Hold up. We think social media may be harming your relationship. Here is why:
1. Communication Trouble
Although the frequency of communication matters a lot (no one wants their lover talking to them once a month), the depth of communication does matter more.
Whilst social media may sure be offering you the chance to communicate with your better half more often; it is also slashing the depth of your communication.
Communication between partners should include feelings way beneath the surface—feelings that can only be squeezed out of voice tone, facial expression, etc.
Social media keeps this from happening.
With texts, emojis, and videos, your feelings are likely to be misinterpreted or taken.
You may mean to say the most innocent things, but your partner reads them wrong, and it is trouble.
Related: How to Help Your Teen Cut Back on Smartphone Usage
2. Do you Even Miss Each Other?
Believe it, missing each other is healthy for your relationship, as it triggers memories and urges you to recreate them.
When you are always on the phone, texting all day, it might be difficult to miss them that much. And this will surely affect the rate at which you both meet in real life.
Instead of setting up dates, you’ll just go; mentally, I am going to text him at night. We’ll still talk.
How is that going to turn out in the long run? I am telling you: bad.
Read: How to Manage Your Time
3. Stalking May be Building Up Resentment
Social media makes it easy to stalk your lover.
Accept it; you have at least fallen to this somehow. If not the very obvious kind of stalking, then most definitely the silent kind. Like checking to see their active status, to see what they posted last, to see who just added them up, etc.
How do you feel when your partner is online but not texting you?
I am guessing bad. Very bad.
This feeling, if left unchecked, is going to translate into resentment and start to chip edges of your relationship away so that it stops being the fine work of art it once was.
4. Excessive Clinginess
When you and your partner text a lot, habitually, expect to be attached to the routine at some point.
In my past relationship, even though my girlfriend lived just two streets away from me, we both texted a lot.
We had this routine of texting each other at 9 p.m. every night until one person fell asleep.
It was only a matter of time until I got really attached to the routine.
She was in her final year and sometimes got busy. I knew this. But even at that, I would feel terrible each time I came online by 9 p.m. to find that she wasn’t online.
Texting too much made me clingy.
Read: 17 Tips on Managing and Reducing Stress
5. You are Overthinking
The easy stalking that comes with social media is sure going to turn you into an overthinker.
You’ll cook up scenarios that don’t exist over a single picture of your partner smiling with someone else.
And guess what? Your relationship is sure taking those hits.
Bottom Line
Social media is extremely powerful and helpful, but it is best to exercise caution as we make use of it because it can harm our relationships. It can affect your relationship subtly in ways you do not realize.
Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash
