Lost in Txtlation

These are the cookie crumbs for my depreciating mind.

Tag: relationshops

Let’s play dating telephone, without the phone.

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Question: What’s more dangerous these days then the lack of inflection in a text?

Anwer: A friend reading that text out of context without the inflection and being asked to “interpret” it.

This has been going on way before texting existed but before you could scroll back up through a conversation you had with someone else, you had to remember the experience and then explain it in your words. Most of the time this one factor “in your words” needing you to explain how you interpreted the situation would give a friend the ability to go, “Ok this is your crazy showing” or go “Nope that shit is fucked and you need to get a restraining order”.

But not today. Today we get judged based off our ability to drop a stand up routine straight out of the gate. “Make me laugh and love sarcasm!” Do I look like Eddie Murphy? I mean he is one sexy bitch, but let me at least get your name first before I entertain you for free. What happened to “be yourself” you may ask? Well no one wants “yourself” because that may include having a shitty day and wanting to talk about it. Not to say everyone hates it, some people understand interaction and compassion and don’t feel like you are bringing them down by being in the moment. But for the majority that want an adventure and sarcasm, good luck saying anything other than George Carlin’s greatest hits as an intro.

Also don’t share. They don’t want you to have walls, they want you to be this open book, but the minute you share something with them, be it a piece of writing that is in context to the conversation, a photo, or a past story, they immediately go: “Well fuck, now he thinks I am that person, I am not that person, fuck, am I that person, why do I need to explain myself to this person I don’t know, fuck I need to show this to a friend!”

Now you are done. The minute it is in their head and they don’t bring it up right away to you to clarify it’s over before it even had a chance to start. The friend will obviously side with them over you the random creeper on an “online dating” platform. Because, it is never them who is the problem, it is always the other person. They have their shit together. They are open. They have a Myers briggs profile. They know their astrological sign. And so without you knowing, they are taking your text, the one line or two or ten that they selected and letting it fester in their brain, picking it apart to the point where logic is no longer even in the equation, mixed with a second or third opinion of someone else who has no idea who you are. Then they wait, they formulate, they speculate. This is where the game of telephone with their own psychi starts.

You basically now killed their first born with your charming Eddie Murphy stand up one liner. Somewhere in between the first text and the few hours you were excitedly waiting for them to be done with their evening so you could continue talking and (the key part) “GETTING TO KNOW ONE ANOTHER”, they have started their textual breakup for a relationship that never got started. A textual spew that is created for one reason and one reason alone, to make them feel less insecure about themselves. To give them the upper hand in a situation where no one needed the upper hand. To lull themselves into false sense of approval. “OK, he is going to get defensive when I say the following, and when that happens, me and my friends will have been right”. What they are missing is the fact that we probably have known each other for less than a 24 hour period and when you throw a wall of text at me saying “You are X Y AND Z” of course I am going to try to defend myself. I mean honestly at this point I should just turn off texting, but alas I am not that strong. So, I, as calmly as I can via text, try to figure out what is happening, why it is happening, when I said all these things I am being accused of saying, even though I am 99% sure I didn’t, and where they got expounded so out of proportion. Problem is it is impossible, I cannot make out where it is derived from anymore. But I already know the outcome here regardless of even if I was to deliver a speech that rivaled that of Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men definitively proving my “innocence”.

So in under 24 hours we are about to have our first fight. We have skipped the line, did not pass go, and when directly to jail. Guilty unable to prove innocence just waiting until someone hits the block button.

And it is always the same shit:

“I have to prove myself”(talked about this with stop caring)

“I feel judged”(you feeling judged is not on me, that is something you are holding onto)

“You are so defensive, why would you be like that”(cause you are yelling at me for shit I don’t even understand at this point)

“You said people do this horrible stuff, I AM NOT THAT PERSON” (yes people, not you… I was giving you the benefit of the oh fuck it, you just kinda proved my point)

“You need a therapist”(ok.. After these interactions I don’t disagree.)

