Digital Love: Technology and The Love Letter
Modern romance can be hard to come by. Now that fast and convenient means of communication like email and text messaging have become the modus operandi of many, long hand expressions of love are becoming obsolete.
I'll never forget my first love, I was 16, a junior in high school. In the five minute breaks between classes my boyfriend and I would exchange 2 or 3 page long letters written on college ruled paper torn out of spiral bound notebooks. Filled with declarations of naive adoration that can only accompany young love, the missives remain among the most romantic correspondence I've kept with another person. Of course, it should be mentioned that my junior year of high school is also the year I got my first cell phone, a large and unwieldy Nextel that my parents could walkie talkie me on. Text messages didn't exist and my AOL email account was checked maybe once a week.
Somewhere in the past decade, technology has advanced far past the love letters I relished exchanging at 16. Last year
The Telegraph polled 2,558 people, two-thirds of whom had never sent a love letter. However, the same majority had texted "I love you" or a variation of the phrase. This may signify a decline in romance if the group hadn't indicated that they would still prefer to receive a handwritten letter rather than a text. 70% of women polled said they would like a letter, while 53% of men agreed.
Though taking the time to pen letters on a regular basis may seem more than a little unrealistic, there is a point where electronic expressions of love can be taken too far. In an article on electronic etiquette,
USATODAY cites a story about a young student at Northwestern:
Just before Northwestern University senior Rachel Clayton returned home
from school, her boyfriend told her -- for the first time -- that he
loved her. She was thrilled by his sentiment, but after the initial
butterflies subsided, Clayton felt a little, well, cheated."I just sat there and stared at my cellphone," says Clayton, 22. "After
six months of dating, I couldn't believe that the first time he used
those words was over a text message."
Of course she felt cheated, the non-confrontational method of texting someone a message so loaded is cowardly to say the least. (Personally, I think telling someone you love them for the first time in any sort of written communication is a little weak. I mean c'mon, if you can't say it to my face, should you be saying it at all?) If you haven't told your significant other the way you feel, texting "I love you" is almost as bad as the text message break up.
Though perhaps not the most romantic, there is an upside to our electronic age: what we lack in quality, we make up for in quantity. Within a matter of hours one can send a heartfelt email and receive an equally caring reply. Gone are the days of waiting by the mailbox as our communication with loved ones has become constant and our pronouncements of love more abundant than ever before.
And even though the physical shoebox full of love letters may be a thing of the past,
gmail does have a labeling system for you to archive all those short but sweet messages that let you know you're loved.
1 Comment
Jessica Downey said:
I totally agree with you, telling a person you love them in a text for the first time is weak. Frankly, is a little impersonal and I think that is something a lot of people don't realize. I am an avid texter, I won't lie but there are some things that are better said in person or at least over the phone.
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