Life starting changing for me back in the late 80′s. When Lee jeans were in and it was cool to have your boombox blasting Kiss FM’s Kool DJ Red Alert, I discovered the freshest thing: girls! And I wasn’t alone. My friends and I increasingly turned our attentions to the girls watching us play wiffle ball in the schoolyard. Soon, it wasn’t enough to chat them up at lunch and after school. No, we need more because our hormones were raging and we had girls on our minds. Of course no one would admit that, but we were all channeling Ralph Tresvant from the Popcorn Love video.
This desire to learn more about the girls I liked led to asking for *gasp* their phone number to call them at night. I don’t remember my first call to a girl but I’m sure it lasted 20 seconds and with me either hyper-ventilating or passed out on the floor. As my confidence grew, the phone calls got longer, until they became epic marathons. Through college, the main form of communication was the telephone. Yeah we had beepers, but you called people back when they paged you. Or you didn’t. A funny thing happened as I grew into adulthood: technology blossomed as well.
Skipping ahead to where we are now: smartphones rule the universe. Nearly everyone has a Blackberry, iPhone, or Android based phone. The capabilities of each are staggering, including the infamous Blackberry Messenger [BBM]. BBM is basically AIM and the 2-Way combined. Many folks communicate with their contacts because it costs nothing in minutes or texts, a nice little value add from the folks at Research in Motion [RIM]. Now how does that impact the social landscape you ask? Tremendously!
Technology allowed people to be mobile and still communicate. You could be in one place and no one would really know where you were. Or you could tell your girlfriend you were at the gym with your boys, while laying in the arms of a new conquest. See where I’m going with this? Yes, emails and texting from mobile devices has created an imbalance in how we court and date. And the ladies have taken notice. I’ve seen plenty of tweets where women wonder if men still call women or do they just text. Facebook is a fertile ground of frustrated status updates conveying the same message. So what happened fellas? Here are just three of many reasons:
Convenience: Guys don’t want to sit on the phone and talk for hours. Maybe at the beginning because you’re learning about the person but not all the time. If a guy can shoot off a series of texts/emails, that’s much more efficient in his mind. And it’s easier to understand what she’s ‘saying’ when you can read the word. That doesn’t always work though.
Avoidance: He might not want to let you know where we are or what we’re doing. This is a little tricky, because you should always be upfront and honest in your relationship. But what if the guy’s supposed to be headed to pick up her puppy from the groomer. Picking up the phone at home when he should be out the door will surely earn him time in detention. But a text saying he’s ‘on his way’ though ambiguous, serves him very well.
Social Butterflies: Guys with no personality find it difficult to carry conversations. Typing and reading the response allows the socially inept time to craft a proper reply. It’ easier to be witty and charming without the pressure of the woman actually being present.
See, guys are pretty lazy in their approach to women. If something worked on one woman, we automatically assume it will work on all the others. And right now, the ladies have given us permission to communicate with them over text messages. Many conversations end with: “BBM me”, or “I’ll text you later.” Men take this as explicit instructions on how the woman wants to be communicated with.
To be fair, texting and emailing are not all that bad. They are great for short messages or even when you’re trying to convey an idea to your partner in a discreet manner. My ex-girlfriend and I sent thousands of messages to each other over every communication device possible. I still remember the marathon emails we sent each other when we first met. But it didn’t replace the time we spent together. We made sure to talk and spend time together. When an email was confusing, we’d call to clarify. That was an ideal situation because we worked to make it successful.
Communication is extremely important in a relationship, but how to communicate is key. It’s best to ask the question from the beginning: “Do you prefer phone calls or texts?” come to an agreement on what will work best for the relationship and go from there. Right now though, the ladies are craving for a little nostalgia, to be courted and sought after. To be wined and dined and spoken to with our actual voices, not letters on a screen acting as our proxies
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