people will choose to communicate via text and email only. I had had that approach to internet dating sites all along- it’s something you expect. (I tell a story in my book about the guy who was communicating with me with two completely different profiles) But I had thought that dynamic changed after meeting, and the rules changed somewhat.

Now I know that if I’m only having an email and text type relationship that it generally makes me over think, and probably I have very little trust in the “realness” of the person on the other side- there is no tone or expression, and everything is read in your own perspective and not the perspective of others. People can provide one element of who they are in an email or text, and assumption swirls around it, and then eventually you have two people who are communicating two completely things talking to each other electronically, when one face to face meeting would not hold that same level of miscommunication

People hide behind texts and emails. They can live more than one life very effectively using it. We can pretend we didn’t get the text or email or that it was late. We can even say we did get it, but that it got lost around some important ones. We can wait, think and decide when we are going to respond. Some of that can be a good thing- but it’s not real relating. We can ‘hate” someone, fallout with someone, fall in love with them, or build them up into someone they are not- because with only the words, we cannot take in their expression, their body language and that look in their eyes.

I still love email. I love using twitter, and I’m a big believer in keeping in contact with people via electronic means. But I think our drive to reach out and relate is so often thwarted by it all. Real relationships and friendships are about taking it offline. Skin hunger is so prevalent with our whole society because we choose to hide behind the walls of our computers and our cell phones. We can choose the person we are presenting to the rest of the world- whether it’s accurate or not.

Are texts, emails and such great for relationship building? They sure can be. But if it’s all you have, no matter the feelings attached to it, if it’s all you continue to have, it’s not all. There still is nothing that compares to face to face meetings, or even, at a pinch, a real live voice on the other side of a phone call. While we can then still choose to present the side of us we want the other person to see, it’s far easier for break a little of that down and actually communicate for real.

Related posts:

1. Breakfast: Online Dating Tips I sometimes forget that this website started from my book...
2. BREAKFAST JUNE 10: Rachel Goodchild on Long Distance Relationships Thinking about one, in one or couldn’t imagine anything worse?...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.