By: Bill Farrand, MA, LCPC
Anyone who has lived in New York City as an adult prior to moving to Chicago (or any other less densely populated city) will immediately experience a mild form of culture shock upon doing so. It’s the same syndrome you’d continue to feel more of if you proceeded down the scale to, say, St. Louis, then Des Moines, then to Springfield, etc.: People get so much nicer (or, at the very least, increasingly polite and seemingly considerate)! They say “please” and “thank you” and even “How’s your day?” and, the longer we remain living there, the more we ourselves begin to do the same.
One working their way in the opposite direction, toward ever more metropolitan environments, logically finds themselves, over time, beginning to less often say “hello,” or “excuse me.” The sheer congestion of the environment justifiably takes an inevitable toll on the behavior of even the kindest, most compassionate among us. This adaptation is more than understandable, if not ultimately inevitable.
However, what these geographic relocations have in the past done to us sociologically is now in many ways mirrored or, arguably, even amplified, by the advent, absorption and quick saturation into our modern lives of Social Media. In our daily experience, on the spectrum stretching from “privacy/isolation” to “public/lost in the crowd,” physical location has lost much of its determinative weight. Anyone with internet access can now instantly commune with numbers of their (often like-minded) brethren that were completely unthinkable even half a generation ago.
Every relationship (at least in first-world countries) today is affected by this uniquely-brand-new context in which we all now find ourselves immersed – even those who are “drastically less online” than others are nonetheless at the very least aware of (and in countless ways influenced by) the unprecedented, far broader horizons suddenly available to us all: regardless of whether or not we choose to avail ourselves of them.
Like it or not, there is no escaping many, if not most, of the effects and implications of this exponential spike in the vast number of people whom anyone alive today can potentially meet due simply to the wide accessibility of these new forums and technologies. Highlights of this rapid metamorphosis include:
- In 1932, a full third of couples getting married had lived within a five-block radius of each other before meeting. One out of six, within the same block. One in eight married couples lived in the same building before getting married.
- Between 2005 and 2012, more than a similarly-sized third of marrying couples in the United States had met through the use of an online dating site – the most frequent of any other method — now more than from work, friends and school combined.
- In 2010, 17 percent of American adults owned a smartphone, rocketing up to 58 percent in a mere four years. Today, 83 percent of adults between eighteen and twenty nine carry a smartphone wherever they go.
- In 2014, average Americans each spent 444 minutes (nearly 7.5 hours) in front of a screen (smartphone, tablet, television or personal computer) every day. Even so, this doesn’t even put us in the top five nations (China, Brazil, Vietnam, the Philippines and at the top of the digital heap, Indonesia, whose citizens spend an average of nine hours a day staring at a screen).
Basic rules of supply and demand dictate that much of how we value not just commodities but even the more ephemeral elements that comprise our “Quality of Life” are going to be affected on fundamental levels by such seismic shifts in both our general mindfulness and in our specific criteria for health and wellbeing. Obviously, just knowing that alternative choices exist immediately colors any evaluation of something’s (and yes, someone’s) worth.
The presence of any number of substantively-similar-if-not-entirely-exchangeable candidates for one’s Saturday Night Date (or Life Partner) within a few city blocks can’t help but at least subconsciously factor into our relative contentment with what (or who) we currently have. The range of options with which we’re presented today has no precursor — no template to which we can refer. To say “the bigger the city, the more disposable the people” may seem too harsh just yet, but with our ever-expanding menu of choices, it’s getting pretty tough to deny that we’re feeling at least more replaceable with each and every day.
Along with this development, the criteria of what we hope for in our relationships has transmogrified as well. For all the debate in recent years over “Definitions of Marriage” (and/or committed, lifelong relationships), in the grand scheme of things it is only quite recently – relatively speaking – that mutual romantic or sexual attraction has not been hugely overshadowed in importance by what were then more pressing issues regarding the strategic merger of fortunes, resources and real estate, alliances, peace treaties – even the settling of feuds from which the current bride and groom may well be generations removed.
The renowned TED Lecturer and psychotherapist Esther Perel has counseled hundreds of couples. In her words:
Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given and that toys and lingerie are going to save us with that.
We have, then, a complete morphing of our definition of and expectations for a relationship, that was —incredibly enough — conveniently followed by an unprecedented blossoming (some might say an explosion) of tools and options available to us for satisfying them. No pressure at all!
This paralysis (or nearly that) which arises from an overabundance of options is an intriguing conundrum in and of itself. Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, explores it in absorbing detail in his book The Paradox of Choice, arguing that as our continuum of options widens, we actually grow less satisfied and sometimes — almost inevitably, the longer we keep at it — hit a plateau from which we’re unable to choose at all.
Another of the world’s foremost experts on choice is Sheena Iyengar, the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division at Columbia Business School. In one of her most influential studies, she set up a table at a luxury food store to offer shoppers samples of jams. When they offered 24 varieties, people were far more likely to stop and taste a sample (or two…), but were much less likely to actually buy any than when the researchers only offered six different kinds. Those who stopped to taste the smaller array of offerings were indeed fewer in number themselves, but they were almost ten times more likely to make a purchase than those tasting the larger number.
The Marketplace is indeed a cruel mistress — the global one especially so — but even the most magnanimous of socialists finds, eventually, that its ramifications cannot be entirely denied. Nor, actually, might those aspiring to true generosity always want to. The push for women’s equality in the 60s and 70s (as well as a host of other civil rights arenas) was greatly assisted by these very market forces once society realized what that many more people generating income might mean for everyone’s bottom line. Much of the recent strides in LGBTQ equality have, likewise, been well abetted by the Queer Community’s learning to wield its considerable economic and political influence. Communities of color are harnessing their own monetary muscle in similar ways.
Most would agree that these advances are helping to make for a better world in which to live, and that learning to navigate these regrettably-strange new seas of Fairness and Equity is a price well worth paying. So it is with our relationships, as well. A continually expanding (even occasionally exploding) availability of tools at our disposal need not be quite so much to fear if we can recognize this Paradox of Choice and learn to nurture our as-yet-still-nascent means of grappling with it.
This “brave new world” we find ourselves awakening in is no doubt every bit as promising and exciting as it is unprecedented. If we can manage to keep reminding each other to take a breath (or two!) and remain vigilant in the requisite, continual revisions that maintain the accuracy of our “map of reality,” we might one day have very little problem with one in which we can order anything we want delivered to our Arctic Circle Igloo from a twelve-page, double-sided, glossy-photo-strewn Denny’s menu of tempting options (on a Kindle™, of course!).
Does the information in this piece resonate with you? If you identify the explosion of social media and a tsunami of options for everything from dating to dishtowels as a source of anxiety and stress to you, consider consulting one of our highly trained and experienced counselors who specialize in anxiety, stress, and relationships. Contact us today and get the skills you need to stay grounded and happy in this new life at the speed of light.
