Stories of love and heartbreak in virtuality: it is worth looking for a partner on the internet or not

“The ones I met on Tinder ended up with a 'stop writing to us', without further explanation but without hard feelings, part of what could happen. The worst was one that talked to me 24/7, we had gone out a few times and one day he bleached romance on the networks (I didn't know) and stopped talking to me. He didn't last a month with her. At the same time I answered a story, we spoke again 24/7, always with invitations that I didn't finish: he told me that he had a lot of work...”

“... Then he bleached a girlfriend again, but this time he blocked me. I felt very used because I was talking to me all day. When he came back to search for me in networks, I learned and did not respond to him anymore (besides I was with someone). I didn't even like him that much or felt in love, but he had a game that was half addictive, that made you dependent on him and then he kicked you out.”

The story is shared by Diana (fictitious name to prevent identity). She is 31 years old and says she has had other stories that were born on social media and didn't end so badly. But in this case the situation was different.

She was the victim of what is known as breadcrumbing, which refers to the actions of those people who do not end up completely disappearing, but nor do they make an appointment or meeting.

It is a term that emerged around the same time as ghosting, which refers to the untimely disappearance of a person, after going on several dates, without giving explanations. The person completely vanishes, becomes a “ghost” or ghost, as they say in Spanish.

“I went out with a skinny guy and everything was going great. We were together for a few months, but it was all super intense: we had incredible outings; I went to his birthday at the sister's house; he sent me pictures of the children and from one day to the next he didn't answer me anymore. He disappeared. I wrote to him a few more times but I never got any answers again. To this day I don't know what happened. It's horrible not to know what happens on the other side and that they disappear from one moment to the next,” says V, a 35-year-old girl who also asks to book with her name because she doesn't want to be exposed.

The stories of Diana and V are one of the many anecdotes of virtual loves and heartbreaks that can be heard or read daily, in everyday life or through public releases on different social networks. Has virtuality fostered the most fleeting links or is there simply more talk about something that also happened before?

“I think that on the one hand it reveals in a faster way dynamics that already existed and that are of the order of face-to-face as well. Obviously, virtuality has its peculiarities because there is ghosting, but it is not that it did not exist before, but now there is a more visible way; and as long as there is more control through social networks, we can have more information about that disconnection as about the link itself”, says Mariana Palumbo, doctor in Social Sciences and researcher at Conicet, in dialogue with Infobae.

R., also has to share a story that ends in ghosteo: “It happened to me that I had a relationship when I had just arrived in Buenos Aires City, with a boy from La Plata (Buenos Aires Province). We saw each other every weekend: sometimes I went to his apartment and other times he came to mine, in Capital. During the week we talked a lot on WhatsApp. He didn't have social networks. After the year and months of relationship, the talk began to become increasingly coarse and I saw, on its part, less intention of meeting.

Almost at the end of the relationship, I went one weekend to celebrate his birthday together. There was nothing out of the ordinary, just that he didn't accompany me to the train station, as he used to always do. When I returned home, we exchanged a couple of messages and the last thing he sent me was a “lol”, in response to something I had said to him. Since I noticed that there was something strange, I didn't talk to him to see how long it took to talk or something, but the days turned into months and I never heard from him again. Several times before he had told me things about my thinking being childish, so I preferred not to bother him and I just didn't talk to him anymore. He didn't even talk to me to look for the books he had lent me.”

Liquid Love

These stories are examples of what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman described as liquid love in his book of the same name, published in 2003. There he talks about more fleeting, superficial and less committed interpersonal relationships. For the author, such ties flourish in postmodernity, in which there is a greater tendency towards individualism and a preponderance of consumerist ideology that causes everything, even other people, to be seen as commodities to satisfy needs. Once the need is satisfied, the other becomes disposable.

The psychoanalyst María Fernanda Rivas, member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA) and author of the book “The family and the law. Conflicts Transformations”, says that several years have passed since that reflection and that in recent years the links have been reconfigured quite a bit, without this necessarily implying less commitment or depth.

“Are traditional ways of looking for a partner the only ones that are suitable? We don't necessarily have to think that a relationship that starts virtually is destined to be superficial or to die out quickly. It is risky to equate virtuality with a lack of commitment,” says the expert.

Palumbo also points out that we should not think that digital life necessarily implies the creation of harmful or ephemeral links.

“It seems important to me to make it clear that virtuality does not necessarily have to be thought of as a negative space to break the social bond, but on the contrary we can think that virtuality, although it has its own dynamics based on greater immediacy, on greater transience, it also reproduces dynamics that are of the order of everyday social life face to face”, analyzes the specialist.

For her, it is essential to analyze the situation taking into account the social context in which they occur. “Rather than demonizing virtuality, we have to think about what is happening to us as a society, how we are linking ourselves, what we expect from links, and what is happening on a more social and economic level so that virtuality is today our preferred channel of expression and communication,” he adds.

The pandemic as a catalyst for virtual meetings

When analyzing the links, one cannot fail to mention the pandemic and the catalytic effect it has had on the development of virtual meetings. In times of lockdown and quarantines, social media and dating apps became almost the only channel to engage with others. And this was clearly evidenced by the explosion of new users who registered on many of these channels.

“The pandemic, considered a macrocrisis, which affected human ties and underwent an accelerated transformation in the world, produced a paradoxical effect: on the one hand it generated great losses, but on the other it allowed the creation of new resources and different ways of 'being together'. One thing that has become very clear is that even in the midst of illness and death people have not stopped looking for ways to form relationships. Virtual resources were launched and in some places dating apps exploded. Faced with the state of vulnerability, it seems that attachment became of crucial importance. One of the most longed for sensations in these times has been to feel accompanied and why not?... loved”, says Rivas.

Dating apps and networks have also made it easier to sustain long-distance relationships or simply allow themselves virtual flirts that may, or may not, end up in strong bonds.

Palumbo says that apps enable a wider variety of people to meet from the comfort of home or wherever you are because you can use these services while doing other activities. In that sense it promotes more freedom, and even greater possibility of a romantic romp. But he warns that there are also limitations in that environment.

“You also have to think about it in terms of gender, often logics continue to be reproduced in which women are hooked faster than men and men continue to be available from the networks to continue seducing infinitely. So I think there are certain discourses of the non-virtual order that are reproduced in the virtual space as yet another space of human bonding”, emphasizes the sociologist.

That they nail our sight hurts the same way it hurt, a few years ago they didn't answer the phone anymore. Rejection, regardless of the forms it takes, always generates pain, as experts point out.

“There are things of the order of heartbreak, or not being elected that generate anguish and sadness, but it also has to do with what kind of bond there is but that also happens in face-to-face,” says Palumbo.

In line with this thought, Rivas says the following: “Behind social networks we find human beings who suffer out of love as much as in face-to-face. Being or not reciprocated affects self-esteem and when it is not, it manifests itself through deep emotional pain.”

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