There are so many things I love about social media but the unhealthy cultural stuff and evangelizing immaturity in life and relationships is getting to a point where I’m questioning if it’s even worth the tradeoff
You just can’t be on tumblr or twitter without being exposed to it and it gets more and more irritating and off-putting and frustrating to witness the deeply unhealthy harmful delusional and fundamentally selfish things that get treated as normal or held up as Goals
Parasocial relationships are corrosive to actual relationships. They acclimate you to a way of seeing and relating to others that is fundamentally unseeing and unknowing and based entirely on your own fantasies. It’s why healthy crushes in adults are mild and often not acted upon because as you mature you recognize that your fantasies about people are just projections - you can’t love someone you don’t know, you can only love the desires that you’ve projected onto them and from which they have nowhere to go but down.
No one can ever live up to your imaginary relationship with them and while it’s normal to be invested in those fantasies as a kid, once you’re an adult the healthy thing is to mature and grow up and learn that indulging those fantasies isn’t harmless because it leaves you comparing your real relationships and people as they really are to the elaborate fantasies you’ve built up in your head. Your current partner is never going to be as interesting or exciting as the fantasy partner you’ve projected onto some crush you don’t know who you’ve built into the ideal person in your head. Even their flaws are endearing because you’ve chosen flaws for them that are compatible with you and you’ve fantasized about problems you might run into that are problems you’d feel perfectly comfortable navigating, that wouldn’t challenge your ego or push you into unfamiliar and difficult territory.
Which is all part of the Perfect Life fantasy peddled on these sites that is just so deeply destructive and self-sabotaging at best, and externally destructive at worst.
“You should be obsessed with your partner and they should be obsessed with you”
That’s called being codependent and it is a wildly mutually destructive dynamic and that does not exist in any healthy lasting relationship. Anywhere. Period.
But social media makes it seem like you’re settling if you accept that fact. That you’re settling for mediocre love or compromised relationships or comfort over True Love and True Romance.
Having a few close friends who you lean on and can turn to outside of your partner, having a wider circle of casual friends who you can party and visit and hang out with, and then having your partner be someone you trust and love and feel safe and good building a life with, but who doesn’t meet all your needs or wants and who has a different personality than you which is sometimes great and sometimes difficult, isn’t a compromise or settling - it’s what healthy mature love looks like. Making any one person the center of your world isn’t a good thing, there simply is no version of that that can go well or serve as a foundation for healthy love.
And when you grow up and mature, you come to recognize that as a basic truth about life the same way you learn to let go of other black and white thinking and other extreme ways of seeing the world.
But social media glorifies immaturity. It glorifies fantasy and delusion and self-interest and treating people as tools for your personal growth. “People come into your life for a reason and leave for a reason and they’re there to teach you” NOOOOO They’re not! They don’t exist for you! They’re not characters in your life story, they’re real human beings with as rich an internal life as you who are impacted by your choices and actions and to whom you have a series of basic obligations as a fellow living being on Earth. People don’t exist for your convenience or consumption or to fill in roles in your daydreamed life and they don’t vanish off the Earth the moment they leave your sight.
These are not easy things to learn or face, but they’re real and it’s part of growing up to realize you have more responsibilities to others than you maybe wanted or thought you would, and to realize that life is about something more complex and nuanced than just pursuing your own happiness no matter what it takes.
And politically that means accepting there isn’t a good team and a bad team, that it’s complicated and messy and that liberation is nonlinear and you can’t just write people off who do things that upset you and you can’t just write people in who share your identity.
And interpersonally it means accepting that you have flaws and shortcomings and that the things you like and want may not be things that are healthy or good to want or like and that maturing means learning to prioritize your well being and the well being of your community over the things you want when those things aren’t healthy or good.
And personally, it means not taking the easy way out anymore. Not investing in fantasies cause it’s safer than investing in reality. Not indulging in the most seductive or easiest option when you know in your heart it isn’t right or fair or kind or loving to do so. Not basing your happiness around getting what you want and not feeling cheated when things don’t go your way.
Growing up is good. Maturing is good. You’re not becoming a depressing boring surrendered adult just because you embrace a more subtle nuanced responsible view of life. Having healthy boundaries to strangers, not daydreaming all the time about a life devoid of obligations or responsibilities to others, being accountable to your values and learning to do the work of growing up and being patient and recognizing the value of compromise are fundamental parts of building a healthy good life.
The fact that being a person and having good relationships and being politically conscientious all take work is not a bad thing or something to try and avoid. It IS what life’s about - the journey not the destination, the process not the outcome, the knowledge and growth that comes from facing the world as it is, not resenting it for what it’s not.
Happiness isn’t about that person you’ve been obsessing over liking you back or a spontaneous offer for the perfect job or having your dream home. That person will have flaws you didn’t foresee and they’ll be boring some days and you’ll have fights and you’ll have doubts. And that job will take effort you didn’t expect and have demands you’ll wish it didn’t. And that dream home will have pipes burst and neighbors that piss you off and maintenance you’re tired of doing and structural flaws you didn’t notice when you first moved in.
If you want to be happy, you’ve got to learn how to appreciate being alive - for all the ups and downs - and accept that an enduringly good life won’t fall into your lap, you’ve gotta build it and you’ve gotta find joys in the building - the joys in overcoming a fight with your partner, the joys in finally being able to repair that problem in your house, the joys in a job well done even if the job itself isn’t one you love.
Otherwise, you’ll spend your life on a rollercoaster, forever chasing those highs and forever resentful and disappointed and unsatisfied by the reality of gravity.
