Technology isn’t always our friend….
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a bajillion times. It is easier to cheat in this day and age than it ever was in the past. The invention of the internet, followed by the smart phone, was the downfall of the monogamous relationship. I know, I know. People have cheated for all of time. I get that. But think about it. It wasn’t near as easy to meet people back in the day as it is now. With the click of a button, you can meet people a thousand miles away. You can have complete affairs with people and never actually meet them!! Back in the olden days, you actually had to meet in person, and getting caught was much more likely.
I was recently binge watching Young Sheldon, and I saw the episode where George came close to having an affair with their neighbor, Brenda. That was the late 80’s/early 90’s. Even then, it would have been likely that they would have been seen out together, Mary would have been told, and they would have been busted. The End. Well, after Sheldon “Sheldon-ized” the situation, because that is what would make it a real episode, right? But these days, it isn’t like that. Not at all. The advancement of technology has made this a much easier feat. No wonder the divorce rate is so high!!
Have you seen the TV series Why Women Kill? If you haven’t, then you should! It TOTALLY isn’t what you think it is. Anywho…I want you to close your eyes. NO WAIT!!! Don’t close your eyes! I need you to read…so close your mind’s eyes and imagine a PSA from the late 50’s/ early 60’s. (No, this is not a spoiler of the show) Now, picture it: The scene is black and white. You can hear that wonderful little 50’s PSA diddy playing in the background. The husband is sitting on the stiff looking couch, leg crossed on his knee, reading the day’s paper. His hair is perfectly Brylcreem’d and parted, and he is probably smoking his evening cigarette. The wife enters from the background wearing her full skirt and blouse, neatly tucked in, of course, with her apron to match. She has on her oven mitts and is holding a fresh pie near her face, so you can see her perfect makeup and neatly coifed hair. You’d never in a million years think that ol’Bill there is cheating with his golfing buddy’s wife, and Susie has put antifreeze in the pie because she found out from the butcher about the affair! This is how Why Women Kill would have been back then. But today….
Bill is sitting on the couch, wearing his dirty work clothes after pulling a 10 hour shift at the local factory and is drinking his 5th beer of the night, the scent of his strawberry cheesecake vape filling the air, scrolling through his phone, occasionally typing something with a stupid grin on his face. He keeps his phone in such a way that no one can see what is going on. Susie comes in the door after working her full time job, 3 kids in tow, hauling in groceries and bitching at Bill to help carry things in. She sees Bill on his phone AGAIN, and she gets that feeling in the pit of her stomach. She knows. Deep down, she knows. She doesn’t know who, but she knows he is talking to someone online. Why else would he take his phone into the bathroom with him every single time he went in there? A woman’s intuition is never wrong. Later, when Bill gets in the shower, she grabs his phone, looks through his text messages, sees the texts from all the strange numbers, and then she heads over to his social media. That’s where she sees where he had met up with one of the women earlier that day, and the conversation about the liaison brings her to her knees. She knew it!! Bill, of course, denies it, and has since deleted any and all evidence on his phone. Deny, deny, deny, right??? Susie eventually forgives but never forgets, and hence the cycle either starts or continues. Her self-esteem plummets. She questions her worth, her beauty, and asks herself over and over and over again WHY she isn’t enough, knowing she will never get an honest answer.
I came across a TikTok video, which I recently shared on my Facebook page, that explains the whole social media dynamic perfectly. The guy explains that if you are in a relationship, and your partner is on social media and giving any kind of attention to somebody else, even if they tell you it’s not serious, it is actually the most disrespectful thing they can do. They are liking someone else’s stuff, and whether the person online has one like or 1 million likes, your partner is opening the door to receiving DM’s from this person, and subconsciously that is what a lot of people are hoping for. The craziest part is that the ones who do this think it is normal, that it’s okay. IT’S NOT!!! If you are liking someone else’s half naked photos, you are disrespecting your partner. If your feed is nothing but photos of half naked people, and either your partner isn’t okay with it or you hide if from them, you are disrespecting them. If you are in a relationship in real life, then you should be in a relationship on social media. OR….You should be single until you realize how disrespectful that behavior is to your partner. We all make mistakes, yes, but if you don’t learn from that mistake, and continue to do the same thing over and over, it is no longer a mistake. It is a choice, and you should be single until you do learn.
Another chick on TikTok has several reels where she explains that liking another person’s pictures while you are in a relationship is 1, telling that person you are interested in them and 2, telling your partner that you have told this person that you are interested in them, and that opens a whole other can of worms. She also takes the situation OFF of social media and says that your partner feels disrespected and disgusted when you break your neck to look at the waiter or waitress as they go by. All of this speaks to me! I GET IT!!! I can actually say I agree with all of this. It’s not that I am jealous. It’s not that I am insecure. It’s that I feel completely disrespected by my partner when any of this happens. If the tables were turned and I was the one liking the pictures, having a feed full of buff, half-naked men that I constantly scroll through, or I go out of my way to check out the waiter or bartender, then all hell would break loose and I would be called everything but a white woman (which is what I AM, btw). It is a double standard.
This is why relationships in today’s world are near impossible. That is my solid opinion. Social media, the internet, smart phones….they have all made it so hard to have a trusting, faithful relationship. They have created dumb people. Now, hear me when I say both sexes are guilty of the above scenarios. And I’m not saying that a normal, trusting relationship not possible at all. I’m saying it is very, very difficult in this day and age. At one point or another, we’ve all been betrayed, and we all have some kind of trust issues, and because of that, we struggle in this area as a society. You have to decide what boundaries are you going to set in any relationship, and if you are willing to change them as time goes by…and just how far. What are you willing to tolerate, and what are you willing to let slide? What do you consider disrespectful? Maybe I’m right and maybe I’m wrong, but I’m willing to bet that I’m more right than I am wrong.
Think about it.
Love you most,
Lacy