“I am just the innocent bystander here”(who literally just made up an entire fake scenario you needed to spew at me instead of just moving on, so you felt vindicated from a story you made up)

“See you are still being defensive.” (you are still texting me bullshit, having counterpoints is not being defensive, back in my day this was called debate, conversation, or interaction. But we did it with voices and face to face, try it sometime, you may be surprised at how the other person may not be yelling at you and may actually be calm, collected, and a bit surprised.)

“You are judging me for things I haven’t done” (nope, I am talking about my past openly, you are applying it to yourself out of context for some reason, actually the reason is probably you holding onto something from YOUR past, the same thing you said: you wish I would not apply my own past to you.)

“My friends were right” (hahahaha)

The problem is I could continue this. It only goes on and on. But it is based in a baseless world of inflection-less words. Words people don’t seem to understand can be changed or clarified these days if more context is needed. But nope, let’s form the worst case scenarios and just go bat shit crazy on someone else.

I run across this enough and I wonder, hmm, perhaps I am the crazy one. But then I take a step back and realize, nope I just avoided a seriously fucked up scenario with a person who will fester ideas and not tell me until they are sure they have a winning Trump card. Problem is, there was never a contest or argument to be won. So, maybe I share too soon, but if it allows me to weed out these types of people who can only see one dimensionally in a very 3 dimensional world, I guess I can endure the frustration and angst a little bit more.

This is one of those cases by the way where I suggest the usage of the block button. And we all know how I feel about that.

We need to start getting hurt again.

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We are breeding a generation of pampered “feelings”. We are breeding a generation protected by the “block” button. We are breeding a generation of “ghosts”. We don’t understand what it is like to plan how you are going to meet a person face to face to let them know that things just aren’t working out.(because we used to believe a phone call, not a text, was too informal and rude) A ritual that used to take time, consideration, and thought. An uncomfortable situation, but one that ultimately gave closure be it with tears, screams, or a kiss on the cheek. You will remember this moment and grow from it. You won’t remember the person you erased from your life.

But why take the time to consider someone else’s feelings when we have been taught by every app, every program, every avenue of our life, that we can just “mute” the other person and focus on ourselves.

When I say a generation, I don’t just mean “millenials” or “Gen Z”, I mean everyone who is adopting online dating into their life. It is easier this way. It is convenient. Because honestly, no one likes being hurt, so if you show us a way to avoid it we will. It is part of human nature. We forget that our lack of pain, often brings it to others. But we are sheltering it so much, that instead of touching the hot pot and learning not to do it again, we “ghost” the stove.

Example: You are talking to someone, something during said conversation triggers you in one way or another, you say nothing. You wait until the conversation is over, and start frantically searching for the “block button” before they realize they even made a mistake or slipped up on a sentence that could have had different meaning. There are no second chances, there is just the rush to purge. Because immediately after the purge you don’t have to feel bad, have a moment of self reflection or healing. You just swipe right and start talking to the next person, waiting for them to trigger you and the process repeats.

I have talked about this “ready to purge” state in depth before on another podcast. But I believe we need to look further than the consequence of our society and look at the process of resolving it. Receiving a little heartache or prepping human consideration in how you deliver the bad news to another is one of the missing ingredients. How can you grow, when you have all these apps and online portals holding your hand with the “block button” at the ready?

There is no more growing from our experiences, only pushing them down into a repressed memory state, called the block list. We have taken the human connection out of the human connection and it is hurting us as a species. The amount of times you could totally avoid the “weird text I got from my friends friend”, by just giving the other person the humane benefit of an explanation. But why should you do that? Facebook, instagram, okcupid, tinder, they all just have the block button. Why should I do anything above and beyond what society is shoving down my throat as the norm? Well I guess here in lies the rub. You don’t have to, but you should. You should start getting hurt again. You should be open to “hurting” as well. Because ultimately it will make you stronger, kinder, more compassionate, and less of an automated process in a system designed to keep you entwined. 99 out of 100 times someone will be happier to “move on” if you are honest with them, then waking up to “this person doesn’t exist”. It leaves a feeling of emptiness and a pit in the other person’s stomach, wondering if the app broke or if they did something terrible or if they just weren’t good enough. Logical, no, but illogical thoughts in illogical moments brought on by these apps are logical.

