“You really like this one.” “He was the first to see my story. He’s stuck.” “He doesn’t follow me anymore Instagram“. “I followed her, if she also follows me, I will send her.” “Since yesterday he has been reading me.” “Did you see what he uploaded today?” “Something wrong with them, he doesn’t like her anymore, maybe they broke up?” Human relationships are already fragile, but in the age of social media, they are like dancing in a minefield. Everything means everything and nothing at the same time, every movement is equally suspicious and innocent, important and meaningless. And an unsubscribe to remind us that the end is always a click away.

“I was bullied, I was bullied, I was sexted, and I was bullied in revenge porn,” says A, 43, a self-employed worker, recalling how Carrie Bradshaw would sound if Sex and the City were filmed today. “While there. For example, I’ve never dated someone on Instagram because I’m just not attracted to this way of dating. Yes, I flirted through insta chat, but I never expected to meet flirting that started with a like on my photo “Just the thought that the same message he sent me could have been sent to a hundred other girls scares me. I don’t even start answering or following strangers expecting to flirt.” For A., ​​the biggest problem with social media was that they gave the illusion that we had more choices than we actually did: “We may meet more people, but you still fit in with the same – few – people.”

Hidden in the keyboard

Social networks create another illusion that we know each other. According to clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Anna Kandarakis, we often choose our partners based on the fantasies we create about them from bits of information they display in public. “The Internet promises that it can give you what you lack. And when your heart hurts you think that everything is eaten. If you have experienced deep loneliness and are in desperate need of a relationship – the advice is already wrong, since relationships should be based on desire, not need – you will attribute to the unknown Other qualities that he does not have, or at least you do not have enough evidence to confirm.”

She points out that social media creates false intimacy. “Within a very short amount of time, you feel like you can open your heart by hiding behind a keyboard without the slightest bit of real exposure and therefore intimacy. But intimacy without intimacy cannot exist.” That’s why, says Ms. Kandaraki, the real impact is often a crash landing. “Meetings are easy to do online and on screen. Fast, sparkling polished and automatic. Everything fits perfectly. The other seems to be available and always present, but we do not realize that at the same time that he is “here”, he does not need to get up from his sofa or bed. He doesn’t even have to be alone. Relationships are completely different. It is a complex process that requires disclosure, sharing and intimacy. Wrinkle and basically time and availability. Real presence. In flesh and blood. This is where we get confused. We think we have a relationship because we are faced with a falsified image, with a “made up” profile that has been falsified with a strict selection of what will be projected outward. It’s just that online profiles lack naturalness, spontaneity and, ultimately, truth. It’s like constantly meeting someone at their best. But we are not, or at least not the only ones. A profile may show a part of us, perhaps the best of us, but it is by no means enough to meet and match someone. How often have you seen someone advertise their failure on their social profiles? Rarely. Maybe never. But we are people and our failures. And in fact, how we deal with our failures and challenges is an important reflection of who we are.”

F., 37, journalist, landed hard several times after actually meeting the man she was flirting with. “Most people build the face they want to show. They become “funny”, “cool”, “smart”. You will find along the way that it is not, it is a smokescreen to hide an insecurity, a phobia, some other characteristic. It takes time to get rid of your confidence in the other person, which was really an illusion.

When you think that everything is happening for you

According to her, the experience of parting today is also different, difficult. “In the past, after a breakup, you would say that I don’t want you to talk to me again, I don’t want to see you again, and it was all over. At best, you separated the bars and groups, stopped passing by his hangouts and that’s it. Today you do not have such an opportunity, you cannot protect yourself effectively. You see what he’s doing, who he’s dating, how he’s doing. The pain lasts longer because you think everything is happening for you. That everything is a sign. That’s why I prefer to block and finish.”

Separation is a small death, and, as Ms. Kandaraki says, daily eye contact, even through a screen, does not help the mourning process. “In order for awareness to come, in order to leave denial, we must experience absence and lack. With the constant bombardment of information, images and events of someone else’s life, it, unfortunately, remains present and sometimes makes this process not only very slow, but also pathological. And, unfortunately, life goes on, and we remain attached to the memory.