Texting a Relationship- Pretext
There once was a time when we tried out relationships by face to face meeting. Of course there was the obligatory phone call, but eventually we met that someone face to face. I met my husband by dialing a wrong number. I suppose if we zipped a few years in the future it could have been a wrong text. But I thank fate it wasn’t. I have no less than five friends who are dating in textland. I call it pretext. Instead of fingering body parts, they finger keys. Instead of gazing into another face, they gaze at a Fb pic or a thumbnail. Instead of actually seeing the nuances that will be deal makers or deal breakers, they are weighing the significance of tweets, tidbits and jargon. “Oh look,” my friend says , “he’s texting me recipes!” I look at the screen and see a recipe for Lovers Delight which involves a banana dipped in caramel, sprouting a dollop of whipped cream and then placed between two lady fingers. “Are you kidding,” I said, never expecting to be answered. Then I ask her for a review of this relationship which apparently her good friend, had been completely unaware of for the past year. “Oh it’s been going on a while,” she says. And then I learned that in the past year, around her other dating experiences, smashed in between the hours at school functions and her job, she’s had a whopping two dates which involved some dry humping on his couch and a lunch at a greasy diner while he waited for them to change his oil in his car. “What happened to dating?” She sighs and tells me “It’s complicated, he’s got all kinds of responsibilities. He’s going through a divorce and we live an hour apart. We can only see each other when my job sends me to his region and that will not be for another week. Then we only have the afternoon because he has his twin girls half the week, a second job to pay his attorney, and then band practice.”