You think Tinder’s business model benefits from you finding love? Do you think Hinge really wants to be the “dating app you delete”. No, it benefits from you coming back. Why else would it have a 6 month or 12 month subscription up front?! Think about that for a second.

So perhaps instead of using these tools that these apps present to us in such a disconnected from human feeling and emotion, we should start using the apps the way we want. When they then stop working in the way we expect, we stop using them all together, forcing them to work for us and not the other way around. This is a business, we speak with our wallets. Stop paying to be manipulated, and claim your right to start getting hurt again, because what you may learn is, when you open yourself up to being “hurt”, inadvertently you decrease it. Not that you won’t feel the heart ache or pit in your stomach, but you allow yourself the mindspace to heal and grow from the hurt, getting you out there sooner to meet the person you are meant to be with. Not hiding from all the people you are afraid they might be.

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Interesting… So I am more of a “DO SOMETHING” don’t “SAY SOMETHING” but “say a little something to fuel the ego” lol

I feel _____.

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Something I have been getting much better at lately is telling others how I feel, how what they say makes me feel, and drawing boundaries for myself. This is unique for me, because I always believed in being the open open book. However, it turns out I benefit from a little bit of a cover. Not that this means I am any less open, it just means my “open” is a little bit more protected from dirt.

This I find, however, is not something easily accepted by others. Others might do it as well, but they may not be in the same place as you to truly accept it. They might be doing it not as an open conversation, but as a conversation stopper. And they may not have learned it the same way, so you get some pretty big clashes by being honest.

I used to think that I would meet someone who I could find that could agree with me that life is too short to spend it taking jabs at one another and treating each other with sarcasm, versus encouragement and support. But what I am also learning is that these things are things you do for so long over a lifetime that you cannot switch them off overnight, and some sort of banter is necessary to survive the support.

I am a sensitive being. I can get hurt quickly, I am weak in certain areas, I am fast to form an opinion, so when you combine that with text conversations and an equally sensitive partner, you find the opposite of fireworks, you just get internal explosions no one else can see. This causes quiet secrets, that are not meant to hurt, but created by both parties to protect one another from hypotheticals.

I also have the inate ability to recover from shit being flown my way. I have had to deal with it as a child, teen, adult, etc. I taught myself due to extreme circumstances growing up where I got hit with it a lot. So combine that with me now sharing when something feels wrong and you have a very interesting explanation of self, especially for someone who doesn’t know your “self”.

We have been living with our own demons and pasts so long, getting someone to understand them as well is hard. It is a true test of wills. But at the same time are we supposed to just “click” or are we just supposed to “click” on specific things, allowing the non clicked moments to feel less impactful. Opposites attract… yet I always feel that if I met someone who put as much thought into the idea of people, the context of valuing humanity over physical and tangible achievements, that it could be truly magical. I suppose the opposites are best defined as being things that you can contribute to one another in a way that lets growth live and breath with each other.

But it isn’t just about being able to agree upon things, it is about being able to have a thicker skin when shit doesn’t mix and being able to work through it without letting the past define us too much. I know my past has the potential to throw some serious wrenches all over the place. At the same time I also know my past does not control my future as long as I am open to letting it out and in when need be. But on top of that if you are feeling as though instead of “hearing” another being is just “accepting” it is the same as brushing off an acknowledgement. It becomes increasingly frustrating. There has to be a sense that two people are working together equally, not just setting up boundaries at every turn. Actually understanding the boundaries is more important than the boundaries themselves.

“I learned to understand my Leo by understanding that he needed positive reinforcement for the little things. He needed me to be open to letting it all hang out with him or he tended to think I was not interested or had anything interesting to offer. This was out of my comfort zone but when I let go a little bit to him, it was a warm embrace that followed”

I am just rambling, because I did meet a similar person, and that similarity seemed to be only similar in brand not by make. Created completely differently, not actually riding the rails side by side, but being on opposite hemispheres thus having an entirely different type of passenger that we let aboard.

Who knows, maybe one day we will be universal to one another, but for now we continue our daily commute with a completely different schedule.

Oh well, derailed for a moment today, back on track tomorrow. And with that… enough train metaphors.

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