Whenever new means are invented, there are those who foresee the end of civilization and morality as we knew it. Television would be the end of reading; video games would corrupt our youth; The Internet is just a portal to pornography and predators.
As a researcher of rekindled romances – couples who loved each other years ago, broke up, and then reunited years later – I’ve been asked repeatedly about Facebook; Marriages are breaking up because lost loves are found on social media sites, cheating on their spouses, and suddenly leaving with their rediscovered high school boyfriends. If we didn’t have Facebook, we would have safe marriages!
What’s the fault of technology in bringing people together who shouldn’t get back together?
I have worked with reunited couples for 16 years. Yes, the population seems to have changed. According to my research participants in various phases of my study, there are more extramarital affairs in this population now than in the 1990s, before the web, search engines, classmate sites, and now classmates were invented. social media. In the 1990s, people looking for lost loves did so with great determination.
People were easy to find, it is a myth that only the Internet has rejoined long-lost loves, but to contact that old flame, it was necessary to make human contact: perhaps ask a friend or relative of the lost love for their / your phone number and then call lost love home. It was rare for a married man to have the audacity to go to an older father to ask for the daughter’s phone number and then call his long-lost love at home, not knowing if an irritated spouse would answer the phone. And the act of making that consultation or phone call was clearly a romantic overture, and the seeker knew it. There are no rationalizations there.
So what has changed with the Internet is how casual, even accidental, it can be today to see a photo of a lost love, or even a name, and all the memories flow again. The old flame is there, ready for contact, and what could be the harm? People who are happily married, especially, don’t realize the risk they’re taking, the Pandora’s box they’re opening, just to say hello. But this started long before Facebook. A lost love can be found through Google, websites like Classmates.com, or people search sites like Zabasearch.com. Facebook is simply the newest medium to blame.
Facebook is not the cause of marriages breaking up. Facebook does not reserve hotel rooms. What I have noticed, however, is that extramarital affairs with lost loves are started by younger people. Older websites like Classmates.com had older members. Facebook has younger members; They are no more likely to cheat than people who find lost loves on other websites, but because they are younger on Facebook, when marriages part from lost love reunions on Facebook, young families often get involved in place of empty nests.
However, there is no question: cheats are enabled by “new and improved” technology in general. It is no longer necessary to write letters. Do you remember how long they took to arrive? It was difficult to remain obsessive during those long intervals. And you had to make sure you beat your spouse at the mailbox. A computer takes care of all that: quick responses and secret email accounts so the spouse never sees the mail. It is also much cheaper than a secret PO box, and members can communicate at any time, directly from home.
Smartphones can be used for silly purposes; A married person who wants to get in touch with a lost love can send emails or text messages on the go. Or send digital photos of the last appointment … then delete them from the phone. The evidence is gone.
You can buy cheap cell phones that spouses never know about. Only the partner on the matter has the number. Instant messaging! Chat rooms! Enough talk.
Online purchases allow you to send gifts from your computer directly to the partner’s business address. Use a secret credit card or PayPal account and your spouse will never know.
Do you want to finish the adventure? Email to say it’s over, then delete your email account and throw away the cheap secret phone. Done!
This is the most arrogant way I hear people in lost love talk about technology. They are delighted that the secret is so easy. But you know what? Most people get trapped. Men and women who had been in a kind of denial in their teens suddenly lose their marriages and then wonder what hit them. If the spouse is very forgiving, the marriage can stay together. But a lot of damage has been done.
Technology cannot cause adventure. But the dazzling hubbub of new technology can obscure the old-fashioned devastation that befalls lost loves, their spouses, their children, their family and friends, their business contacts, and their community support systems. Reunions of lost love between single, divorced, or widowed men and women can be very happy; but if people are not truly free to come together, everyone loses. Seeing these issues awaken, over and over again, saddens this objective researcher.