Text Messages Ruined Relationships

"Ma, our time together is our time together, and our time apart is our time apart... So love Jay with your mind girl and not your heart" - Jay Z; Rapper, Mogul, Entrepreneur

"Welcome to Crisp County"... that's what the sign read. We had finally made it. My grandma and I. Traveling back to Albany, Ga, my hometown, from Raleigh, NC where my mom and I resided at the moment. It was at that moment I saw something amazing. For reference, Crisp county is about 30 minutes outside of Albany. Exit 99 on I-75 is Ga-300 that leads you into my small town. It was when we reached this point that my grandma pulled out her outdated flip phone and called my granddad to let him know to go ahead and meet us in the city to pick her up (My grandma lives in the "country"). She gets off the phone and proceeds to take her head scarf off that she's gracefully worn the entire 9 hour ride. She styles her hair, applies makeup, and puts the right hint of perfume on. All in a matter of 15 minutes. My grandma, at the time, was in her early 70's. "Grandma, y'all must be going somewhere?", I asked. "No Pooh, we going home." Confused, I asked, "So why are you getting so done up?". With a quickness her answer was, "My husband haven't seen me in a week, the first time he see me it's not going to look like I'm going to sleep". I was floored.

This was 4-5 years ago. Probably the genesis of my thought process. Over time I have come to the conclusion, TEXT MESSAGES RUINED RELATIONSHIPS!!! Sure, this can't be the only factor. But I think it's so underrated how big of a factor text messages played in this. My grandma and granddad have been together over 40 years. What I realized is that, in all those years, they always had time to miss each other. They both had jobs, friends, obligations, and hobbies that took them momentarily from each other. In their time, best case scenario, was a house phone attached to the wall. A house phone that was generally used for real simple and quick exchanges. There was no expectation for 24 hour attention or gratification. There was no expectation to have every minute of their days dedicated to each other. Fast forward to our generation, when our phones being in our hands are almost as important as oxygen being in our lungs. I'm not here to slander communicative relationships. Communication, not just of problems, is actually my top priority in an intimate relationship. In almost all relationships actually. But I remember a time, being apart of the last generation old enough to remember life pre internet yet young enough to be deeply ingrained in its maturation, where you had to wait on a phone call. I remember fighting with my older brother for phone time between him being on the phone or being on our dial up internet connection so I could talk to the cute girl in class. This is life pre social media and text messages. This is even pre handheld cell phones. My dad had a bag car phone mounted in his car. I had a beeper. Not the beginning of the end Motorola two way pagers, I had a real beeper. This was when you had to focus your attention on the girl/ guy you were most interested in and pray and wish for two hours per night of phone conversation. You went all day planning what you would say to start the convo. What you'd do if her mom answered the phone instead of you. What time you were going to call. And, which videos on 106 and park you couldn't wait to talk about to her (Maybe that was just me). My point is, there was an art to this. Even then you had Myspace and other early social networks, you had to WAIT to get the computer. Now, the {market} is oversaturated.

Once cell phones modernized and added text messages, that was the beginning of what I call unreasonable expectations. Over time this phenomenon materialized into social networks being easily accessed via smartphones then into Blackberry Messenger, then now iMessage. Don't get me wrong I love Apple as much as Steve Jobs and all the convenience technology provides but what it makes inconvenient is building a relationship with substance and realism. People argue now about how long it takes someone to text back, or which words they abbreviated, or if they read their message and didn't immediately respond. All of which are pointless trivial issues, but if you let a small problem exist long enough, it becomes a big problem. My grandfather didn't have to worry about texting my grandma every 5 minutes during his work shift. If my grandma decided to come visit us for the week she didn't have to make sure she facetimed my granddad or texted back before he took his next breath. What text messages did was open the floodgates, and the levy broke. We fostered a dependency on instant gratification and constant attention that has made it almost impossible to ever do enough. What text messages have also allowed to happen that I couldn't manage from the wall phone with the long crinkled cord at my grandma's house is for people to entertain multiple people simultaneously. Not simultaneously like in the same day or same week or even same month, people can literally be on phone with one person and texting another. Seconds later tweeting. Seconds later replying to someone else's message. There's almost no chance for undivided attention. Even on a scale of seconds. Text messages led to the boom in social media that allows Jason to talk to Erica in California from Texas, Erica is connecting with Tony in New York, and Tony has Marissa in Miami.  It's a dangerous web of possibilities. Overexposure is never a good thing. On any medium. But I think it has been the first domino that pushed so many down that has led to the mass communication and even more massive disconnection of a generation from love and substance and verbal communication.

There's no going back, text messages are here to stay, but ask yourself, if you had to communicate with your partner in strictly a verbal manner for 30 days would you survive? If you couldn't text, dm, or tweet your partner for a month would your bond get stronger or worse? I'll take that a step further, if you couldn't look at any of their social media pages at all for a month, could you? Because how much do you have to communicate directly if you have most of their daily thoughts already literally in the palm of your hands? Challenge yourself and see if you could do it for one work week?

Just my thoughts!

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