If love and Instagram have one thing in common, it’s that nothing is ever what it seems. The new guy that you swear will be your soulmate forever turns out to be a total creep and the blogger whose account you’re obsessed with spends 8 hours on every photo. Dating has become even more treacherous thanks to our constant need to broadcast our lives online, but it’s not all bad news. Here’s what social media can teach us about love:
- Perfection isn’t reality. We’ve all realized by now that Instagram isn’t real life. While it’s not news that we want our lives to look pretty and shiny online, it’s a good reminder that when it comes to our love live, we shouldn’t expect our relationships to be perfect all the time (or ever).
- It’s about quality, not quantity. Sure, it can feel amazing if you have a million Instagram or Twitter followers, but it doesn’t actually mean anything. As long as you’re posting things that are true and important to you, who cares if only your closest friends or the whole universe are following? The same goes for finding love. You don’t need to fall for a million guys — you just need one.
- Obsession isn’t a good thing. Whenever we find a new form of social media to get into, we all become obsessed immediately. We post literally everything on Instagram, tweet 100 times a day, and update our Facebook profiles way too many times to be good for us. You know it’s not healthy to obsess over a guy, whether it’s your office crush or your ex-boyfriend. So when it comes to boys and Twitter feeds, try to live your actual life and not spend all day and night in a state of total addiction.
- Boundaries are crucial. No one wants their new boyfriend/girlfriend to be a total stalker. That’s the definition of misery. So while it’s perfectly acceptable to do a bit of social media stalking before a date or before you really commit to someone, it’s a little much to eagerly await his every post on every account he has. We all need some space.
- Chatting is not communication. As anyone who has spent afternoon upon afternoon Facebook chatting with a new love interest knows, things can feel super exciting. The words and jokes are flowing, and then something weird happens: you realize that the two of you can’t communicate verbally when you’re right in front of each other. Don’t let chatting take communication’s place. You can’t exactly conduct your entire relationship on Facebook. Well, you can try, but that’s basically the plot of an episode of Catfish.
- You can’t love everything. Some of us are Instagram addicts, while others stick to Facebook. Some of us are total monogamists and others just want something casual. Just like you’re never going to want to use every single social media platform, you won’t like every guy you meet, or be cool with every style of dating.
- You have to be you. If you lie about your addiction to reality TV just to impress a guy, he’ll eventually find out about your Real Housewives love and will wonder why you didn’t just say so. Pretending to be someone else online or lying will turn people off super fast.
- Change is inevitable and totally OK. It can seriously suck when your fave social media platform looks different (weird Twitter hearts, I’m looking at you). If there’s one thing that social media and dating have in common, it’s that change is going to happen. It’s just a question of when.
- All good things come to an end. There comes a time in every millennial’s life when you have to say goodbye to what you loved so much. Maybe you’ve moved on from Pinterest or gotten bored with tweeting the tiny details of your life. Just like any break-up, now it’s time to look inside and think about what you want next. Maybe Instagram is more your style.
