Are Media and Technology responsible for our messed up relationship and love life?

These days our life revolves around TV. We seem to seek and value connection and #intimacy, because we are afraid of being alone. Yet, it keeps eluding us. Why? I think part of the reason is technology and media. The average person spends so many hours a day using technology such as cell phones, TV, video games, music and Internet.  This fast-changing electronic culture is impacting our love and relationship big times. Because of media and technology, the ways in which we fall in #love, connect within relationship and experience sexuality are different than any other generation before this one. We are spending vast amounts of time engaged in mediated reality and less time engaged with each other.  How does one navigate these uncharted waters and discern what real, healthy #marriages and #romantic #relationships should look like?

The root of any romance today is the #delusion of love. In past, we came together because our parents arranged it or because it benefit us financially; love was secondary.  Today, we make love the only thing that matters. This over-emphasis on love is encouraged by media that tells stories, sings songs and writes books about how true love conquers all, is ultimately fulfilling, brings a never-ending wealth of happiness and is rarely marred by significant conflict. As we all know, real love doesn’t work this way, but that doesn’t mean those tantalizing (and insistent) images don’t affect  our hopes for romance—and, in turn, cause disappointment in the mundane drone of the day to day. Life is not fairy tale.

When I was a little girl I used to read fairy tails. I remember the books being filled with beautiful pictures and #happy endings. But fairy tails are not happy stories. Only from distance are they beautiful. In reality they are dark tales of abuse, neglect, violence, and murder. Cinderella is held a prisoner and treated as a slave in her own family home, abandoned by the death of her father to the physical and psychological torment of her stepmother and step sisters. Hansel and Gretel are abducted by a sadistic maniac who holds them captive in the woods, frightening them with the intent of roasting them alive and cannibalizing them. Red riding hood goes into the forest to visit her elderly grandmother only to find the woman has been savaged and eaten alive by wild animal. These are fairy tales, this is real life.

We do not need to look too far to find real love – at times we are so obsessed with the idea of a perfect, unattainable, #fairytale(the way the media portrait it as happily-ever-after) love that we fail to see the love within our reach. We are so into the delusion of real love, we fail to recognize it. Real love might not be passionate and fiery in the beginning but when two souls meet and decide to give their initial attraction a chance to grow and develop, in time perhaps they will discover that they are indeed made to be together and passion grows as you learn to know each other. 

The media portrays love as that kind of love that thrives on drama, passion and lust. But our experience has taught us to live in the present moment, #appreciate the little things that make our everyday life a happy and serene one, and enjoy the feeling of loving and being loved without always looking for something new, exciting and extraordinary. I’ve learned to find the joy of life with the love with see in our partner's eyes, in our children's smile, and our friends’ hugs. Our relationships with the people around us and with nature indeed make life worth living!